Элизабет Маккракен, The Hero of This Book0.0 A taut, groundbreaking new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother--and about the very nature of writing, memory, and art
Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.
The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary--her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties--and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother's nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.
The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.
Саймон Паркин0.0 The remarkable untold story of a Jewish orphan who fled Nazi Germany for London, only to be arrested there by the British government and sent to an internment camp for suspected foreign agents on the Isle of Man, alongside a renowned group of refugee musicians, intellectuals, artists, and—possibly—genuine spies.
Following the events of Kristallnacht in 1938, Peter Fleischmann evaded the Gestapo’s midnight roundups in Berlin by way of a perilous journey to England via the Kindertransport train. But he could not escape the British police, who came for him in the early hours and shipped him off to Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man, under suspicion of being a spy for the very regime he had fled.
Peter’s story was no isolated incident. During Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews escaped and found refuge in Britain. Once war broke out in 1939, the nation turned against them, fearing that Nazis had planted spies posing as refugees. Innocent asylum seekers thus were labeled “enemy aliens” and ultimately sentenced to an indefinite period of internment.
When Peter arrived at Hutchinson Camp, he found one of history’s most astounding prison populations: renowned professors, composers, journalists, and artists. Together, they created a thriving cultural community, complete with art exhibitions, lectures, musical performances, and poetry readings. The artists welcomed Peter as their pupil and forever changed the course of his life. Meanwhile, suspicions grew that a real spy was hiding among them—one connected to a vivacious heiress from Peter’s past.
Drawing from unpublished first-person accounts and newly declassified documents from the British government, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin tells the story of this unlikely group of internees. The Island of Extraordinary Captives brings history to life in vivid detail, revealing the hidden truth of Britain’s grave wartime mistake and showcasing how hope and creativity can flourish in even the darkest of circumstances.
Делая свой выбор, судьи охарактеризовали книгу как потрясающее, мощное произведение, «оригинальное и прекрасно написанное». Они хвалили истории за то, что они были собраны в единое целое, но также и за то, что они стоят отдельно — все они противоречат тому, что значит быть евреем.
In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.
The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young women’s coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss’s stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.
Янив Ичковиц4.0 "Occasionally a book comes along so fresh, strange, and original that it seems peerless, utterly unprecedented. This is one of those books."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
An irresistible, picaresque tale of two Jewish sisters in late-nineteenth-century Russia, The Slaughterman's Daughter is filled with "boundless imagination and a vibrant style" (David Grossman), as well as enough intrigue and misadventure to stupefy the Coen brothers.
With her reputation as a vilde chaya (wild animal), Fanny Keismann isn't like the other women in her shtetl in the Pale of Settlement--certainly not her obedient and anxiety-ridden sister, Mende, whose "philosopher" of a husband, ZviMeir, has run off to Minsk, abandoning her and their two children.
As a young girl, Fanny felt an inexorable pull toward her father's profession of ritual slaughterer and, under his reluctant guidance, became a master with a knife. And though she long ago gave up that unsuitable profession--she's now the wife of a cheesemaker and a mother of five--Fanny still keeps the knife tied to her right leg. Which might come in handy when, heedless of the dangers facing a Jewish woman traveling alone in czarist Russia, she sets off to track down Zvi-Meir and bring him home, with the help of the mute and mysterious ferryman Zizek Breshov, an ex-soldier with his own sensational past.
Yaniv Iczkovits spins a family drama into a far-reaching comedy of errors that will pit the czar's army against the Russian secret police and threaten the very foundations of the Russian Empire. The Slaughterman's Daughter is a rollicking and unforgettable work of fiction.
Линда Грант0.0 When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman and confirms a sense that in London a person can become invisible once outside their community - and that assumes they even have a community. A policeman,a documentary film maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. The filmmaker and the policeman meanwhile have safe homes with wives - or do they? An immigrant family speaks their own language only privately; they have managed to integrate - or have they? The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea. How all our lives intersect and how coincidence or the randomness of birth place can decide how we live and with whom.
Франсуаза Френкель0.0 The unforgettable story of one woman's struggle to survive persecution in wartime France
‘I loved my bookstore the way a woman loves, that is to say, truly’
In 1921, Françoise Frenkel – a Jewish woman from Poland – opens Berlin’s very first French bookshop. It is a dream come true. The bookshop attracts artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets – even the French ambassador himself. It brings Françoise peace, friendship and prosperity. Then one summer’s day in 1939, the dream ends.
It ends after Kristallnacht, when Jewish shops and businesses are smashed to pieces. It ends when no one protests. So, just weeks before the war breaks out, Françoise flees to France.
In Paris, on the wireless and in the newspapers, horror has made itself at home. When the city is bombed, Françoise seeks refuge in Nice, which is awash with refugees and terrible suffering. Children are torn from their parents; mothers throw themselves under buses. Horrified by what she sees, Françoise goes into hiding. She survives only because strangers risk their lives to protect her.
Unfolding in Berlin, Paris and against the romantic landscapes of southern France, No Place to Lay One’s Head is a heartbreaking tale of human cruelty and unending kindness; of a woman whose lust for life refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.
Very little is known about the life of Françoise Frenkel. She was born in Poland in 1889 and later studied and lived in Paris; in 1921 she set up the first French-language bookshop in Berlin with her husband. In 1939, she returned to Paris, and after the German invasion the following year fled south to Nice. After several years in hiding, she made a desperate attempt to cross the border to Switzerland. Frenkel died in Nice in 1975. Her memoir, originally published in Geneva in 1945, was rediscovered in a flea market in 2010, republished in the original French and is now being translated and published in numerous languages for the first time.
Майкл Франк0.0 A psychologically acute memoir about an unusual and eccentric Hollywood family.
My feeling for Mike is something out of the ordinary, Michael Frank overhears his aunt say to his mother when he is a boy. I wish he were mine.
Michael's childless Auntie Hankie and Uncle Irving, glamorous Hollywood screenwriters, are doubly his aunt and uncle brother and sister married sister and brother. The two families live just blocks away from each other in Laurel Canyon. In this strangely intertwined family, even the author's two grandmothers share an apartment together.
Talented, sparkling, and lavish with her money, attention, and love, Auntie Hankie takes charge of Michael's education, showing him which books to read, which painters to admire, which houses to like, which people to adore. She literally trains his eye until that eye wants to see on its own.
As his aunt's moods begin to darken, it becomes apparent that beneath her magical exterior there lies a dangerous rage. His aunt stages a series of tumultuous scenes that devastate Michael, forcing him to reconstruct both himself and his family narrative as he tries to reconcile the woman he once cherished with the troubled figure he discovers her to be.
The Mighty Franks is a psychologically acute memoir that asks each of us where the boundaries of family life should be drawn, and who should draw them.
Айелет Гундар-Гошен5.0 Каждый, кто любит магию печатного слова, должен прочитать роман «Просыпающиеся львы». Это мрачная история, полная жестокости, жадности и предательства, но пронизанная искуплением грехов и упорством. Гундар-Гошен заслужила мировую аудиторию, и этот великолепный роман вполне может стать залогом ее успеха.
Филипп Сэндс4.5 Исследование собственных корней ведет автора от Львова-Лемберга в Нюрнберг, от Нюрнбергского процесса — в наши дни, ибо сами понятия человечности и бесчеловечности навеки окрашены Холокостом и приговором, прозвучавшим на Нюрнбергском процессе. И оттого что большая история так тесно переплетается с историей семьи, человеческое в ней — утверждается.
Николаус Вахсман4.6 Известный историк, профессор Бирбек-колледжа Лондонского университета Николаус Вахсман исследовал и представил полную историю нацистских концентрационных лагерей с 1933 по 1945 год. Основываясь на подлинных документальных материалах о лагерях Освенцим, Дахау, Заксенхаузен, Бухенвальд, Маутхаузен, Флоссенбюрг, Равенсбрюк и многих других (двадцать два крупных лагеря и более тысячи лагерей-спутников опутали Германию и Европу), автор представил историю создания, цели, принципы, структуру и систему управления этой чудовищной человеконенавистнической машиной по уничтожению людей, обратив особое внимание на невероятные по жестокости условия содержания в них узников. Заключая свой колоссальный труд, автор высказывает мысль о том, что «система концлагерей была великим извратителем ценностей, является историей бесчеловечных мутаций совести, сделавших нормой насилие, пытки и убийства». И настаивает: современный мир не имеет права об этом забывать. В приложении приведены данные о заключенных лагерей, начиная с 1935 по 1945 год.
Мишель Лауб3.0 At the narrator’s elite Jewish school in a posh suburb of Porte Alegre, a cruel prank leaves the only Catholic student there terribly injured. Years later, he relives the episode as he examines the mistakes of his past and struggles for forgiveness. His father, who has Alzheimer’s, obsessively records every memory that comes to mind, and his grandfather, who survived Auschwitz, fills notebook after notebook with the false memories of someone desperate to forget.
This powerful novel centered on guilt and the complicated legacy of history asks provocative questions about what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century.
Томас Хардинг0.0 The untold story of the man who brought a mastermind of the final solution to justice.
May 1945. In the aftermath of the Second Word War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Hoss is his most elusive target. As Kommandant of Auschwitz, Hoss not only oversaw the murder of more than one million men, women, and children; he was the man who perfected Hitler's program of mass extermination. Hoss is on the run across a continent in ruins, the one man whose testimony can ensure justice at Nuremberg.
HANNS AND RUDOLF reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Hoss's capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day. Moving from the Middle Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, it tells the story of two German men - one Jewish, one Catholic - whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.
Делая свой выбор, судьи охарактеризовали книгу как потрясающее, мощное произведение, «оригинальное и прекрасно написанное». Они хвалили истории за то, что они были собраны в единое целое, но также и за то, что они стоят отдельно — все они противоречат тому, что значит быть евреем.