From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Judy Budnitz
Does government-sanctioned suicide offer the same potential for satire as, say, the consumption of children? Possibly. One need only look to Kurt Vonnegut's story "Welcome to the Monkey House,"...
An epic journey of love and discovery from the national bestselling author of The Russian Concubine and The Red Scarf.China, 1929. For years Lydia Ivanova believed her father was killed by the Bolsheviks. But when she learns he is...
These four novels by Christine Brooke-Rose each develop distinctive narrative patterns, changing the structures, textures, forms, and idioms of fiction to explore the central tensions and contradictions in culture. The novels are distinguished by...
Early in "Proud Beggars," a brutal and motiveless murder is committed in a Cairo brothel. But the real mystery at the heart of Albert Cossery's wry black comedy is not the cause of this death but the paradoxical richness to be found in even the...
In this vivid and compelling novel, Tim Murphy follows a diverse set of characters whose fates intertwine in an iconic building in Manhattan’s East Village, the Christodora. The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple...
Upon the death of their leader, a group of Tuareg, a nomadic Berber community whose traditional homeland is the Sahara Desert, turns to the heir dictated by tribal custom; however, he is a poet reluctant to don the mantle of leadership. Forced by...
The Book of Blam, Aleksandar Tišma’s “extended kaddish. . [his] masterpiece” (Kirkus Reviews), is a modern-day retelling of the book of Job. The war is over. Miroslav Blam walks along the former Jew Street, and he remembers. He remembers...
New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier makes her first fictional foray into the American past in The Last Runaway, bringing to life the Underground Railroad and illuminating the principles, passions and realities that fueled this...
The brilliant new novel from the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
On the eve of Angolan independence an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the pigeons she lures...
In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these 21 vintage selected stories and 13 scintillating new ones take us around the...