Juan Gabriel Vásquez3.7 The dark, brilliant new novel by the author of The Informers and The Secret History of Costaguana. No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde than disaffected young Colombian lawyer Antonio Yammara realises that his new friend has a secret, or rather several secrets. Antonio's fascination with the life of ex-pilot Ricardo Laverde begins by casual acquaintance in a seedy Bogota billiard hall and grows until the day Ricardo receives a cassette tape in an unmarked envelope. Asking Antonio to find him somewhere private to play it, they go to a library. The first time he glances up from his seat in the next booth, Antonio sees tears running down Laverde's cheeks; the next, the ex-pilot has gone. Shortly afterwards, Ricardo is shot dead on a street corner in Bogota by a guy on the back of a motorbike and Antonio is caught in the hail of bullets. Lucky to survive, and more out of love with life than ever, he starts asking questions until the questions become an obsession that leads him to Laverde's daughter. His troubled investigation leads all the way back to the early 1960s, marijuana smuggling and a time before the cocaine trade trapped a whole generation of Colombians in a living nightmare of fear and random death. Juan Gabriel Vasquez is one of the leading novelists of his generation, and The Sound of Things Falling that tackles what became of Colombia in the time of Pablo Escobar is his best book to date.
Тан Тван Энг4.2 Малайя, 1951. Юн Линь – единственная, кто выжил в тайном японском концлагере. В этом лагере она потеряла свою любимую сестру – та разделила ужасную судьбу тысяч заключенных. Единственное, что Юн Линь может сделать для сестры, – исполнить ее мечту, создав дивной красоты японский сад. Юн Линь ненавидит японцев, отнявших у нее близких и чуть не убивших ее саму. Но ей приходится обратиться к японцу Аритомо, в прошлом императорскому садовнику, который готов обучить ее своему искусству.
Она понимает, что у Аритомо есть тайна, и его неожиданное исчезновение подтверждает ее предположения. Пройдет целая жизнь, прежде чем Юн Линь удастся приблизиться к разгадке этой тайны…
Гербранд Баккер3.5 A Dutch woman, a university English lecturer researching the work of Emily Dickinson, rents a farm in remote, rural Wales. When she arrives, there are ten geese living on the farm, but one by one they disappear. Perhaps it's the work of a local fox. The reason for her move abroad gradually becomes clear: her husband is trying to track her down. Having confessed to an affair with one of her students in Amsterdam, she has quietly fled to Wales from a situation that had become unbearable. Her husband contacts the police and teams up with a detective to go and look for her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve. But in the meantime, the woman increasingly seems to be losing her grip on the situation. Gerbrand Bakker has made the territories of isolation, inner turmoil and the solace offered by the natural world his own. The Detour is a gripping and subtle new novel.
Мишель де Крецер3.0
Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events. An enthralling array of people, places and stories surround these superbly drawn characters - from Theo, whose life plays out in the long shadow of the past, to Hana, an Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself. Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now. Questions of Travel is infused with wit, imagination, uncanny common sense and a deep understanding of what makes us tick.
Патрик Флэнери0.0
In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa to embark upon a project that will establish his reputation - he is to write Clare's biography. But how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit in crimes lurking in South Africa's past; is she an accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against her family real or imagined? In the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her shimmering prose, lie Sam's own ghosts.
Karl Ove Knausgaard4.1 Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with exhilarating honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death. When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature.
A Death in the Family is the first of the six books in the My Struggle cycle. In it Knausgaard has created a universal story which is gripping, hugely readable and written as if the author's very life were at stake.
Another international sensation from the publishers of HHhH, 1Q84 and Coetzee's Summertime.
Marie Ndiaye0.0 In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful.
This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.
With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits us to an immigrant experience rarely if ever examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.
Andrés Neuman4.8 A novel of philosophy and love, politics and waltzes, history and the here-and-now, Andrés Neuman's Traveller of the Century is a journey into the soul of Europe, penned by one of the most exciting South-American writers of our time.
A traveller stops off for the night in the mysterious city of Wandernburg. He intends to leave the following day, but the city begins to ensnare him with its strange, shifting geography.
When Hans befriends an old organ grinder, and falls in love with Sophie, the daughter of a local merchant, he finds it impossible to leave. Through a series of memorable encounters with starkly different characters, Neuman takes the reader on a hypothetical journey back into post-Napoleonic Europe, subtly evoking its parallels with our modern era.
At the heart of the novel lies the love story between Sophie and Hans. They are both translators, and between dictionaries and bed, bed and dictionaries,they gradually build up their own fragile common language.
Through their relationship Neuman explores the idea that all love is an act of translation, and that all translation is an act of love.
'A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart'
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian
'A thought-provoking historical romance, in which sex and philosophy mingle to delightful effect.'
Ángel Gurría Quintana, Financial Times, Best Books of 2012
Andrés Neuman (b.1977) was born in Buenos Aires and later moved to Granada, Spain. Selected as one of Granta magazine's Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, Neuman was included in the Hay Festival's Bogotá 39 list. He has published numerous novels, short stories, essays and poetry collections. He received the Hiperión Prize for Poetry for El tobogán, and Traveller of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize in 2009.
