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Bêtes, hommes et dieux: à travers la Mongolie interdite, 1920-1921
By Ferdinand Ossendowski. 2000
"Un livre-culte de la littérature d'aventure vécue. Krasnoïarsk (Sibérie centrale), hiver 1920. L'homme vient d'apprendre qu'on l'a dénoncé aux Rouges,…
et que le peloton d'exécution l'attend. Il prend son fusil, fourre quelques cartouches dans la poche de sa pelisse, sort dans le froid glacial - et gagne la forêt. Commence alors une course-poursuite dont il ne sortira vivant, il le sait, que s'il ose l'impossible : gagner à pied l'Inde anglaise à travers l'immensité sibérienne, puis les passes de Mongolie, puis le désert de Gobi, puis le plateau tibétain, puis l'Himalaya... L'itinéraire qu'il suivra sera quelque peu différent, et si possible plus sidérant encore. Mais ce que le livre révèle - et que le lecteur n'attend pas - c'est, parallèle au voyage réel, une étrange odyssée intérieure qui nous introduit au cœur des mystères de l'Asie millénaire. Car Ossendowski, géologue de son état, n'est pas qu'un savant doublé d'un aventurier. C'est un esprit exalté et curieux qui vit sa marche folle à la manière d'une initiation... [...]" -- 4e de couvPELLEGRINI DI SHAMBALA
By Rafael T llez Romero. 2016
Thomas, un giovane uomo che ha perso tutto, inizia un viaggio in India per cercare di reindirizzare il corso della…
sua vita. Presto troverà compagni interessanti con i quali condividerà momenti indimenticabili, conoscerà scuole di saggezza e imparerà gli insegnamenti fondamentali. Tutto questo in un viaggio zaino in spalla, dove il caso e il karma sembrano giocare un'epica partita di scacchi, avendo come scacchiera, posti sia sacri che emblematici per il ricercatore spirituale. Un viaggio ricco di esperienze, pieno di incontri con personaggi saggi e pittoreschi, che poco a poco riveleranno piccole "perle di saggezza" per aiutare il protagonista a trovare la sua strada. Il protagonista e il lettore quindi, potranno trovare le chiavi spirituali che permetteranno loro di andare avanti. D'altra parte, il viaggiatore vivrà altri incontri più banali, facendo posto all'amore, alla delusione e al dolore. Incontri che poco a poco, si trasformeranno in un "romanzo mandala" che ci lascerà a bocca aperta.To Every Thing There Is a Season: A Cape Breton Christmas Story
By Alistair Macleod. 2004
The story is simple, seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. As an adult he remembers the way things…
were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two-year-old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, “Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think I’ll be a snowman.” They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on “the Lake boats” in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of “clothes” back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift-wrapping role of Santa Claus. The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift. For readers from nine to ninety-nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers.Good Offices
By Evelio Rosero. 2009
When Father Almida is summoned to an audience with the parish's principal benefactor, a stand-in is found in Father Matamoros,…
a drunkard with an angel's voice whose sung mass is mesmerizing to all. But Matamoros hides a darker side, and when the church's residents throw a feast for him he encourages them to lose all their inhibitions and give free reign to their most Bacchanalian desires. A satire on the iniquities of the Catholic church in Colombia, Good Offices is at once comic, surreal and startling, a novel that will linger long in the mind.The Folded Earth: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2012
In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day…
she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place is remote enough or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town's new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who divide people and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and soon Maya understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible. When Diwan Sahib's nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, and finally she is forced to confront bitter and terrible truths. A many-layered and powerful narrative, by turns poetic, elegiac and comic, by the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2010
On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family live in solitude in their vast new house. Here,…
swathed in silence, a widower struggles with feelings for an unmarried cousin while his motherless daughter Bakul runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined at the top of the house, the matriarch goes slowly mad, while her husband shapes and reshapes his glorious garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. Although he prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, his thoughts are all of what was once his home - and he knows that he must return. This is a love story, as intricate as it is enchanting, about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else.Sad Janet
By Lucie Britsch. 2020
A whip-smart black comedy for fans of Fleabag and My Year of Rest and Relaxation'Loved this book' EMMA GANNON'Surprising and…
irreverent...Be prepared for edginess, dark humor and profanity' NEW YORK TIMES'Hilarious, wise, wicked' CYNTHIA D'APRIX SWEENEYNamed one of the Best Books of the Summer by LitHub, The Millions, Refinery29, and Hey Alma.***Meet Janet. Janet is sad. Not about her life, about the world. Have you seen it these days? The thing is, she's not out to make anyone else sad. She's not turning up to weddings shouting that most marriages end in divorce. She just wants to wear her giant coat, get rid of her passive-aggressive boyfriend, and avoid human interaction at the rundown dog shelter where she works.That is, until word spreads about a new pill that promises cynics like her one day off from being sad. When her family stages an intervention, and the prospect of making it through Christmas alone seems like too much, Janet finally decides to give them what they want. What follows is life-changing for all concerned - in ways no one quite expects.Hilarious, provocative and profound, Sad Janet is the antidote to our happiness-obsessed world.***PRAISE FOR SAD JANET:'If you're a Halle Butler fan or like despair cut with humour, you'll love this' Leigh Stein, author of SELF CARE'As I was reading this, my partner kept asking why I was laughing. This book is dark and hilarious and will speak to everyone who's ever wondered why they spend time with humans and not just dogs' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days and Harmless Like You'A tragicomic riot of a book - charging, foul-mouthed and tender, across the modern condition' Claudia Dey, author of Heartbreaker'Try reading Sad Janet ... It might just make you happy' Marcy Demansky, author of Very Nice'A biting, pitch-perfect novel about one woman's desire to stay true to herself in a world that rewards facile happiness ... a dazzling debut' Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney'The narrative voice of Janet in Britsch's debut novel is a skin-tingling combination of new and necessary' Booklist starred review'Loved this book... it made me lol via the dark humour and dry observations. An artful take on the "happiness economy"' Emma Gannon, author of Olive'I loved SAD JANET'S cynical humour. Superbly original, with spot-on one-liners. Brilliantly bleak, but with a spark of hope' Caroline Hulse, author of The AdultsWhat's Left of Me is Yours
By Stephanie Scott. 2020
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE DAILY MAIL AND WOMAN AND HOMEA New York Times 'Editor's Pick'One of the…
Observer's Ten Best Debut Novelists of 2020Shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel AwardLonglisted for the Jhalak PrizeLonglisted for the CWA John Creasy New Blood Dagger'Enrapturing... This richly imagined novel considers the many permutations of love and what we are capable of doing in its name' New York Times'A brilliant debut' Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard'You'll have the heart rate of an Olympic hurdler' Sunday Express'I read it with my heart in my throat' Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton 'An exquisitely crafted masterpiece you'll be pressing into the hands of others' Woman & Home 'An intoxicatingly atmospheric mystery' Daily Mail'Dark, addictive and eye-opening, this is a brilliant debut' StylistA gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, What's Left of Me Is Yours follows a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life - and her murder.In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the wakaresaseya (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings.When Sato hires Kaitaro, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Sato has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitaro's job is to do exactly that - until he does it too well.While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitaro fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter Sumiko's life.Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, What's Left of Me Is Yours explores the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.Power, passion and a devastating fight for the crown - discover the gripping story of Oliver Cromwell's youngest daughter. Perfect…
for fans of Anne O'Brien, Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory 'A powerful and superbly researched historical novel' Andrew Taylor, author of The Last Protector1657. The youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, eighteen-year-old Frances is finding her place at England's new centre of power.Following the turmoil of Civil War, a fragile sense of stability has returned to the country. Her father has risen to the unprecedented position of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and Frances has found herself transported from her humble childhood home to the sumptuous palaces of Hampton Court and Whitehall, where she dreams of romance.But after an assassination attempt on the Cromwell family, Frances realises the precarious danger of her position - and when her father is officially offered the crown, Frances' fate becomes a matter of diplomatic and dynastic importance. Trapped in the web of court intrigue, Frances must make a choice. Allow herself to be a political pawn, or use her new status to take control - of her own future, and of her country's... ***Readers are swept away by The Puritan Princess:'There is much to enjoy in this evocation of a family whose lives are so upended by the convulsions of history' Antonia Senior, The Times'The Puritan Princess is a genuinely moving portrait of the tragedy of the Cromwells at the height of their power' S G MacLean, author of the Damian Seeker series'A beautifully written and captivating true story of personal love and loss... Malins inhabits her characters and brings them convincingly to life' James Evans, author of EMIGRANTS'The extraordinary, revealing and moving relationship between Oliver Cromwell and his daughter Frances is brought to vivid life in this masterly historical novel' Paul Lay, author of Providence Lost'Miranda Malins is a real and fresh new talent. This is beautifully written, exciting fiction from a writer in full command of the history' Suzannah Lipscomb'This engaging novel brings one of the most momentous but least well known periods of English history vividly to life.' Carolyn Kirby, author of THE CONVICTION OF CORA BURNSFault Lines
By Emily Itami. 2021
'A brilliant modern love story. I found it atmospheric and transporting but also wise, clever and universal in its exploration…
of love, family and identity. I loved it' Cathy RentzenbrinkMizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It's everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether it would be more fun to throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband or hanging up laundry. Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, a voice, and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. But the further she falls into their relationship, the clearer it becomes that she is living two lives - and in the end, we can choose only one. Alluring, compelling, startlingly honest and darkly funny, Fault Lines is a bittersweet love story and a daring exploration of modern relationships from a writer to watch.Easter
By Michael Arditti. 2000
Winner of the Mardi Gras and Waterstone's Book awards, longlisted for the Costa Novel award'It's a delight to find a…
modern novel that takes religion and all the objections to it seriously as a subject: the rockpool of a London parish teems with all kinds of curious life' Philip Pullman'Michael Arditti writes about Western Christianity, as it is manifest in the present Church of England, with pungency and satirical frankness. His style has Joycean echoes' Muriel SparkA Vicar and his congregation are caught up in a latter-day Passion story that will tear apart their lives.The parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale is preparing for Easter. In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Vicar explains that Christ's crucifixion and redemption are taking place every day. He little suspects that, before the week's out, he and his entire congregation will be caught up in a latter-day Passion story which will tear apart their lives. Michael Arditti's magnificent novel is both a devastating portrait of today's Church of England and an audacious reworking of the central myth of Western culture. Taking the form of a traditional triptych, it is at once intimate and epic, lyrical and analytic. Shocking events unfold against a backdrop of meticulously observed religious services. High Church ritual, evangelical revivalism and the ancestor-worship of the English gentry are all subjected to merciless scrutiny.The Enemy of the Good
By Michael Arditti. 2009
Over three remarkable years, the Glanvile family go through events and ordeals that cause it to reassess its deepest values…
and closest relationships'Our best chronicler of the rewards and pitfalls of present day faith' Philip Pullman'His best to date . . . You could truly say all human life was here' A.N. Wilson, Reader's DigestThe Glanvilles are an extraordinary family. Edwin is a retired bishop who has lost his faith. Marta, a child of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a controversial anthropologist. Their son, Clement, is a celebrated gay painter traumatized by the death of his twin. Their daughter, Susannah, is a music publicist recovering from an affair with a convicted murderer. Over three remarkable years, the family goes through a sequence of events that causes it to reassess its deepest values and closest relationships. Clement's work and reputation are violently attacked and his private life exposed. Susannah's exploration of the Kabbalah takes her into the closed world of Chassidic Jews and a seemingly impossible love. Edwin's illness forces Marta to confront the horrors of her past. Each must find a way to escape the abyss.The Night Tiger: The Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
By Yangsze Choo. 2019
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'The two main characters will captivate you as their paths are destined to cross... you won't…
be able to put this one down!'Reese Witherspoon'I was willingly propelled into a fascinating and exotic world'Daily MailThey say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk among us... In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master's severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth forever. Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother's debts. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. As time runs out for Ren's mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin's paths will cross in ways they will never forget.Captivating and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores the rich world of servants and masters, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and unexpected love. Woven through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.'An exuberant medley of magic, romance and weirdness'The Times'[A] highly imaginative and a spellbinding read'Woman's WeeklySleeping on Jupiter: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2016
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015A stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence…
in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.The Office of Gardens and Ponds
By Didier Decoin. 2017
A mesmerising fable with a difference, set in Japan over 1000 years agoFor readers of Alessandro Baricco's Silk, Patrick Süskind's…
Perfume and Takashi Hiraide's The Guest Cat.The village of Shimae is thrown into turmoil when master carp-catcher Katsuro suddenly drowns in the murky waters of the Kusagawa river. Who now will carry the precious cargo of carp to the Imperial Palace and preserve the crucial patronage that everyone in the village depends upon?Step forward Miyuki, Katsuro's grief-struck widow and the only remaining person in the village who knows anything about carp. She alone can undertake the long, perilous journey to the Imperial Palace, balancing the heavy baskets of fish on a pole across her shoulders, and ensure her village's future.So Miyuki sets off. Along her way she will encounter a host of remarkable characters, from prostitutes and innkeepers, to warlords and priests with evil in mind. She will endure ambushes and disaster, for the villagers are not the only people fixated on the fate of the eight magnificent carp. But when she reaches the Office of Gardens and Ponds, Miyuki discovers that the trials of her journey are far from over. For in the Imperial City, nothing is quite as it seems, and beneath a veneer of refinement and ritual, there is an impenetrable barrier of politics and snobbery that Miyuki must overcome if she is to return to Shimae.The Third Squad: A Noir Novel
By V. Sanjay Kumar. 2017
"Kumar evokes [Mumbai] with lyrical prose."--Publishers WeeklyIncluded in Publishers Weekly's Crime Fiction feature on police corruption and brutality."A melancholy cop's…
obsessions are just the tip of the iceberg as he leads a two-fisted team determined to clean up Mumbai's mean streets...Kumar's style, blunt but often by turns poetic and droll, is arresting...As unusual as it is compelling, this entry lays the groundwork for an entertaining series."--Kirkus Reviews"[A] gripping thriller...Kumar has created some thoroughly intriguing characters...but the most fascinating of Kumar’s characters is Mumbai itself--enormous, crowded, hyperactive, roiling, stunningly rich and grindingly poor, and teeming with almost unfathomable energy. International-crime fans should flock to this one."--Booklist"The Third Squad enveloped me in Mumbai, in its strangeness even to people who call it home. Each of the many odd but totally real characters who populate this book shines a light on the city and on one another. It's a page-turner, but as I got closer to the end I slowed down because I didn't want to have to leave this world."--S.J. Rozan, author (as Sam Cabot) of Skin of the Wolf"Against a backdrop of debilitating poverty, ancient religion, staggering wealth, and corruption, Mumbai comes alive in The Third Squad as the perfect storm for twenty-first-century noir. Driving this absolutely compelling tale is Karan, a police sharpshooter who is essentially a trained assassin. Initially distanced from his own actions by both Asperger's syndrome and Old World devotion to authority, he's ultimately forced to reconcile personal morality with obedience in a grim new age of blind opportunism."--Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old CountryThe Third Squad is an arresting, ripped-from-the-headlines noir novel that deftly explores how in recent decades, to ostensibly combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai's underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspected criminals. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch of the Indian police dispensed with dishing out this peculiar blend of vigilante justice, has a difficult choice to make: should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or should he take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?Belonging to a hit squad whose members all fall somewhere along the autism spectrum, Karan, who has been diagnosed with mild Asperger's syndrome, is notorious for his ruthless precision and efficiency in carrying out these assassinations, yet he remains aloof and distant. Gradually, his impenetrable façade begins to crack, and Karan's emotional and psychological depth reveals itself as he is forced to make decisions where the stakes are literally life-and-death. Also at play is the looming specter of the city of Mumbai itself, seemingly at the cusp of a neoliberal era of enlightenment and progress, yet still trapped under the ineluctable burden of old Bombay history, which can never quite be forgotten or suppressed.Dark and gritty, raw and fast-paced, and never sentimental, The Third Squad distills the best aspects of classic American noir writing into a uniquely Indian context, revealing V. Sanjay Kumar as a singular talent on the crime fiction circuit.The Night Tiger: The Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
By Yangsze Choo. 2019
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'The two main characters will captivate you as their paths are destined to cross... you won't…
be able to put this one down!'Reese Witherspoon'I was willingly propelled into a fascinating and exotic world'Daily MailThey say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk among us... In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master's severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth forever. Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother's debts. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. As time runs out for Ren's mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin's paths will cross in ways they will never forget.Captivating and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores the rich world of servants and masters, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and unexpected love. Woven through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.'An exuberant medley of magic, romance and weirdness'The Times'[A] highly imaginative and a spellbinding read'Woman's WeeklyAn Indiana Christmas
By Bryan Furuness. 2020
Imagine a moonlit railroad track, a rural road and barn covered with just a dusting of snow, a hound dog…
asleep by the woodstove, and a Red Ryder BB gun hidden behind the tinseled tree—all the makings of an unforgettable Indiana Christmas. In An Indiana Christmas, editor Bryan Furuness brings together timeless short stories, poems, plays, and letters to help you get into the holiday spirit. Lose yourself in classics like "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" by Jean Shepherd, which inspired the beloved movie A Christmas Story, and "A Feel in the Christmas Air" by James Whitcomb Riley, along with more recent literary works like "The Myth of the Perfect Christmas Photo Family" by Kelsey Timmerman and "While Mortals Sleep" by famed Indiana writer Kurt Vonnegut. To achieve the perfect combination of Christmas nostalgia and cheer, Furuness has curated Hoosier stories that allow you to experience an idyllic holiday gathering in "Indiana Winter" by Susan Neville, feel the excitement of a child on Christmas Eve with "Earthbound" by Barbara Shoup, and face the loneliness of a drifter on Christmas night in "Howard Garfield, Balladeer" by Edward Porter. The collection even offers the chance to read a Christmas war dispatch from the late, great Hoosier journalist Ernie Pyle. Heartfelt and unique, An Indiana Christmas paints a picture of what Hoosiers truly hold dear. Family, love, giving, hope, and faith shine through these poignant stories, which are sure to put you in good spirits for the holidays.Thoughtless: A sharp, profound and hilarious new novel - for all the overthinkers...
By Lucie Britsch. 2023
"No one understands the misery and hilarity of being alive better than Lucie Britsch ... Writing like this takes talent…
and the most tender of hearts." JEAN KYOUNG FRAZIER, author of PIZZA GIRLAll her life, Susan's loved ones have been hiding a terrible secret from her: If she thinks too hard, her head will explode. Luckily, her devoted boyfriend, anxious parents and fierce best friend are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Susan safe in ignorant, thoughtless bliss. And until now, Susan has lived happily in a bubble of TV and takeaways, social media and small talk; anything to distract her from the spiralling thoughts that so often haunt the rest of us - thoughts that would be deadly for her. But what happens when reality creeps in and Susan's perfectly curated world starts to crumble? Can we distract ourselves from the real world forever... and should we?Praise for Lucie Britsch'Surprising and irreverent' NEW YORK TIMES'A strangely exuberant meditation on sadness' REFINERY29'A whip-smart, biting piece of tragicomedy... Hilarious, profound' HUFFINGTON POST'A wicked satire of our obsession with happiness' THE i'A tragicomic riot of a book - charging, foul-mouthed and tender' CLAUDIA DEY 'Like a grown up Daria' HELEN MCCLORY 'If you're a Halle Butler fan or like despair cut with humour, you'll love this' LEIGH STEIN'Dark and hilarious' ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANANI Called Him Necktie
By Sheila Dickie, Milena Michiko Flasar. 2014
"The best of the best from this year's bountiful harvest of uncommonly strong offerings ... Deeply original." -O, The Oprah…
Magazine"Exceptional ... In today's less-than-brave new world in which sincere human interaction is disappearing even as the numbers of so-called 'friends' are multiplying, Necktie is a piercing reminder to acknowledge, nurture, and share our humanity."-Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center blog BookDragon"The quiet reflection of this jewel of a novel is revelatory, redemptive and hypnotic until the last word."-Kirkus Reviews"A spare, stunning, elegiac gem of a book. Milena Michiko Flašar writes with a poet's clarity of language and vision, probing deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes ... to tell a compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship."-Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being"Flašar's exquisite, finely wrought novel is both a prose poem and a parable about how we deflect, defer and disconnect from life, and what is needed before we can bravely embrace it again."- Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth"A tender, melancholy book of great linguistic beauty and clarity. A flawless novel."-Süddeutsche Zeitung"With high artistry . . . this seductive beauty is also strangely religious: the book treats life with an almost Buddhist serenity."-Der SpiegelTwenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori-a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction-in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred.Milena Michiko Flašar was born in 1980, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. She lives in Vienna. I Called Him Necktie won the 2012 Austrian Alpha Literature Prize.