John Updike4.0 A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975.
The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which the first, “Olinger Stories,” already appeared as a paperback in 1964; in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as “a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid pattern.” These eleven tales, whose heroes age from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, are followed by groupings titled “Out in the World,” “Married Life,” and “Family Life,” tracing a common American trajectory. Family life is disrupted by the advent of “The Two Iseults,” a bifurcation originating in another small town, Tarbox, Massachusetts, where the Puritan heritage co-exists with post-Christian morals. “Tarbox Tales” are followed by “Far Out,” a group of more or less experimental fictions on the edge of domestic space, and “The Single Life,” whose protagonists are unmarried and unmoored.
Of these one hundred three stories, eighty first appeared in The New Yorker, and the other twenty-three in journals from the enduring Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s to the defunct Big Table and Transatlantic Review. All show Mr. Updike’s wit and verbal felicity, his reverence for ordinary life, and his love of the transient world.
Sabina Murray0.0
From an acclaimed young author of Filipino background comes this history told through individual lives. The Caprices revolves around the Pacific Campaign of World War II. In the wreckage of bombed cities and overcrowded prison camps, there were no winners and no conquerors, and no nation truly triumphed.
Set in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the United States, these stories bring to life ordinary people who must rely on extraordinary measures of faith and imagination. In "Order of Precedence," an Indian officer starving to death in a prison camp remembers playing polo during his days in India. In "Folly," the last days of Amelia Earhart are imagined as the Japanese prepare for war. In "Colossus," an American veteran in his eighties recalls the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the infamous death march of 1941.
With lyrical prose and searing insight, Sabina Murray brings to light a complex cast of characters. Eloquent, artful, and brimming with raw emotion, these tales capture the gross injustices of war as well as the consequences of survival and the memories that follow. In stories that tell as much about the fluid nature of time as they do about the ghosts that haunt survivors, Sabina Murray establishes herself as a passionate and wise voice.
Энн Пэтчетт3.7 Приглашенные на светский прием гости с нетерпением ждали появления всемирной знаменитости - певицы Косc. Ее чарующий голос заворожил всех. Но прекрасный вечер был неожиданно прерван - в зал ворвались вооруженные террористы. С этого момента для всех участников драматических событий началась другая жизнь, а весь мир сузился до размеров одного зала...
Филип Рот4.0 Филип Рот - один из наиболее известных сегодня американских авторов. Его произведения регулярно номинируются на Нобелевскую премию. Так было и в 2007, когда от получения самой престижной награды в области литературы Рота отделял только один шаг...
Семидесятилетний профессор Коулмен Силк исключен из университета из-за несправедливого обвинения в расизме. Трагедия в том, что Силк, в юности порвавший со своей средой и назвавшийся евреем ради того, чтобы никогда не слышать в свой адрес уничижительное "ниггер", на самом деле переступил через самого себя. И это одно из самых страшных предательств разрушит всю его жизнь.
Ха Цзинь3.7 "In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village. Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."--Judges' Citation, National Book Award
"Ha Jin's novel could hardly be less theatrical, yet we're immediately engaged by its narrative structure, by its wry humor and by the subtle, startling shifts it produces in our understanding of characters and their situation."--The New York Times Book Review
"Subtle and complex--his best work to date. A moving meditation on the effects of time upon love."--The Washington Post
"A high achievement indeed."--Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books
"A portrait of Chinese provincial life that terrifies with its emptiness even more than with its all-pervasive vulgarity. The poet in [Jin] intersperses these human scenes with achingly beautiful vignettes of natural beauty."--Los Angeles Times
"A simple love story that transcends cultural barriers--. From the idyllic countryside to the small towns in northeast China, Jin's depictions are filled with an earthy poetic grace--. Jin's account of daily life in China is convincing and rich in detail."--The Chicago Tribune
"Compassionate, earthy, robust, and wise, Waiting blends provocative allegory with all-too-human comedy. The result touches and reveals, bringing to life a singular world in its spectacular intricacy."--Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish?
"A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement."--Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain
Майкл Каннингем4.0 "Часы" - самое известное сочинение Каннингема, признанное лучшим американским романом 1999 года и удостоенное Пулитцеровской премии и награды ПЕН/Фолкнер. Как устроено время? Как рождаются книги? Как сцеплены между собой авторские слова-сны? Как влияют события (разнесенные во времени и пространстве) на слова, а слова - на события? Судьба Вирджинии Вулф и ее "Миссис Дэллоуэй". Англия 20-х и Америка 90-х. Патриархальный Ричмонд, послевоенный Лос-Анджелес и сверхсовременный Нью-Йорк. Любовь, смерть, творчество. Обо всем этом и о многом другом в романе Майкла Каннингема "Часы".
Рафи Забор0.0 The hero of Rafi Zabor's first novel is an alto saxophone virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Shakespeare-and Blake-quoting bear whose keen sense of irony protects him from the double loneliness of the artist and animal in an underappreciative metropolis.The scion of a long line of European circus bears (and the product of an amazing roll of the genetic dice), the Bear, when we first meet him, is eking out a living doing a routinely humiliating street dancing art with his friend and keeper, Jones. But what the Bear is really best at -- besides making himself cosmically miserable -- is playing the alto with his world-calls set of chops. One day he makes a bold foray from their apartment to jam with Arthur Blythe and Lester Bowie -- real-life musicians rub elbows with fictional counterparts throughout the novel -- at a New York club, thus beginning a musical and romantic odyssey. A nightclub bust followed by long dark nights of the soul in New York City's dankest jail. Freedom, a recording contract, underground fame, a road tour that is alternately hilarious, scary, ridiculous, and inspiring. A vexed, physically passionate, and anatomically correct interspecies love affair with a beautiful woman named Iris. And, finally, a triumphant return to a jazz club inside the Brooklyn Bridge, where the Bear plays a solo where it all comes together for him, and blows him all the way back home.
Джина Беррио0.0 This remarkable collection received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, a gold medal from the Commonwealth Club of California, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. For four decades Gina Berriault has been writing short stories praised for their elegance, compassion, range, and psychological intelligence. Writers from Raymond Carver to Andre Dubus have championed her work, which has been published in magazines from The Paris Review to Harpers Bazaar. Though she has received many fellowships and prizes, she has been too often overlooked.Suddenly, however, this has changed. In 1997, Berriault captured four of this countrys most prestigious awards: The National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and a gold medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, the book reviewers in her home state of California bestowed upon her the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Brigitte Frase, writing for Newsday, seemingly had a premonition when she wrote in December of 1996, Gina Berriault has been writing superbly for [forty] years. Its time she became an overnight sensation.Berriaults deep understanding of human emotions and human predicaments draws us into her stories--a librarian pursued by a homeless man searching for the meaning of his life, a daughter listening to her father as he speaks awkwardly to his heartbroken mistress, a son reintroducing himself to his parents after many years of absence. From her first lines (When Milo Jukovich was 19, he introduced himself to his father) to her last (She heard his breath take over for him and, in that secretive way the sleeper knows nothing about, carry on his life) her narrative sense and her eye for detail astound.She is a writer of uncommon range, her moods sometimes distanced and ironic, other times achingly raw and direct. She has said that she is indebted to the Russians--Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy,and Turgenev--for her literary inheritance, but she rejects every way of categorizing her writing. I find my sustenance in the outward, she says, in the wealth of humankind everywhere, and do not wish to be thought of as a Jewish writer or a feminist writer or as a Californian writer or as a leftwing writer or categorized by any interpretation. I find it liberating to roam wherever my heart and my mind guide me.
Ричард Форд3.5 Этот роман, получивший Пулитцеровскую премию и Премию Фолкнера, один из самых важных в современной американской и мировой литературе. Экзистенциальная хроника, почти поминутная, о нескольких днях из жизни обычного человека, на долю которого выпали и обыкновенное счастье, и обыкновенное горе и который пытается разобраться в себе, в устройстве своего существования, постигнуть смысл собственного бытия и бытия страны. Здесь циничная ирония идет рука об руку с трепетной и почти наивной надеждой. Фрэнк Баскомб ступает по жизни, будто она – натянутый канат, а он – неумелый канатоходец. Он отправляется в нескончаемую и одновременно стремительную одиссею, смешную и горькую, чтобы очистить свое сознание от наслоений пустого, добраться до самой сердцевины самого себя. Ричард Форд создал поразительной силы образ, вызывающий симпатию, неприятие, ярость, сочувствие, презрение и восхищение. «День независимости» – великий роман нашего времени.
Дэвид Гутерсон4.1 В водах залива Пьюджет-Саунд найдено тело одного из местных рыбаков. Подозрение падает на американца японского происхождения Миямото Кабуо.
Роман английского писателя Дэвида Гутерсона - это история жизни обитателей маленького острова, сосуществующих в замкнутом пространстве и вынужденных пересматривать некоторые принципы ради мира и покоя.
