A painter is so obsessed with painting the perfect portrait of his beautiful wife, that he does nothing else until it is finished. As an artist myself, I can relate to this story in more ways than one. It is very short, only a couple of pages,...
In seventh-century China, during the great Tang dynasty, a young girl from the humble Wu clan entered the imperial gynaecium, which housed ten thousand concubines. Inside the Forbidden City, she witnessed seductions, plots, murders, and brazen...
In the bestselling tradition of Doctor Zhivago and Sophie’s Choice, a sweeping epic of Russia from the last days of the Tsars to today’s age of oligarchs—by the prizewinning author of Young Stalin.
Winter 1916: St. Petersburg, Russia, is...
Life is fury. Fury—sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal—drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise—the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent,...
From an author named by The New Yorker as one of the "20 Best American Fiction Writers Under 40," a hilarious, inventive, unforgettable collection of stories.
His remarkable first collection of stories was hailed by The New York Times...
When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the...
Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson’s...