Энтони Марра2.0 In A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra takes us to snow-covered Chechnya during the Second Chechen War. The novel, a remarkable decade-spanning debut, opens with eight-year-old Havaa looking on as her father is dragged off by Russian soldiers for a crime he did not commit. The soldiers set fire to Havaa's home, and next-door neighbor Akhmed attempts to hide her at nearby hospital. Sonya, the doctor who runs the facility, is hesitant to harbor Havaa, as the child invites unnecessary risk to her barely functioning hospital, but both she and Akhmed realize that Havaa represents something greater than a single life: she is the key to maintaining humanity in an ethnic conflict that is absurd and unjust. "There are things a person shouldn't understand," Akhmed says. "There are things a person has a moral duty never to understand." But by the end of Vital Phenomena, we do understand--with deeply emotional characters and gripping depiction of wartorn Chechnya, Marra makes us understand. --Kevin Nguyen
Адриан Матейка0.0 A finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in Poetry—a collection that examines the myth and history of the prizefighter Jack Johnson
The legendary Jack Johnson (1878–1946) was a true American creation. The child of emancipated slaves, he overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow, challenging white boxers—and white America—to become the first African-American heavyweight world champion. The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka’s third work of poetry, follows the fighter’s journey from poverty to the most coveted title in sports through the multi-layered voices of Johnson and the white women he brazenly loved. Matejka’s book is part historic reclamation and part interrogation of Johnson’s complicated legacy, one that often misremembers the magnetic man behind the myth.
Ари Шавит0.0 With both unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. In My Promised Land, one of Israel's most influential columnists sets out to answer the question of how his beloved country has arrived at this unsettling moment. Rather than rehashing the established narrative--one of wars, treaties, and noted political figures--Ari Shavit tells the stories of ordinary citizens--the grassroots leaders, the farmers, the immigrants, the nightclub owners, the settlers, and the Arabs--who came to shape the moral fabric of the country. With each chapter focusing on an underappreciated moment in history or an untold story, My Promised Land paints a nuanced picture of a small country whose identity and presence has a crucial role not only in the Middle East but in the Western world. It tells a riveting story that is both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.
