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The Welsh Girl
by Peter Ho Davies
Half-Welsh Davies draws on his heritage and a little-known part of World War II history in this beautifully written story of life and love on the outskirts of the war. The stories of three primary characters alternate as their lives intersect: Rotherdam, a British intelligence officer, son of a Canadian mother and German father who was Jewish; Karsten, a young German corporal taken prisoner in France; and title character Esther Evans, 17, who helps her widower father with his sheep farm and works at the neighborhood pub. In mid-1944, English troops finish building a base in the Welsh hills, which--unknown to the locals--will be a POW camp, when Esther is raped by her English soldier sweetheart, with whom she had dreamed of eloping. Karsten, ashamed of surrendering even when the only recourse was death for him and his men, is an English-speaking POW at the new camp who restores his reputation and is aided by Esther when he escapes. And Rotherdam, skilled at interviewing prisoners (among then Rudolf Hess), struggles with his heritage. Dealing with issues of honor, identity, patriotism, and displacement, this centers on cynefin, a Welsh word describing a sense of place or territory for which there is no English equivalent. This first novel by Davies, author of two highly praised short story collections, has been anticipated--and, with its wonderfully drawn characters, it has been worth the wait. (Booklist review)
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The Angel of History
by Bruno Arpaia
For a brief moment in 1940 the lives of a young Spanish militant and a reclusive academic of German and Jewish heritage are thrown together. Along with thousands of others across Europe, both men have fled their homeland in the face of fascist persecution. Yet, until the day their paths converge on a remote mountain pass between France and Spain, their experience of war has been vastly different. Based on true events of Benjamin's life, and ranging from Paris' Left Bank to the prison camps of southern France, The Angel of History explores how the history we think we know is not a series of events but rather a constellation of countless individual lives. And although every story is unique, each is founded on the same human desire - to be remembered.
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The Terror
by Dan Simmons
The men on board, Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition - as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth - and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in search of the fabled North-West Passage. But the ships have now been trapped in the Arctic ice for nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling supplies or the vessels being slowly crushed by the unyielding grip of the frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the ships, snatching one man at a time - mutilating, devouring. A nameless thing, at once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition's nemesis. When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain Francis Crozier of HMS Terror to take command and lead the remaining crew on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Eskimo woman who cannot speak. She may be the key to survival - or the harbinger of their deaths. And as scurvy, starvation and madness take their toll, as the Terror on the ice becomes evermore bold, Crozier and his men begin to fear there is no escape...
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The Lemon Tree
by Sandy Tolan
In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR's Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.
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Klezmer
by Joann Sfar
Klezmer tells a wild tale of love, friendship, survival, and the joy of making music in pre-World War II Eastern Europe. Noah is perfectly content as the leader of a traveling klezmer band, until his bandmates are brutally murdered by rival musicians. He sets out for Odessa alone, but is joined by Chava, a beautiful girl with a voice like an angel. Meanwhile, Yaacov is expelled from his yeshiva for stealing; he too makes his way to Odessa along with Vincenzo, a violinist, and Tshokola, a gypsy entertainer.When these five misfits finally come together, they must set aside their differences and learn to work together (and rock a crowd) through their music. Tragic, humorous, violent, and tender, Klezmer is a rhapsody in watercolor, captivating readers from the first note to the grand finale.
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Paris: The Secret History
by Andrew Hussey
If Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon described daily life in contemporary Paris, this book describes daily life in Paris throughout its history: a history of the city from the point of view of the Parisians themselves. Paris captures everyone's imaginations: It's a backdrop for Proust's fictional pederast, Robert Doisneau's photographic kiss, and Edith Piaf's serenaded soldier-lovers; a home as much to romance and love poems as to prostitution and opium dens. The many pieces of the city coexist, each one as real as the next. What's more, the conflicted identity of the city is visible everywhere—between cobblestones, in bars, on the métro. In this lively and lucid volume, Andrew Hussey brings to life the urchins and artists who've left their marks on the city, filling in the gaps of a history that affected the disenfranchised as much as the nobility. Paris: The Secret History ranges across centuries, movements, and cultural and political beliefs, from Napoleon's overcrowded cemeteries to Balzac's nocturnal flight from his debts. For Hussey, Paris is a city whose long and conflicted history continues to thrive and change. The book's is a picaresque journey through royal palaces, brothels, and sidewalk cafés, uncovering the rich, exotic, and often lurid history of the world's most beloved city.
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The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image
by Jeffrey C. Robinson
The Walk, a meditation on walking and on the literature of walking, ruminates on this pervasive, even commonplace, modern image. It is not so much an argument as a journey along the path of literature, noting the occasions and settings, the pleasures and possibilities of different types of walking—through the country or city, during day or night, alone or with someone—and the literatures—the poems, essays, stories, novels, and diaries—walking has produced. Jeffrey C. Robinson's discussion is less criticism than appreciation: with an autobiographical bent, he leads the reader through Romantic, modern, and contemporary literature to show us the shared pleasures of reading, writing, and walking.
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Fruit of the Lemon
by Andrea Levy
From Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Best of the Best Orange Prize, comes a story of one woman and two islands. Faith Jackson knows little about her parents' lives before they moved to England. Happy to be starting her first job in the costume department at BBC television, and to be sharing a house with friends, Faith is full of hope and expectation. But when her parents announce that they are moving "home" to Jamaica, Faith's fragile sense of her identity is threatened. Angry and perplexed as to why her parents would move to a country they so rarely mention, Faith becomes increasingly aware of the covert and public racism of her daily life, at home and at work. At her parents' suggestion, in the hope it will help her to understand where she comes from, Faith goes to Jamaica for the first time. There she meets her Aunt Coral, whose storytelling provides Faith with ancestors, whose lives reach from Cuba and Panama to Harlem and Scotland. Branch by branch, story by story, Faith scales the family tree, and discovers her own vibrant heritage, which is far richer and wilder than she could have imagined. Fruit of the Lemon spans countries and centuries, exploring questions of race and identity with humor and a freshness, and confirms Andrea Levy as one of our most exciting contemporary novelists.
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The Tenderness of Wolves
by Stef Penney
It is 1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly waves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year. |
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The Culture of the New Capitalism
by Richard Sennett
In this provocative book Richard Sennett looks at the ways today's global, ever-mutable form of capitalism is affecting our lives. He analyzes how changes in work ethic, in our attitudes toward merit and talent, and in public and private institutions have all contributed to what he terms "the specter of uselessness," and he concludes with suggestions to counter this disturbing new culture. "Hardly any social thinkers have given serious thought to the drastic changes in corporate culture wrought by downsizing, 're-orging,' and outsourcing. Fortunately, the exception—Richard Sennett—is also one of the most insightful public intellectuals we have. In The Culture of the New Capitalism Sennett addresses the new corporate culture with his usual vast erudition, endlessly supple intellect, and firm moral outlook. The result is brilliant, disturbing, and absolutely necessary reading." —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream "[Sennett] has brilliantly pushed his thinking. . . . [A] triumph."—Will Hutton, The Observer "Reflective, studded with sharp insights, moving with grace between big ideas and specific cases. This is vintage Sennett."—Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End "Packed with thought. . . . Profound and challenging. . . . [I am] full of admiration for the subtlety and originality of Richard Sennett's work."—Madeleine Bunting, New Statesman
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