Edward P. Jones2.0 In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker , the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever
Чимаманда Нгози Адичи4.3 Красавица Оланна из богатой семьи никогда не отличалась дерзостью, как ее сестра-двойняшка Кайнене, но именно Оланна решилась оставить полную комфорта жизнь ради любви. Переезжая в маленький городок, где жил и работал ее будущий муж, профессор местного университета, она вряд ли понимала, что бесповоротно меняет свою судьбу. Деревенский мальчик Угву, поступивший в услужение в профессорский дом, тоже не догадывался, что отныне его жизнь изменится необратимо и непредсказуемо. Застенчивый молодой англичанин Ричард, приехавший в Нигерию, чтобы написать книгу, вовсе не собирался оставаться здесь навсегда. А непокорная и избалованная Кайнене вряд ли думала, что взвалит на свои хрупкие плечи ответственность за жизнь огромного числа людей. Но война, обрушившаяся на страну, не только корежила судьбы людей, но и меняла их самих, вытаскивая наружу то, что в обычной жизни скрывается за лоском цивилизованности. Оланне, Угву, Ричарду и всем остальным героям романа предстоит пройти сквозь немыслимые ужасы войны, не раз лицом к лицу столкнуться со смертью и вновь обрести себя после страшных испытаний. Полный напряженного драматизма роман "Половина желтого солнца" рассказывает истории нескольких людей, — истории, которые сплелись самым поразительным образом. Читатели назвали роман Адичи "африканским "Бегущим за ветром"", а британские критики присудили ему престижнейшую премию "Оранж".
Calvin Baker0.0 With Calvin Baker's first two novels, Naming The New World and Once Two Heroes, he has continued to be acclaimed by the major media from the Los Angeles Times to Esquire. Now, with Dominion, Baker has written a lush, incantatory novel about three generations of an African American family in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War.
Dominion tells the story of the Merian family who, at the close of the seventeenth century, settle in the wilderness of the Carolinas. Jasper is the patriarch, freed from bondage, who manages against all odds to build a thriving estate with his new wife and two sons — one enslaved, the other free. For one hundred years, the Merian family struggles against the natural (and occasionally supernatural) world, colonial politics, the injustices of slavery, the Revolutionary War and questions of fidelity and the heart. Footed in both myth and modernity, Calvin Baker crafts a rich, intricate and moving novel, with meditations on God, responsibility, and familial legacies. While masterfully incorporating elements of the world's oldest and greatest stories, the end result is a bold contemplation of the origins of America.
Kim McLarin0.0 In her previous books, celebrated author Kim McLarin skillfully examined issues of race and love. Jump at the Sun is her stunning third novel in which she addresses the same complicated subjects, as well as gender, class, and motherhood.
Grace Jefferson is an educated and accomplished modern woman, a child of the Civil Rights dream, and she knows it well. But after a series of rattling personal transitions, she finds herself in a new house in a new city and in a new career for which she feels dangerously unsuited: a stay-at-home mom. Caught between the only two models of mothering she has ever known -- a sharecropping grandmother who abandoned her children to save herself and a mother who sacrificed all to save her kids -- Grace struggles to embrace her new role, hoping to find a middle ground. But as the days pass and the pressures mount, Grace begins to catch herself in small acts of abandonment -- speeding up on neighborhood walks, closing doors with the children on one side and her on the other -- that she fears may foretell a future she is powerless to prevent. Or perhaps it's a future she secretly seeks.
Jump at the Sun is a novel about an isolating suburban life and the continuing legacy of slavery, about generational change and the price of living the dream for which our parents fought. Primarily it is a novel about motherhood, and not a sentimental one. As Grace struggles not to damage her children with her own fears and complications, her thoughts stray far from the greeting-card picture often expected of mothers in society today. In her bold and fearless voice McLarin explores both the highs and the lows of being a mother and how breaking the cycle of suffocation and regret is infuriatingly difficult, and absolutely necessary.
Бернис Макфадден0.0 “Nowhere Is a Place is a powerful portrait of family secrets, damage, and healing, probing deep below the surface of an African American family’s history to mend present day relationships . . . Ms. McFadden has a beautiful writing style that is simultaneously lyrical and transparent. In parts of the narrative, time seems to stand still as she describes an event in riveting minute to minute detail. Other times she employs a kind of poetic shorthand that condenses long periods of time, years even, into a few sentences.”–New York Journal of Books"An engrossing multigenerational saga . . . With her deep engagement in the material and her brisk but lyrical prose, McFadden creates a poignant epic of resiliency, bringing Sherry to a well-earned awareness of her place atop the shoulders of her ancestors, those who survived so that she might one day, too."–Publishers Weekly"Telling her story from two perspectives and on two levels–the mother-daughter relationship and Sherry's fictional account–McFadden brings added texture to this story of reconciliation."–Booklist“A poignant tale of self-discovery in the face of a complicated family history.”–Brooklyn Daily Eagle"Bernice L. McFadden’s Nowhere Is a Place is a hauntingly-disturbing and redemptive frame story of many generations of a Yamasee Native-American and African-American family from pre-slavery times until July 1995."–Bowling Green Daily News"With a good dose of poignancy about life and finding the wisdom of the world for ourselves, Nowhere is a Place is a fine addition to modern literary fiction collections."–The Midwest Book Review"Compelling, beautifully written, and profoundly human, McFadden has conjured a tale of a fractured family who journey across the country and back through history to unearth painful truths that unexpectedly reshape their relationships with each other."–Lynn Nottage, playwright, author of Intimate ApparelNothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets; but Sherry is determined to know the full story. In just a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them. What Sherry and Dumpling find on their trip is far more important than scenic sites here and there–it is the assorted pieces of their family's past. Pulled together, they reveal a history of amazing survival and abundant joy.Bernice L. McFadden is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels including the classic Sugar, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice), and Glorious, which was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. She is a two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the BCALA. Her sophomore novel, The Warmest December, was praised by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison as «searing and expertly imagined.» McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o5.0 Set in the fictional Free Republic of Aburiria, Wizard of the Crow dramatises with searing humour nad piercing observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburirian people. Fashioning the stories of the powerful adn the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, Ngugi wa Thiog'o reveals humanity in all its surprising intricacy. Informed by richly enigmatic traditional African storytelling, Wizard of the Crow is a masterpiece and a major achievement in Ngugi wa Thiongo's extraordinary and brave career.
Asali Solomon0.0 Asali Solomon's characters are vivid misfits--a heathen at Jesus camp, a scheming prep-school student, a middle-aged mom pining for her salsa-dancing salad days, a scheming twentysomething virgin, a college stud in love with his weight-lifting partner, a lonely girl in love with a yellow dress. The kids in Get Down are trapped between their own good breeding and their burning desire to join the house party of sex, romance, and bad behavior that seems to be happening on some other block, down some other, more dangerous street. Get Down is, in the words of Edward P. Jones, "touching and sensitively observed . . . from the first word to the last."
Мари-Елена Джон0.0 In this riveting narrative of family, betrayal, vengeance, and murder, Lillian Baptiste is willed back to her island home of Dominica to finally settle her past. Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian left Dominica when she was fourteen after
Патрисия Смит0.0 A National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Edward Sanders.
“What power. Smith’s poetry is all poetry. And visceral. Her poems get under the skin of their subjects. Their passion and empathy, their real worldliness, are blockbuster.”—Marvin Bell
“I was weeping for the beauty of poetry when I reached the end of the final poem.”—Edward Sanders, National Poetry Series judge
From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation’s premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade—a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned cele-bration of poetry’s liberating power.
