Verdigris

Michele Mari (Author) Brian Robert Moore (Translator)

At the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends
his summers at his grandparents' modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore,
losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his
grandfather's library. The greatest mystery he's ever encountered, however,
doesn't come from a book--it's the groundskeeper, Felice, a sometimes
frightening, sometimes gentle, always colorful man of uncertain age who speaks
an enchanting dialect and whose memory gets worse with each passing day. When Michelino
volunteers to help the old man by providing him with clever mnemonic devices to
keep his memory alive, the boy soon finds himself obsessed with piecing
together the eerie hodgepodge of Felice's biography . . . a quest that leads to
the uncovering of skeletons in Nazi uniforms in the attic, to Felice's
admission that he can hear the voices of the dead, and to a new perspective on
Felice's endless war against the insatiable local slugs, who are by no means
merely a horticultural threat.

And yet nothing could be more fascinating to Michelino
than Felice's own secret origins. Where did he come from? Is he the victim or
the villain of his story? Is he a noble hero, a holy fool, or perhaps the very
thing that Michelino most wants and fears: a real-life monster.

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Hard by a Great Forest

Leo Vardiashvili (Author)

NAMED ONE OF THE OBSERVER'S 10 BEST NEW NOVELISTS FOR 2024

"The stakes could barely be higher in Leo Vardiashvili's propulsive page-turner...It's a spellbinding achievement."--The Financial Times

"Has a commercial-fiction spring in its step.... Vardiashvili also has captured the winking, world-weary humor and magic-realist touches that mark a lot of literature from Europe's war-torn corners." --Los Angeles Times

"This novel annihilated me.... Left my heart bruised and battered and aching for more." --Khaled Hosseini, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner

"Tender and raw and funny." --Colum McCann, National Book Award winning author of Let the Great World Spin

"Propulsive, funny, and profound."--Elif Batuman, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Idiot

"A book like no other, from an imagination like no other." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost

Amid rubble and rebuilding in a former Soviet land, one family must rescue one another and put the past to rest: a stirring novel about what happens after the fighting is over

Saba is just a child when he flees the fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, for asylum in England. Two decades later, all three men are struggling to make peace with the past, haunted by the places and people they left behind.

When Irakli decides to return to Georgia, pulled back by memories of a lost wife and a decaying but still beautiful homeland, Saba and Sandro wait eagerly for news. But within weeks of his arrival, Irakli disappears, and the final message they receive from him causes a mystery to unfold before them: "I left a trail I can't erase. Do not follow it."

In a journey that will lead him to the very heart of a conflict that has marred generations and fractured his own family, Saba must retrace his father's footsteps to discover what remains of their homeland and its people. By turns savage and tender, compassionate and harrowing, Hard by a Great Forest is a powerful and ultimately hopeful novel about the individual and collective trauma of war, and the indomitable spirit of a people determined not only to survive, but to remember those who did not.

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Love Novel

Ivana Sajko (Author) Mima Simic (Translator)

Winner of the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis - Shortlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award - One of The Millions Most Anticipated Titles of 2024 - One of Kirkus Reviews' Twenty Books You Can Read in a Weekend - One of the Boston Globe's Anticipated Forthcoming Titles

Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us to the frontlines of a war waged between kitchen and bedroom.

He, an unemployed Dante scholar, trying to change the world and write a novel. She, once a passable actress with a vaguely rewarding theater job, now a stay-at-home mom. He is delirious with dreams of grandeur; she is on edge, a detonator bomb with a dirty laundry trigger. The rent is late, the neighbor caviling, the government astoundingly callous: with violence looming on all sides, husband and wife circle one another in a dizzying dance towards the abyss.

Intense and astutely ironic, devastating and darkly comic, Ivana Sajko's Love Novel takes a scalpel to the heart of modern married life.

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Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan

Siamak Herawi (Author) Sara Khalili (Translator)

An intimate look at the lives, loves, horrors, and dreams of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule

A heartbreaking tragedy in the vein of The Kite Runner from a major English-speaking Afghan figure famous for his books and long career in politics

Siamak Herawi brings Afghan women centerstage and takes us deep into the heart of his motherland to witness the reality of their lives under the Taliban's most extreme interpretation of Islam. Based on true stories, the result is a sobering and harrowing tale that relates the current ethos of a country under occupation by one power or another for more than half a century.

Told in a direct, conversational prose, this chorus of voices offers us a vivid picture of the endless cycle of the suffering of girls and women in the grip of the Taliban authorities, of the imbalance of power and opportunity.

The central figures illuminate the power of love, friendship, and generosity in the face of poverty and oppression. Their experiences and dilemmas have a visceral power and we become deeply attached to Kowsar, Geesu, and Simin. These are testaments of resilience, hope, courage, and visceral fear, of doors of opportunity opening just a crack that offer a way out.

In Sara Khalili's vibrant and nuanced translation from the Persian, Tali Girls tears down the curtain and exposes the treacherous realities of what women are up against in modern-day, war-torn Afghanistan.

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Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness

Shahd Alshammari (Author)

This lyrical hybrid memoir revisits a lifetime's worth of personal journals to slowly piece together a narrative of chronic illness--a moving account of survival, memory, loss, and hope.

Shahd Alshammari is just eighteen when she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and told by her neurologist that she would not make it past age thirty. Despite what she is told, by thirty, she has become a professor of literature, and has managed to navigate education systems in both Kuwait and the United Kingdom and inspire generations of students.

Head above Water is the intimate, philosophical memoir of Shahd Alshammari's life of triumph and resistance, as a woman marked "ill" by society and as a lifelong reader, student, and teacher. Charting her journey with raw honesty, Alshammari explores disability, displacement, and belonging--not only of the body, but of culture, gender, and race, and imparts wisdom of profound philosophical value throughout. It is people, human connections, that keep us afloat, she argues--"and in storytelling we have the power to gain a sense of agency over our lives."

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Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women

Pashtana Durrani (Author) Tamara Bralo (Author)

From young Afghani activist and Amnesty International Global Youth Ambassador Pashtana Durrani, a deeply inspiring memoir about the power of learning and the value of educators in their many forms - from teachers, mentors, and role models, to fathers, mothers, and any one of us with the drive to stand against ignorance...

A Ms. Magazine Pick for Most Anticipated Feminist Books


"Pashtana's story highlights the resourcefulness and bravery of young women in Afghanistan. I hope readers will be inspired by her mission to give every girl the education she deserves and the opportunity to pursue her dreams."--Malala Yousafzai

Inspired by generations of her family's unwavering belief in the power of education, Pashtana Durrani recognized her calling early in life: to educate Afghanistan's girls and young women, raised in a society where learning is forbidden. In a country devastated by war and violence, where girls are often married off before reaching their teenage years and prohibited from leaving their homes, heeding that call seemed both impossible and dangerous.

Pashtana was raised in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan where her father, a tribal leader, founded a community school for girls within their home. Fueled by his insistence that despite being a girl, she mattered and deserved an education, Pashtana was sixteen when, against impossible odds, she was granted a path out of the refugee camp: admittance to a preparatory program at Oxford. Unthinkably and to her parents' horror, she chose a different path. She chose Afghanistan.

Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls in remote areas of the country, training teachers in digital literacy. Her commitment to education has made her a target of the Taliban. Still, she continues to fight for women's education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.

Courageous and inspiring, Last to Eat, Last to Learn is the story of how just one person can transform a family, a tribe, a country. It reminds us of the emancipatory power of learning and the transformational potential that lies within each of us.

A portion of proceeds from Last to Eat, Last to Learn will be donated to LEARN (LearnAfghan.org), the NGO dedicated to providing quality education and healthcare to communities in conflict zones.

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Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide

Tahir Hamut Izgil (Author) Joshua L. Freeman (Translator)

A National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize finalist

Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMES - THE WASHINGTON POST - THE ECONOMIST - TIME

A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide

One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China's internment camps for Muslim minorities.

Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government's radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs' radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world.

Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir's daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope.

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.

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What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork

Witold Szablowski (Author) Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator)

A New York Times Editors' Choice

"Entertaining . . . A heady mix of propaganda and paranoia . . . [Szablowski writes] sensitively . . . not just about food but also its terrible absence." --The New York Times Book Review

"Riveting--a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book." --Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food Explorer

A high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure that tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food, by an award-winning Polish journalist who's been praised by both Timothy Snyder and Bill Buford

In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szablowski has tracked down--and broken bread with--people whose stories of working in Kremlin kitchens impart a surprising flavor to our understanding of one of the world's superpowers.

In revealing what Tsar Nicholas II's and Lenin's favorite meals were, why Stalin's cook taught Gorbachev's cook to sing to his dough, how Stalin had a food tester while he was starving the Ukrainians during the Great Famine, what the recipe was for the first soup flown into outer space, why Brezhnev hated caviar, what was served to the Soviet Union's leaders at the very moment they decided the USSR should cease to exist, and whether Putin's grandfather really did cook for Lenin and Stalin, Szablowski has written a fascinating oral history--complete with recipes and photos--of Russia's evolution from culinary indifference to decadence, famine to feasts, and of the Kremlin's Olympics-style preoccupation with food as an expression of the country's global standing.

Traveling across Stalin's Georgia, the war fronts of Afghanistan, the nuclear wastelands of Chornobyl, and even to a besieged steelworks plant in Mariupol--often with one-of-a-kind access to locales forbidden to foreign eyes, and with a rousing sense of adventure and an inimitable ability to get people to spill the tea--he shows that a century after the revolution, Russia still uses food as an instrument of war and feeds its people on propaganda.

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Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women

Sandra Guzman (Author)

Spanning time, styles, and traditions, a dazzling collection of essential works from 140 Latine writers, scholars, and activists from across the world--from warrior poet Audre Lorde to novelist Edwidge Danticat and performer and author Elizabeth Acevedo and artist/poet Cecilia Vicuña--gathered in one magnificent volume.

Daughters of Latin America collects the intergenerational voices of Latine women across time and space, capturing the power, strength, and creativity of these visionary writers, leaders, scholars, and activists--including 24 Indigenous voices. Several authors featured are translated into English for the first time. Grammy, National Book Award, Cervantes, and Pulitzer Prize winners as well as a Nobel Laureate and the next generation of literary voices are among the stars of this essential collection, women whose work inspires and transforms us.

An eclectic and inclusive time capsule spanning centuries, genres, and geographical and linguistic diversity, Daughters of Latin America is divided into 13 parts representing the 13 Mayan Moons, each cycle honoring a different theme. Within its pages are poems from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón and celebrated Cervantes Prize-winner Dulce María Loynaz; lyric essays from New York Times bestselling author Naima Coster, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Guggenheim Fellow Maryse Condé; rousing speeches from U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Lencan Indigenous land and water protector Berta Caceres; and a transcendent Mazatec chant from shaman and poet María Sabina testifying to the power of language as a cure, which opens the book.

More than a collection of writings, Daughters of Latin America is a resurrection of ancestral literary inheritance as well as a celebration of the rising voices encouraged and nurtured by those who came before them.

In addition to those mentioned above, contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Albalucia Angel, Marie Arana, Ruth Behar, Gioconda Belli, Miluska Benavides, Carmen Bouollosa, Giannina Braschi, Norma Cantú, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Angie Cruz, Edwidge Danticat, Julia de Burgos, Lila Downs, Laura Esquivel, Conceição Evaristo, Mayra Santos Febres, Sara Gallardo, Cristina Rivera Garza, Reyna Grande, Sonia Guiñasaca, Georgina Herrera, María Hinojosa, Claudia Salazar Jimenez, Jamaica Kincaid, María Clara Sharupi Jua, Amada Libertad, Josefina López, Gabriela Mistral, Celeste Mohammed, Cherrié Moraga, Angela Morales, Nancy Morejón, Anaïs Nin, Achy Obejas, Alejandra Pizarnik, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Elena Poniatowska, Laura Restrepo, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Mikeas Sánchez, Esmeralda Santiago, Rita Laura Segato, Ana María Shua, Natalia Toledo, Julia Wong, Elisabet Velasquez, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Helena María Viramontes, and many more.

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We think how you spend your time matters. Spending time with quality reading is one of the best possible things you can do for yourself. All of the narratives written and the book covers are taken from the sales page. All purchases support local bookstores near you.

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The Night Watchman

Louise Erdrich (Author)

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal?

Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie - 'Patrice' - Paranteau has no desire to wear herself down on a husband and kids. She works at the factory, earning barely enough to support her mother and brother, let alone her alcoholic father who sometimes returns home to bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to get if she's ever going to get to Minnesota to find her missing sister Vera.

In The Night Watchman multi-award winning author Louise Erdrich weaves together a story of past and future generations, of preservation and progress. She grapples with the worst and best impulses of human nature, illuminating the loves and lives, desires and ambitions of her characters with compassion, wit and intelligence.

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We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World

Malala Yousafzai (Author)

Nobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author Malala Yousafzai turns the faceless statistics and endless news stories about displacement into real people--introducing a small fraction of the millions worldwide who have fled home in this powerful and "stirring" (New York Times) account.

After her father was murdered, María escaped in the middle of the night with her mother.

Zaynab was out of school for two years as she fled war before landing in America. Her sister, Sabreen, survived a harrowing journey to Italy.

Ajida escaped horrific violence, but then found herself battling the elements to keep her family safe.

Malala's experiences visiting refugee camps caused her to reconsider her own displacement--first as an Internally Displaced Person when she was a young child in Pakistan, and then as an international activist who could travel anywhere in the world except to the home she loved. In We Are Displaced, Malala not only explores her own story, but she also shares the personal stories of some of the incredible girls she has met on her journeys--girls who have lost their community, relatives, and often the only world they've ever known.

In a time of immigration crises, war, and border conflicts, We Are Displaced is an important reminder from one of the world's most prominent activists that every single one of the 68.5 million currently displaced is a person--often a young person--with hopes and dreams.

"A stirring and timely book." --New York Times

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The Complete Persepolis: Volumes 1 and 2

Marjane Satrapi (Author) Anjali Singh (Translator)

Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time.

"A stunning graphic memoir...a wholly original achievement in the form." --The New York Times

Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom--Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.

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Mother Doll

Katya Apekina (Author)

* A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 Selected By * The Millions * Chicago Review of Books * Hey Alma * Stylecaster * And Many More! *

Prize-winning author Katya Apekina's Mother Doll is a sharp and visceral nesting doll of a novel, about four generations of mothers and daughters and the inherited trauma cast by Russian history.

"A profoundly moving story . . . Strange, wild, offbeat, and hilarious. I absolutely loved it." --Lauren Groff
"Spellbinding, hallucinatory, and very funny . . . A rare achievement." --Elif Batuman
"Sharply original and surprisingly witty...Apekina turns the multigenerational family saga on its head." --Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
"Like the Russian nesting dolls that inspired it, Mother Doll reveals layer after layer of poignant delights." --Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)

Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn't want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She's deeply disconnected from herself and her desires when she gets a strange call from Paul, a psychic medium who usually specializes in channeling dead pets, with a message from the other side. Zhenia's great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary, has approached him from a cloud of ancestral grief, desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.

As Irina begins her confession with the help of a purgatorial chorus of grieving Russian ghosts, Zhenia awakens to aspects of herself she hadn't been willing to confront. But does either woman have what the other needs to understand their predicament? Or will Irina be stuck in limbo, with Zhenia plagued by ancestral trauma, and her children after her?

Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll forces us to look at how painful secrets stamp themselves from one generation to the next. Katya Apekina's second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity, and war.

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The Women

Kristin Hannah (Author)

From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women--at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets--and becomes one of--the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism,The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

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Arab Language Stories

If you wish to read some free translated stories from Arabic Women, you should check out ArabLit Quarterly. Here are a few samples:

• 9 Short Stories by Moroccan Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Algerian Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Lebanese Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Palestinian Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Syrian Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Egyptian Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Sudanese and South Sudanese Women, in Translation

• 9 Short Stories by Iraqi Women, in Translation

  ---

We think how you spend your time matters. Spending time with quality reading is one of the best possible things you can do for yourself. All of the narratives written below the book covers are taken from the sales page. All purchases support local bookstores near you.

The Tale of Genji: The Authentic First Translation of the World's Earliest Novel

Murasaki Shikibu (Author) Kencho Suematsu (Translator) Michael Emmerich (Foreword by)

The most famous work of Japanese literature and the world's first novel--written a thousand years ago and one of the enduring classics of world literature.

Written centuries before the time of Shakespeare and even Chaucer, The Tale of Genji marks the birth of the novel--and after more than a millennium, this seminal work continues to enchant readers throughout the world.

Lady Murasaki Shikibu and her tale's hero, Prince Genji, have had an unmatched influence on Japanese culture. Prince Genji manifests what was to become an image of the ideal Heian era courtier; gentle and passionate. Genji is also a master poet, dancer, musician and painter. The Tale of Genji follows Prince Genji through his many loves and varied passions. This book has influenced not only generations of courtiers and samurai of the distant past, but artists and painters even in modern times--episodes in the tale have been incorporated into the design of kimonos and handicrafts, and the four-line poems called waka which dance throughout this work have earned it a place as a classic text in the study of poetry.

This version by Kencho Suematsu was the first-ever translation in English. Condensed, it's a quarter length of the unabridged text, making it perfect for readers with limited time.

"Not speaking is the wiser part,
And words are sometimes vain,
But to completely close the heart
In silence, gives me pain."

--Prince Genji, in The Tale of Genji

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou (Author) Oprah Winfrey (Foreword by)

Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin

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Brave New World

Aldous Huxley (Author)

Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit

"A masterpiece. . . . One of the most prophetic dystopian works." --Wall Street Journal

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. "A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization.

Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

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Swastika Night

Katharine Burdekin (Author) Daphne Patai (Afterword by)

Published in 1937, twelve years before Orwell's 1984, Swastika Night projects a totally male-controlled fascist world that has eliminated women as we know them. Women are breeders, kept as cattle, while men in this post-Hitlerian world are embittered automatons, fearful of all feelings, having abolished all history, education, creativity, books, and art. The plot centers on a "misfit" who asks, "How could this have happened?"

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The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka (Author) Tony Darnell (Editor)

"The Metamorphosis" (original German title: "Die Verwandlung") is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.

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Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl (Author) William J. Winslade (Afterword by) Harold S. Kushner (Foreword by)

A book for finding purpose and strength in times of great despair, the international best-seller is still just as relevant today as when it was first published.

"This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength."
--Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN

This seminal book, which has been called "one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought" by Carl Rogers and "one of the great books of our time" by Harold Kushner, has been translated into more than fifty languages and sold over sixteen million copies. "An enduring work of survival literature," according to the New York Times, Viktor Frankl's riveting account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps, and his insightful exploration of the human will to find meaning in spite of the worst adversity, has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946. At the heart of Frankl's theory of logotherapy (from the Greek word for "meaning") is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but rather the discovery and pursuit of what the individual finds meaningful. Today, as new generations face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl's classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles.

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The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Viet Thanh Nguyen (Author)

Soon to be an HBO Original Series

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

One of TIME's 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time

"[A] remarkable debut novel." --Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (cover review)

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, a startling debut novel from a powerful new voice featuring one of the most remarkable narrators of recent fiction: a conflicted subversive and idealist working as a double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.

The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

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The Old Woman and the River (Adapted)

Ismail Fahad Ismail (Author) Sophia Vasalou (Translator)

After the ceasefire in 1988, the devastation to the landscape of Iraq wrought by the longest war of the twentieth century--the Iran-Iraq War--becomes visible. Eight years of fighting have turned nature upside down, with vast wastelands being left behind. In southeastern Iraq, along the shores of the Shatt al-Arab River, the groves of date palm trees have withered. No longer bearing fruit, their leaves have turned a bright yellow. There, Iraqi forces had blocked the entry points of the river's tributaries and streams, preventing water from flowing to the trees and vegetation. Yet, surveying this destruction from the sky, a strip of land bursting with green can be seen. Beginning from the Shatt al-Arab River and reaching to the fringes of the western desert, several kilometers wide, it appears as a lush oasis of some kind. The secret of this fertility, sustaining villages and remaining soldiers, is unclear. But it is said that one old woman is responsible for this lifeline.

From Electric Literature:
Um Qasem is somewhere near 60, widowed, a grandmother. At a glance, she’s neither a threat nor much of a boon to anyone. At the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 to 1988, her husband dies after the family is evacuated from a targeted area that includes their village. Um Qasem settles in to her new location. Her sons and their families quickly adjust and expect her to do the same. But resistance rises in her after a long time of feeling displaced.

With her donkey, Good Omen (a beautifully drawn character in his own right), Um Qasem sneaks away and travels across miles of military presence to return to her village, despite its off-limits status. Once there, she finds military-ordered dams have killed off much of the plant and amphibious animal life. The streams and ponds that once nourished the entire area are nearly dried up. Trees and flowers in the abandoned yards are dying.

When soldiers discover Um Qasem, they see her as little more than a widow who needs protection; she must be removed from the area. But she has other ideas about what needs protecting  A resourceful woman with a vision, she takes risks to free the water from the dams and restore life to her village, pushing herself beyond traditional expectations in the process. 

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Olga Tokarczuk (Author) Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator) Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator)

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

"A brilliant literary murder mystery." --Chicago Tribune

"Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." --Annie Proulx

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

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The Door

Magda Szabo (Author) Len Rix (Translator) Ali Smith (Introduction by)

One of The New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2015"

An NYRB Classics Original

The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary's Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda's housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda's household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda. They share a kind of love--at least until Magda's long-sought success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation.

Len Rix's prizewinning translation of The Door at last makes it possible for American readers to appreciate the masterwork of a major modern European writer.

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The Summer Book

Tove Jansson (Author) Thomas Teal (Translator) Kathryn Davis (Introduction by)

In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer--its sunlight and storms--into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia's grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature Venice, write a fanciful study of local bugs. They discuss things that matter to young and old alike: life, death, the nature of God and of love. "On an island," thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete." In The Summer Book, Jansson creates her own complete world, full of the varied joys and sorrows of life.

Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll comic strip and books brought her international acclaim, lived for much of her life on an island like the one described in The Summer Book, and the work can be enjoyed as her closely observed journal of the sounds, sights, and feel of a summer spent in intimate contact with the natural world.

The Summer Book is translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.

From Electric Literature:
This quiet and beautiful story of a grandmother and granddaughter exploring their world, a tiny island off the coast of Finland, is a classic. As the two go forth to converse, play together, appreciate and protect their island world, a tender closeness grows. But flares of tension ignite on these pages, too. The child’s mother has recently died. 

Tove Jansson was in her late 50s when she wrote this novel in which no real plot emerges and little happens: a miniature Venice gets created by the two companions, a couple of cats show up, each presenting challenges regarding the meaning of love, a friend visits and quickly becomes a problem; there’s weather and the sea and bobbing about in boats, and some other people doing things, too. But the real story that threads throughout this quiet and often funny book is one of connection and transition. This is not a children’s story.

It’s a surprise that the six-year old granddaughter is as much a caretaker of the grandmother’s life as the other way around. The grandmother can be as curious and mischievous as any child might be, while at the same time teaching tolerance of others’ beliefs and care for the natural world. She’s not the stereotypically accepting or sage grandmother, but a woman who realizes her life is coming to a close and she’s clear that’s her business.

Both the grandmother and granddaughter own themselves. Each has a memorable personality, and they are determined to freely express that personality with one another because here on the island and together, their love and their surroundings allow for great freedom. This is an honest book about a pair of unique individuals, mutually devoted.

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The Woman Next Door

Yewande Omotoso (Author)

The U.S. debut of award-winning writer Yewande Omotoso, in which an unexpected friendship blossoms in contemporary Cape Town--and in a community where loving thy neighbor is easier said than done.

Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors. One is black, the other white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed, and are living with questions, disappointments, and secrets that have brought them shame. And each has something that the woman next door deeply desires.

Sworn enemies, the two share a hedge and a deliberate hostility, which they maintain with a zeal that belies their age. But, one day, an unexpected event forces Hortensia and Marion together. As the physical barriers between them collapse, their bickering gradually softens into conversation and, gradually, the two discover common ground. But are these sparks of connection enough to ignite a friendship, or is it too late to expect these women to change?

A finalist for: International DUBLIN Literary Award-Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction-Barry Ronge Fiction Prize-Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize- University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing
Longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction-One of the Best Black Heritage Reads (EssenceMagazine)- One of NPR's Best Books of the Year-One ofPublishers Weekly's Writers to Watch.

From Electric Literature:
In post-apartheid Capetown, two next door neighbors in an upscale residential area are at odds. Both are old and widowed. Both have been successful in their careers. Marion (white) was an architect, and Hortensia (black) was a textile designer. They’ve felt antagonism toward one another for years. Marion has a history of racism and little self awareness. She has benefitted from all that apartheid offered its white residents. Hortensia moved to Capetown after marrying a white man, Peter, who betrayed her with another woman. Both Hortensia and Marion have been hurt by husbands who failed them.

Even if you know nothing much at all about apartheid in South Africa, these two old women serve as guides into the chasm. Marion and Hortensia are alone and lonely; each judges the other and feels she must keep her distance going forward. But then fate hands each one a burden she cannot carry alone. They are next door neighbors. What can they do but look one another’s way for help?

The novel seems to threaten to swerve into a pleasing connection as an outcome, but Omotoso is too smart for this and doesn’t cheat. Instead, she works to take personalities, pain, ignorance and the reality of the past into account. She directs the intersection of their need for one another and their history with a firm hand as these women begin to stretch themselves into the possibility of building something new together. 

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Two Old Women [Anniversary Edition]: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival

Velma Wallis (Author)

"No one should miss this beautiful legend." --Tony Hillerman

Velma Wallis's award-winning, bestselling tale about two elderly Native American women who must fend for themselves during a harsh Alaskan winter

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.

Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).

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**This week’s recommendations are narratives taken directly from the bookseller.

Trust

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

"Buzzy and enthralling ...A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery...Fun as hell to read." --Oprah Daily

"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City's elite in the roaring '20s and Great Depression."--Vanity Fair

"A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed." --Esquire

"Exhilarating." --New York Times

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth--all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another--and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

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The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

 
A New York Times Bestseller!

Axie Oh's The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is an enthralling feminist retelling of the classic Korean folktale "The Tale of Shim Cheong," perfect for fans of Wintersong, Uprooted, and Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

Deadly storms have ravaged Mina's homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God's bride, in the hopes that one day the "true bride" will be chosen and end the suffering.

Many believe that Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village--and the beloved of Mina's older brother Joon--may be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is to be sacrificed, Joon follows Cheong out to sea, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong's stead.

Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina seeks out the Sea God, only to find him caught in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man named Shin--as well as a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits--Mina sets out to wake the Sea God and bring an end to the killer storms once and for all.

But she doesn't have much time: A human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking...

Praise for The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea:

An ABA Indie Bestseller

"On every page I found something marvelous and new, and I was eager to keep reading because I wanted to further explore this wondrous new world." --The New York Times

"A beautiful, mesmerizing retelling I wish I'd had when I was growing up. ... A heartfelt tale that I will be recommending for years to come." --Elizabeth Lim, New York Times-bestselling author of Six Crimson Cranes

"A clever, creative, and exquisitely written tale of sacrifice, love, and fate." --Stephanie Garber, New York Times-bestselling author of Caraval

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Daughter of the Moon Goddess 

The acclaimed national and international bestseller

"Epic, romantic, and enthralling from start to finish."--Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series

"An all-consuming work of literary fantasy that is breathtaking both for its beauty and its suspense."--BookPage, starred review

A captivating and romantic debut epic fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e, in which a young woman's quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm.

Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin's magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.

Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the emperor's son, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the prince.

To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies. But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream--striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic, of loss and sacrifice--where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.

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A Thousand Splendid Suns 

 
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

"Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini's best-selling first book, The Kite Runner."--Newsweek

Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

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The Tiger's Wife

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop."--Entertainment Weekly

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times - Entertainment Weekly - The Christian Science Monitor - The Kansas City Star - Library Journal

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal - O: The Oprah Magazine - The Economist - Vogue - Slate - Chicago Tribune - The Seattle Times - Dayton Daily News - Publishers Weekly - Alan Cheuse, NPR's All Things Considered

"Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying."--The Wall Street Journal

"Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger's Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination."--The New York Times Book Review

"That The Tiger's Wife never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing."--The Washington Post 

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker's twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.

Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weekly trips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.

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The Hotel Tito: A Novel 

Winner of the Prix Ulysse for best debut novel in France

Winner in Croatia and the Balkan region of the Kočicevo Pero Award, the Josip and Ivan Kozarac Award, and the Kiklop Award for the best work of fiction.

When the Croatian War of Independence breaks out in her hometown of Vukovar in the summer of 1991 she is nine years old, nestled within the embrace of family with her father, mother, and older brother. She is sent to a seaside vacation to be far from the hostilities. Meanwhile, her father has disappeared while fighting with the Croatian forces. By the time she returns at summer's end everything has changed. Against the backdrop of genocide (the Vukovar hospital massacre) and the devastation of middle-class society within the Yugoslav Federation, our young narrator, now with her mother and brother refugees among a sea of refugees, spends the next six years experiencing her own self-discovery and transformation amid unfamiliar surroundings as a displaced person. As she grows from a nine-year old into a sparkling and wonderfully complicated fifteen-year-old, it is as a stranger in her own land.

Applauded as the finest work of fiction to appear about the Yugoslav Wars, Ivana Bodrožic's The Hotel Tito is at its heart a story of a young girl's coming of age, a reminder that even during times of war--especially during such times--the future rests with those who are the innocent victims and peaceful survivors.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude

"One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. . . . Mr. Gabriel García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life." —William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review 

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

In the fictional Colombian town of Macondo, Gabriel García Márquez weaves a magical realist tapestry in "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Spanning seven generations of the Buendía family, the novel explores themes of isolation, cyclical history, and the enduring power of family and memory.

Founding a Dream, Facing Reality:

José Arcadio Buendía, driven by a thirst for knowledge and escape from reality, leads his wife Úrsula to found Macondo, a utopia isolated from the outside world. The town flourishes, attracting gypsies and wonders, but also facing isolation and internal conflicts. José Arcadio's obsession with alchemy and war leads to alienation, foreshadowing the family's struggle with solitude.

Love, Loneliness, and Magical Realism:

The Buendíans become entangled in a web of love, loss, and solitude. Aureliano, the first male child born with his eyes open, inherits his father's thirst for knowledge and rebellious spirit. He embarks on numerous wars, seeking meaning and order in a chaotic world.

Amaranta, his sister, yearns for a love she can never fully grasp, her unrequited desires adding to the melancholic atmosphere. Magical elements, like melting ice and premonitions, weave seamlessly into the narrative, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

Cycles of Hope and Despair:

Each generation of Buendíans grapples with their own challenges. Arrogance, obsession, and incestual relationships lead to the family's decline. Macondo faces epidemics, banana plantation booms and busts, and political turbulence, reflecting the tumultuous history of Latin America. Yet, amidst the despair, glimmers of hope remain. Aureliano Buendia the second's revolutionary ideals and Ursula's unwavering resilience offer the possibility of breaking the cycle of solitude.

Memory and the Echoes of Time:

As the novel progresses, the boundaries between past, present, and future blur. Characters repeat names and traits, mirroring their ancestors, and premonitory dreams foreshadow events. Macondo itself shrinks and crumbles, becoming a ghost town haunted by memories. The last Buendía, Aureliano Babilonia, deciphers Melquíades' manuscripts, revealing that the entire saga has been recorded and read before it even happened.

Enduring Resonance:

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" leaves a lasting impression. It's a story about the universal human experience – love, loss, the search for meaning, and the cyclical nature of life. By blending magical realism with historical and mythical elements, Márquez compels us to reflect on our own families, memories, and the impact of the past on the present. The novel, like Macondo itself, may fade away, but its echoes continue to resonate within us, reminding us of the powerful beauty and bittersweet melancholy of human existence.

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A Shining

 
WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A New Yorker Best Book of 2023

A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon grows dark and begins to snow. But instead of searching for help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by National Book Award-finalist Jon Fosse, "the Beckett of the twenty-first century" (Le Monde).

From World Literature Today

"If you are looking for a manageable first exposure to the work of 2023’s Nobel Prize winner, Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, you might consider his new novella, A Shining. Unlike his previous six-hundred-plus-page, one-sentence novel Septology, it unfolds in short, rapidly progressing sentences, carrying the stream of consciousness of its narrator and protagonist. We follow his thoughts and impressions as, lost in a dark, freezing Norwegian forest, he increasingly loses purchase on reality, edging ever closer to death.

It is not clear to us, nor to the protagonist himself, why he started driving that evening or why he took the road leading to the forest, where his tires get stuck in the mud. He shares his beliefs about his actions and perceptions as he grows increasingly unsure about what is real or why. He leaves his car and stumbles through a thick, snowy forest, at times convincing himself to be in search of other people. 

Initially, he is only confused about his motivation: “I walked into the forest, because I wanted to freeze to death. But I don’t want to . . . Or is that exactly what I do want.” He soon starts feeling led by a presence, a shining, that sporadically talks to him. Two shadowy figures appear, turning into his parents as they approach. He knows himself to be alone and them to be figments of his imagination. Still, there is no fear or desperation to regain reality. His father is as absent and near-mute as his mother is engaging and optimistic. Even so, they cannot help him find the way, and the mother sees the ending “the way it had to end.” In Fosse’s last pages, they are joined by a further, faceless figure, who leads them into the shimmering presence as meaning falls from everything. 

A Shining enwraps the reader in ruminating language, sentences circling in repetitions and contradictions:

“there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or another, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else.”

“It hasn’t been that long . . . , or maybe it has been a long time, maybe it’s been years, or maybe it’s been just a few months, or a few weeks, a few days, because it’s definitely been more than . . .”

We see a confused mind but not a fearful one. For all the protagonist’s questioning, we cannot shake the impression that something in him knows his fate. A lonely man, he seems to be led in rather than leading his own actions. How far this extends back into his past—and perhaps contributed to his walking into the forest one cold night—is left for us to speculate. In the little time that the novella follows its protagonist, he does not seem to make any real decision—not even on whether his life is worth continuing. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he pleads with the reader.

Often touted as the “Beckett of the twenty-first century,” Fosse’s prose frequently plays with the absurd, blurring the line between the imagined and the real. A Shining explores this haze as its protagonist’s mind makes a slow, Dantean descent into the void. The atheist reader might forgive the author’s thinly veiled Christian image of “the presence shining in its shimmering whiteness,” as they are rewarded by simple, quickly paced prose that merges their mind with that of the slowly dying."

Felix Haas
Zurich

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The Book of Fire

 
"A compelling story of love, loss, and redemption in the face of unimaginable tragedy . . . As with The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Lefteri transports the reader to a once lush and now destroyed world."--Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale

"Christy Lefteri writes with great delicacy and urgency, making us see the world through fresh eyes."--Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them.

Months later, as the village tries to rebuild, Irini stumbles upon the man who started the fire, a land speculator who had intended only a small, controlled burn to clear forestland to build on but instead ignited a catastrophe. He is dying, although the cause is unclear, and in her anger at all he took from them, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her.

As the local police investigate the suspicious death, Tasso mourns his father, who has not been seen since before the fire. Tasso's hands were burnt in the flames, leaving him unable to paint, and he struggles to cope with the overwhelming loss of his artistic voice and his beloved forest. Only his young daughter, who wants to repair the damage that's been done, gives him hope for the future.

Gorgeously written, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Book of Fire is a masterful work about the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, as well as the universal ties that bind people together, and to the land that they call home.

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The Stranger

 "The Stranger" is a novel by Albert Camus that centers around the character of Meursault, a detached and apathetic Algerian man residing in French Algiers. The narrative opens with the news of Meursault's mother's death, and the story unfolds as Meursault navigates the aftermath of this event. Throughout the novel, Meursault exhibits a dispassionate and detached demeanor, seeming unaffected by societal norms and expectations, which ultimately leads to his alienation from those around him.

The novel takes a thought-provoking turn when Meursault becomes involved in a violent and senseless act, further complicating his disengaged and detached outlook on life. As the story unfolds, Meursault's trial and the subsequent examination of his character prompt a deeper exploration of existential themes, including the nature of truth, the absurdity of life, and the human struggle for meaning.

Through Meursault's introspective narration, Camus offers an unflinching portrayal of the human condition, challenging readers to confront the inherent absurdity and indifference of existence. "The Stranger" remains a timeless and compelling work that continues to provoke philosophical contemplation and critical examination of the complexities of human experience.

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger--Camus's masterpiece--gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.

Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.

"The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward's translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus's stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity." --from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie

First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.

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Honeybees and Distant Thunder 

 
THE MILLION-COPY AWARD-WINNING JAPANESE BESTSELLER

"Onda's rich descriptions capture often elusive topics--music and longing--and bring the classical repertoire to vivid life." --People, BEST NEW BOOK

Tender and intense, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is the unflinching story of love, courage and rivalry as three young people come to understand what it means to truly be a friend.

In a small coastal town just a stone's throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous--and painful--moments of their lives. Though they don't know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, for ever.

Aya was a child prodigy who abruptly gave up performing after the death of her mother, and is now trying for a comeback; Masaru, a childhood friend of Aya who came to the piano through her insistence that he learn to play, is now reunited with her after many years, and is equally invested in both his and her success; Akashi, who is older and married, works in a music store and is the "old man" of the competitors, hoping for a final chance at success; and Jin, a sixteen-year-old prodigy, the free spirited son of a beekeeper who travels constantly, and has no formal training (and doesn't even own a piano) yet whose mesmerizing insight into music has brought him to the attention of one of the world's most celebrated pianists, the late Maestro Von Hoffman.

Each of them will break the rules, awe their fans and push themselves to the brink. But at what cost?

Beloved in Japan, Riku Onda immerses us in the world of music--from piano masterpieces to the buzz of bees and the rumble of thunder--which crescendos to a surprising ending in this rich and vibrant novel.

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Prophet Song 

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 - NATIONAL BESTSELLER

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what--or who--is she willing to leave behind?

The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother's fight to hold her family together. 

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How To Stand Up To A Dictator

From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account, with an introduction by Amal Clooney

Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections.

But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country's most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines.

There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Phillipines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. She maps a network of disinformation--a heinous web of cause and effect--that has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars to America's Capitol Hill; Britain's Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.

Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?

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About The Book

From Amazon:

This internationally acclaimed winner of the Finlandia Award is “a brilliant and dark parable about the fluid boundaries between human and animal” (The Boston Globe).
 
Angel, a young photographer, comes home from a night of carousing to find a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a wounded, helpless young troll. He takes it in, not suspecting the dramatic consequences of this decision. What does one do with a troll in the city? As the troll’s presence influences Angel’s life in ways he could never have predicted, it becomes clear that the creature is the familiar of man’s most forbidden feelings. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, beguiling story of nature an…

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