Murder is committed for its own sake in the three fictional episodes of The Book of Destruction. In ‘The Gardener’, the narrator learns from the thug Seshadri that he has been selected for assassination for no reason but the pure purpose of...
"The Last and the First "was" "Ivy Compton-Burnett's final novel. In it she deals with her familiar themes — tyranny, power and corruption. Although the novel was unfinished at the time of her death in 1969, it combines the brilliant wit and...
Recipient of three French literary awards, Mathias Énard's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Zone is a timely novel about a young Moroccan boy caught up in the turbulent events of the Middle East, and a possible...
Learning to survive in the harsh interior of Southern Africa, a former slave seeks shelter in the hollow of a baobab tree. For the first time since she was a young girl her time is her own, her body is her own, her thoughts are her own. In...
The Bottom of the Jar is the journey of a boy finding his footing in the heart of Fez during the 1950s, as Morocco began freeing itself from the grip of the French colonial occupation. The narrator vividly recalls his first encounters with the...
To those outside it, Pilsen is a vast barrio on the south side of Chicago. To Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, it is a world of violence and decay and beauty, of nuance and pure chance. It is a place where the smell of cooking frijoles is washed away...
Gaza is being bombed. Rashid – a bright, unemployed twenty-seven-year-old, who has stayed up smoking grass watching it happen – wakes the next day to hear that he’s got the escape route he’s been waiting for: a scholarship to London. His...
Nasim is a young computer scientist, hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project: a plan to map every neural connection in the human brain. But funding for the project is cancelled, and Nasim ends up devoting her career to Zendegi, a...
A 36-year old widow and mother of two finds her way back to La Dolce Vita with the help of a gorgeous 25-year-old Italian immigrant, whose name just happens to be-Leonardo da Vinci.A linguist and English teacher, Ramona Elise (who Leonardo...
At once a sensual and irresistible mystery and a haunting work of psychological insight and emotional depth, The Whole World marks the beginning of a brilliant literary career for Emily Winslow, a superb, limitlessly gifted author.Set in...