Колм Тойбин4.0 Впервые на русском — роман Колма Тойбина, автора «Волшебника» и «Дублина», книга — финалист Букеровской премии, лауреат Международной Дублинской премии IMPAC, «изысканное освещение внутреннего мира Генри Джеймса» (New York Times). Современный классик отдает дань уважения одному из столпов американской и мировой литературы, предтече модернизма. Выдающийся художник, мастер тонкого психологического портрета, показан во всей своей уязвимости и одиночестве — от провала постановки его пьесы «Гай Домвиль» в лондонском театре Друри-лейн, пока в соседнем театре публика рукоплещет премьере «Как важно быть серьезным» Оскара Уайльда, до визита в провинциальный английский городок Рай, где Джеймс поселился на склоне лет, его брата, философа Уильяма Джеймса, и с многочисленными реминисценциями к ключевым эпизодам биографии прославленного добровольного изгнанника, который предпочел Лондон, Флоренцию и Париж родному Бостону…
«Негромкий шедевр, работа необычайной серьезности и сопричастности, раскрывающая нам гения во всей его человеческой полноте. И написан этот глубокий роман — не побоимся слова — мастерски» (New York Observer).
Джонатан Коу4.3 "Круг замкнулся", вторая часть знаменитой дилогии Джонатана Коу, продолжает историю, начатую в "Клубе Ракалий". Прошло двадцать с лишним лет, на дворе нулевые годы, и бывшие школьники озабочены совсем другими проблемами. Теперь они гораздо лучше одеваются, слушают более сложную музыку, и морщины для них давно актуальнее прыщей, но их беспокойство о том, что творится в мире, и о собственном месте в нем никуда не делось. У них по-прежнему нет ответов на многие вопросы. Но если "Клуб Ракалий" - это роман о невинности, то второй роман дилогии - о чувстве вины, которым многие из нас обзаводятся со временем. Проходят годы, столетия, меняется мир, но человек остается неизменным, со всеми его пороками и добродетелями. Об этом новый роман Джонатана Коу, столь же элегантный и превосходно выстроенный, как и все предыдущие книги современного классика.
Маргарет Мадзантини3.8 Маргарет Мадзантини родилась в 1961 году в Дублине в семье итальянского писателя и ирландской художницы. Окончила в Риме театральную школу, с начала 1980-х годов снималась в кино. Ее второй роман "Ради Бога, не двигайся" стал европейским мегабестселлером и в 2004-м был экранизирован; в российском прокате фильм известен как "Не уходи". Постановщиком выступил муж Мадзантини известный актер Серджо Кастеллито ("Голубая бездна"), он же исполнил главную роль - хирурга, разрывающегося между светской красавицей женой и уборщицей по имени Италия (Пенелопа Крус), случайно встреченной в придорожном кафе и пробудившей в нем животную страсть.
Крис Абани0.0 This novel is set in Maroko, a sprawling, swampy, crazy and colorful ghetto of Lagos, Nigeria, and unfolds against a backdrop of lush reggae and highlife music, American movies and a harsh urban existence. Elvis Oke, a teenage Elvis impersonator spurred on by the triumphs of heroes in the American movies and books he devours, pursues his chosen vocation with ardent single-mindedness. He suffers through hours of practice set to the tinny tunes emanating from the radio in the filthy shack he shares with his alcoholic father, his stepmother and his stepsiblings. He applies thick makeup that turns his black skin white, to make his performances more convincing for American tourists and hopefully net him dollars. But still he finds himself constantly broke. Beset by hopelessness and daunted by the squalor and violence of his daily life, he must finally abandon his dream.
With job prospects few and far between. Elvis is tempted to a life of crime by the easy money his friend Redemption tells him is to be had in Lago's underworld. But the King of the Beggars, Elvis's enigmatic yet faithful adviser, intercedes. And so, torn by the frustration of unrealizable dreams and accompanied by an eclectic chorus of voices, Elvis must find a way to a Graceland of his own making.
Graceland is the story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria, where the trappings of American culture reign supreme.
Nadeem Aslam0.0 If Gabriel GarcAa MA?rquez had chosen to write about Pakistani immigrants in England, he might have produced a novel as beautiful and devastating as Maps for Lost Lovers. Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over Enland, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda’s family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable. Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder.
As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu’s worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful.
Ronan Bennett0.0 A penetrating and ambitious historical novel, Havoc, in Its Third Year is an ingenious, often deeply unnerving narrative of seventeenth-century England that speaks directly to the fanaticism and fears of today.
The time is the early seventeenth century, as the quarrel between Royalists and Parliamentarians turns toward civil war, and that between Catholics and Protestants leads toward bloody religious tyranny; the place is a town in northern England, set in a grim landscape swept by crop failures, plague and rumors of war, in which rigid Puritans have taken over government and imposed their own rules.
At the center of the novel is John Brigge, the Coroner and a Governor of the town, though not by any means as convinced a zealot as his fellow governors have become. Married and deeply in love with Elizabeth, who is pregnant with their first child, he has a guilty secret to hide in his affection for Dorcas, his wife's ward -- a secret which, in the world of religious prejudice and extremism toward which England is moving, can be lethal.
Determined to obey the law, rather than prejudice and the need to make an example of an Irishwoman accused of murdering her own infant, Brigge draws upon himself the hostility and suspicion of the powerful men who have been his fellow governors and who now set out to destroy him in the name of morality.
Brigge is both sympathetic and deeply vulnerable. He genuinely loves Elizabeth and longs for their child to be born, but he is also deeply attracted to Dorcas; he is, however guardedly, of "the old faith" and does not hesitate to hide a priest; he favors the wretched vagrants who infest the roads, seeking shelter and a bite to eat, and employs one of them on his farm. He insists on finding out the truth about the Irishwoman's baby, despite the fact that everybody has already decided on her guilt. In short, without intending to do so, John Brigge offers himself up as a victim by refusing to cooperate with the political and religious masters of the town or to subordinate his own conscience to their demand for rigid obedience and piety. Even his own clerk Adam, whom he regards as a son, turns against him in the end in a struggle that will almost cost Brigge his life and that sends him out into a cold and dangerous world, having sacrificed everything he once held dear, stripped of his power and authority, but made heroic by his commitment to love, truth and human feelings.
Havoc, in Its Third Year is a novel of great power, drama and terror, at once a love story and a superb work of historical fiction. It confirms Ronan Bennett's reputation as a masterful creator.
Jens Christian Grondahl0.0 Irene Beckman appears to have a perfect life: two grown children, a house in a prosperous suburb of Copenhagen, and a successful career as a family lawyer. She is cool, sophisticated, and still exotically good-looking, the dyed hair her only concession to time.
Then her husband announces that he's leaving her, and her mother reveals some unexpected information about Irene's father. Suddenly, Irene Beckman is neither wife nor daughter. Nor, she realizes, is it at all clear who she has been all these years. It is time to find out.
From the internationally acclaimed author of Silence in October, An Altered Light is another fascinating exploration of the nature of chance and relationships-between parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and strangers.
Vyvyane Loh0.0 Book DescriptionThis brilliant novel chronicles the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II. Central to the story is one Chinese family: Claude, raised to be more British than the British and ashamed of his own heritage; his father,
Yasmina Khadra5.0 Set in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban, this extraordinary novel takes readers into the lives of two couples: Mohsen, who comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, who was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair.
Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies.
The Swallows of Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.
Томас Уортон0.0 "The particular volume I’m looking for is nameless, lacking a cover, title page, or any other outward markings of identity. Over the centuries its leaves have known nothing but change. They have been removed, replaced, altered, lost. The nameless book has been bound, taken apart, and reassembled with the pieces of other dismembered volumes, until one could ask whether there is anything left of the original. Or if there ever was an original." So begins Thomas Wharton's book about books. What follows is a sequence of variations on the experience of reading and on the book a physical and imaginative object. One tale traces the origins of a fictional card game. Another tells of a duel between two margin scribblers. Roving across the globe and from parable to mystery, Wharton positions his reader between the covers of a book that is not. How are we to read the pieces that follow? As extraneous to the nameless book, as parts of it in its original form or perhaps as evidence that it has relocated to other existing volumes? The Logogryph takes its cues from magic realism and the techniques of cinematography. The result is a mind-bending caper through the process of reading, the relationships we establish with fictitious worlds and the possibility of worlds yet unread. Wharton indulges his reader with tales of fantastical cities where the only occupation is reading and of the plight of a protagonist suddenly dislodged from his own novel. And what becomes of the reader who reads all of this? This book is a Smyth-sewn paperback with a jacket and full sleeve. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Caslon types and printed on Rolland Zephyr Laid paper. The jacket was printed letterpress. The inside features illustrations by Wesley Bates.
