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Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling
By Wendy Doniger, Vinay Dharwadker, Carole Satyamurti. 2014
"Astonishing. . . . [Satyamurti's Mahabharata] brings [the] past alive . . . as though it were a novel in…
finely crafted verse."--Vinay Dharwadker Originally composed approximately two thousand years ago, the Mahabharata tells the story of a royal dynasty, descended from gods, whose feud over their kingdom results in a devastating war. But it contains much more than conflict. An epic masterpiece of huge sweep and magisterial power, "a hundred times more interesting" than the Iliad and the Odyssey, writes Wendy Doniger in the introduction, the Mahabharata is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion, and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love, and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, it is also one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilization. Innovatively composed in blank verse rather than prose, Carole Satyamurti's English retelling covers all eighteen books of the Mahabharata. This new version masterfully captures the beauty, excitement, and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope.Hemingway on War
By Ernest Hemingway. 1947
Ernest Hemingway witnessed many of the seminal conflicts of the twentieth century--from his post as a Red Cross ambulance driver…
during World War I to his nearly twenty-five years as a war correspondent for The Toronto Star--and he recorded them with matchless power. This landmark volume brings together Hemingway's most important and timeless writings about the nature of human combat. Passages from his beloved World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, about the Spanish Civil War, offer an unparalleled portrayal of the physical and psychological impact of war and its aftermath. Selections from Across the River and into the Trees vividly evoke an emotionally scarred career soldier in the twilight of life as he reflects on the nature of war. Classic short stories, such as "In Another Country" and "The Butterfly and the Tank," stand alongside excerpts from Hemingway's first book of short stories, In Our Time, and his only full-length play, The Fifth Column. With captivating selections from Hemingway's journalism--from his coverage of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22 to a legendary early interview with Mussolini to his jolting eyewitness account of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944--Hemingway on War collects the author's most penetrating chronicles of perseverance and defeat, courage and fear, and love and loss in the midst of modern warfare.The Book of Collateral Damage (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
By Sinan Antoon. 2016
Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memory Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon’s…
fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans. Entrusted with the catalogue and obsessed with Wadood’s project, Nameer finds life in New York movingly intertwined with fragments from his homeland’s past and its present—destroyed letters, verses, epigraphs, and anecdotes—in this stylistically ambitious panorama of the wreckage of war and the power of memory.The Baghdad Clock
By Shahad Al Rawi. 2018
A HEART-RENDING TALE OF TWO GIRLS GROWING UP IN WAR-TORN BAGHDAD Baghdad, 1991. The Gulf War is raging. Two girls,…
hiding in an air raid shelter, tell stories to keep the fear and the darkness at bay, and a deep friendship is born. But as the bombs continue to fall and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again. This poignant debut novel reveals just what it's like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath
By Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock. 2020
In this anthology, Vietnamese writers describe their experience of what they call the American War and its lasting legacy through…
the lens of their own vital artistic visions. A North Vietnamese soldier forms a bond with an abandoned puppy. Cousins find their lives upended by the revelation that their fathers fought on opposite sides of the war. Two lonely veterans in Hanoi meet years after the war has ended through a newspaper dating service. A psychic assists the search for the body of a long-vanished soldier. The father of a girl suffering from dioxin poisoning struggles with corrupt local officials.The twenty short stories collected in Other Moons range from the intensely personal to narratives that deal with larger questions of remembrance, trauma, and healing. By a diverse set of authors, including many veterans, they span styles from social realism to tales of the fantastic. Yet whether describing the effects of Agent Orange exposure or telling ghost stories, all speak to the unresolved legacy of a conflict that still haunts Vietnam. Among the most widely anthologized and popular pieces of short fiction about the war in Vietnam, these works appear here for the first time in English. Other Moons offers Anglophone audiences an unparalleled opportunity to experience how the Vietnamese think and write about the conflict that consumed their country from 1954 to 1975—a perspective still largely missing from American narratives.The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero
By Paulus Hochgatterer. 2020
"This is a beautiful book, a masterpiece of brevity and depth" New European"This tense novella builds to a final reckoning"…
The TimesIn October 1944, a thirteen-year-old girl arrives in a tiny farming community in Lower Austria, at some distance from the main theatre of war. She remembers very little about how she got there, it seems she has suffered trauma from bombardment. One night a few months later, a young, emaciated Russian appears, a deserter from forced labour in the east. He has nothing with him but a canvas roll, which he guards like a hawk. Their burgeoning friendship is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a group of Wehrmacht soldiers in retreat, who commandeer the farm.Paulus Hochgatterer's intensely atmospheric, resonant novel is like a painting in itself, a beautiful observation of small shifts from apathy in a community not directly affected by the war, but exhausted by it nonetheless; individual acts of moral bravery which to some extent have the power to change the course of history.Longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize 2017, this subtle, evocative novella will appeal to readers of Hubert Mingarelli's A MEAL IN WINTER and Jenny Erpenbeck's THE END OF DAYS. Translated from the German by Jamie BullochBetty: The International Bestseller
By Tiffany McDaniel. 2020
'Breahtaking'Vogue'So engrossing! Betty is a page-turning Appalachian coming-of-age story steeped in Cherokee history, told in undulating prose that settles right…
into you'Naoise Dolan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Exciting Times 'I felt consumed by this book. I loved it, you will love it' Daisy Johnson, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Everthing Under'I loved Betty: I fell for its strong characters and was moved by the story it portrayed' Fiona Mozley, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Elmet 'A girl comes of age against the knife.' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.Despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.A heartbreaking yet magical story, Betty is a punch-in-the-gut of a novel - full of the crushing cruelty of human nature and the redemptive power of words. 'Not a story you will soon forget' Karen Joy Fowler, Booker Prize shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'Shot through with moonshine, Bible verses, and folklore, Betty is about the cruelty we inflict on one another, the beauty we still manage to find, and the stories we tell in order to survive' Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow ChildNina X
By Ewan Morrison. 2019
Winner of the Saltire Literary Award Fiction Book of the Year'Literary gold . . . Morrison has published his masterpiece'…
Sunday Times'Sensational. Like nothing I've ever read. A tour de force' Ian RankinNina X has never been outside. She has never met another child.Nina X has no books, no toys and no privacy.Nina X has no idea what the outside world is like.Nina X has a lot to learn.Nina X has no mother and no father; she has Comrade Chen, and Comrades Uma, Jeni and Ruth. Her closest emotional connection is with the birds she sees when she removes the plasterboard that covers her bedroom window. Comrade Chen has named her The Project; she is being raised entirely separated from the false gods of capitalism and the cult of the self. He has her record everything in her journal, to track her thoughts. To keep her ideology pure, her words are erased, over and over again. But that was before. Now Nina is in Freedom, and all the rules have changed. She has to remember that everything is opposite to what she was told, and yet Freedom seems to be a very confusing and dangerous place'This moving tale of growing up in a Maoist cult, and the traumatic aftermath, explores ideas of freedom, control and identity with warmth and humour' Alex Preston, Observer'Amazing . . . There are few writers left in Britain who have his ambition, vision and empathy. Nina is marvellous creation and this is an important novel' Irvine Welsh'Compelling. Chilling' Lionel ShriverDaughter of the Tigris
By Muhsin Al-Ramli. 2019
The follow-up to the internationally acclaimed The President's Gardens"Al-Ramli is a remarkable storyteller, and in Daughter of the Tigris he…
creates a dynamic, intricately plotted narrative, brimming with stories and a host of memorable characters" Susannah Tarbush, Banipal On the sixth day of Ramadan, in a land without bananas, Qisma leaves for Baghdad with her husband-to-be to find the body of her father. But in the bloodiest year of a bloody war, how will she find one body among thousands? For Tariq, this is more than just a marriage of convenience: the beautiful, urbane Qisma must be his, body and soul. But can a sheikh steeped in genteel tradition share a tranquil bed with a modern Iraqi woman? The President has been deposed, and the garden of Iraq is full of presidents who will stop at nothing to take his place. Qisma is afraid - afraid for her son, afraid that it is only a matter of time before her father's murderers come for her. The only way to survive is to take a slice of Iraq for herself. But ambition is the most dangerous drug of all, and it could just seal Qisma's fate.Translated from the Arabic by Luke LeafgrenREVIEWS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S GARDENS'Though firmly rooted in its context, The President's Gardens' concerns are universal. It is a profoundly moving investigation of love, death and injustice, and an affirmation of the importance of dignity, friendship and meaning amid oppression. Its light touch and persistent humour make it an enormous pleasure to read' Robin Yassin-Kassab, Guardian.The President's Gardens evokes the fantastical, small town feel of One Hundred Years of Solitude Tom Gordon, Financial Times'No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting' Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction PrizeLove Like Hate: A Novel
By Linh Dinh. 2010
Linh Dinh is already one of the secret masters of short fiction. Love Like Hate is something like a traditional…
cross-cultural novel that's been shocked into life by Dinh's uncanny ability to tell us stories we didn't even know we wanted to hear. -- Ed Park, editor of The BelieverIn Love Like Hate, Linh Dinh weaves a dysfunctional family saga that doubles as a portrait of Vietnam in the last half century. Protagonists Kim Lan and Hoang Long marry in Saigon during the Vietnam War, uniting in a setting that allows Dinh's dark, deadpan humor to flourish. Describing his mushrooming cast of characters in unsentimental and sometimes absurd ways, Dinh embraces contradictions with the surreal exuberance of Matthew Sharpe and the stylistic élan of Italo Calvino.The Things We Do to Make It Home
By Beverly Gologorsky. 1999
An emotionally charged story of passionate love, unfulfilled desire, and an American dream gone totally awry, Beverly Gologorsky's poignant, unadorned…
novel lays bare the destructive impact of the Vietnam War on the wives, lovers, and children of veterans. This haunting story of devotion and loss will speak to anyone who has suffered the effects of an unwinnable war.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.The Last Man Standing: The chilling apocalyptic thriller that predicts Italy's collapse
By Davide Longo. 2010
A chillingly plausible novel about the collapse of Italian society and one man's struggle to retain his humanity amid the…
horror"A bleak, lyrical tale that evokes Cormac McCarthy's The Road.... Gruesome, intense, and strange... a eurozone nightmare brought to life on the page."--James Lovegrove, Financial TimesIt is 2025, and Italy is on the brink of collapse. Borders are closed, banks withhold money, the postal service stalls. Armed gangs of drug-fuelled youths roam the countryside. Leonardo was a famous writer and professor before a sex scandal ended his marriage and career. Heading north in search of her new husband, his ex-wife leaves their daughter and her son in his care. If he is to take them to safety, he will need to find a quality he has never possessed: courage.The Enigma of the Return
By Dany Laferrière. 2009
"An affecting meditation on loss and exile" ANGEL GURRIA-QUINTANA, Financial TimesWindsor Laferrière left Haiti in fear of his life. He…
has lived in Montreal for thirty-three years, and when his father dies in New York, himself an exile for half a century, Windsor travels there to attend the funeral, and then back to Haiti to inform his mother of the death. In Haiti, Windsor is faced with the grim truth of life in his homeland - the endemic poverty, the thwarted ambitions and broken dreams. But only here can he become a writer again . . .The Enigma of the Return lives where fiction, poetry and autobiography meet. These creative tensions sustain a narrative of astonishing beauty, clarity and insight."Looks set to become one of the great poetic statements of homesickness and return . . . It should be read by all exiles everywhere" Ian Thomson, Independent"A poetic, melancholic tour de force . . . a compelling, intense, stark and poignant exploration of living life as an outsider . . . The great Haitian novel" Jo Lateu, New InternationalistAlone in the Classroom
By Elizabeth Hay. 2011
In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing…
them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day. Connie's niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie's past and her mother's broken childhood. In the process she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious, and unrelated, deaths of two young girls.Daughter of the Tigris
By Muhsin Al-Ramli. 2019
The follow-up to the internationally acclaimed The President's Gardens"Al-Ramli is a remarkable storyteller, and in Daughter of the Tigris he…
creates a dynamic, intricately plotted narrative, brimming with stories and a host of memorable characters" Susannah Tarbush, Banipal On the sixth day of Ramadan, in a land without bananas, Qisma leaves for Baghdad with her husband-to-be to find the body of her father. But in the bloodiest year of a bloody war, how will she find one body among thousands? For Tariq, this is more than just a marriage of convenience: the beautiful, urbane Qisma must be his, body and soul. But can a sheikh steeped in genteel tradition share a tranquil bed with a modern Iraqi woman? The President has been deposed, and the garden of Iraq is full of presidents who will stop at nothing to take his place. Qisma is afraid - afraid for her son, afraid that it is only a matter of time before her father's murderers come for her. The only way to survive is to take a slice of Iraq for herself. But ambition is the most dangerous drug of all, and it could just seal Qisma's fate.Translated from the Arabic by Luke LeafgrenREVIEWS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S GARDENS'Though firmly rooted in its context, The President's Gardens' concerns are universal. It is a profoundly moving investigation of love, death and injustice, and an affirmation of the importance of dignity, friendship and meaning amid oppression. Its light touch and persistent humour make it an enormous pleasure to read' Robin Yassin-Kassab, Guardian.The President's Gardens evokes the fantastical, small town feel of One Hundred Years of Solitude Tom Gordon, Financial Times'No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting' Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction PrizeGood 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.Freetown
By Otto De Kat. 2018
"He was a Fula. I say 'was', because I haven't seen him for a long time. I don't know if…
he's still alive or where he might be. He just disappeared."Maria is independent, unconventional and unafraid. She is trying to find an explanation for the disappearance of Ishmael, a refugee from Sierra Leone who came to her door as a newspaper boy and stayed for seven years. He was like a son to her. Vincent is a psychologist. Once he and Maria had an all-encompassing relationship, but since their break-up he has been living in a kind of haze. One day, Maria asks for his help. In the encounters that follow, Ishmael is pushed into the background by a rekindling of the old love between Vincent and Maria. The stories and memories that resurface come to replace the sadness at the loss of the boy. But despite the distraction of their new situation, Ishmael proves impossible to forget.Otto de Kat is known for concise novels that are beautifully observed, subtle and precise, and Freetown is no exception. Translated from the Dutch by Laura WatkinsonMonsieur Linh and His Child
By Philippe Claudel. 2005
Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to…
bring the child in his arms to safety. To begin with, he is too afraid to leave the refugee centre, but the first time he braves the freezing cold to walk the streets of this strange, fast-moving town, he encounters Monsieur Bark, a widower whose dignified sorrow mirrors his own. Though they have no shared language, an instinctive friendship is forged; but Monsieur Linh's stay in the dormitory is only temporary. Sooner or later he and his child must find a permanent home.Delicate and restrained, but with an extraordinary twist, Monsieur Linh and His Child is an immensely moving novel of perfect simplicity, by the author of Brodeck's Report.Tropic of Violence
By Nathacha Appanah. 2016
Marie, a nurse on the island of Mayotte, adopts an abandoned baby and names him Moïse, raising him as a…
French boy. As he grows up, Moïse struggles with his status as an "outsider" and to understand why he was abandoned as a baby. When Marie dies, he is left alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil, ending up in the largest and most infamous slum on Mayotte, nicknamed "Gaza".Narrated by five different characters, Tropic of Violence is an exploration of lost youth on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Shining a powerful light on problems of violence, immigration, identity, deprivation and isolation on this island that became a French département in 2011, it is a remarkable, unsettling new novel that draws on the author's own observations from her time on Mayotte.