Омар эль Аккад0.0 From the widely acclaimed, best-selling author of American War, a new novel--beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving--that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.
"It is one thing to put a human face on a migrant crisis and another to do so in so compelling a way that a reader simply cannot put your book down. --Gish Jen, author of The Resisters
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vanna. Vanna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vanna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, Vanna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy.
In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir's life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.
Angelique LaLonde0.0 Home is where we love, suffer, and learn. Some homes we chose, others are inflicted upon us, and still others are bodies we are born into. In this astounding collection of stories, human and more-than-human worlds come together in places we call home.
Four sisters and their mother explore their fears while teeny ghost people dress up in fragments of their children’s clothes. A somewhat-ghost tends the family garden. Deep in the mountains, a shapeshifting mother must sift through her ancestors’ gifts and the complexities of love when one boy is born with a beautiful set of fox ears and another is not. In the wake of her elderly mother’s tragic death, a daughter tries to make sense of the online dating profile she left behind. And a man named Pooka finds new ways to weave new stories into his abode, in spite of his inherited suffering.
A startling and beguiling story collection, Glorious Frazzled Beingsis a love song to the homes we make, keep, and break.
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia5.0 SHORTLISTED for the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2021 FINALIST for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2021 WINNER of the SprinNG Women Authors Prize 2020 WINNER of the Best International Fiction Book Award, Sharjah International Book Fair 2019
The Son of the House is a compelling novel about two women caught in a constricting web of tradition, class, gender, and motherhood. FOREWORD REVIEWS, starred review
The lives of two Nigerian women divided by class and social inequality intersect when they're kidnapped, held captive, and forced to await their fate together.
In the Nigerian city of Enugu, young Nwabulu, a housemaid since the age of ten, dreams of becoming a typist as she endures her employers endless chores. She is tall and beautiful and in love with a rich mans son.
Educated and privileged, Julie is a modern woman. Living on her own, she is happy to collect the gold jewellery lovestruck Eugene brings her, but has no intention of becoming his second wife.
When a kidnapping forces Nwabulu and Julie into a dank room years later, the two women relate the stories of their lives as they await their fate.
Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobias debut is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria, celebrating the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a mans world.
Jordan Tannahill0.0 A propulsive literary page-turner about a family torn apart by a mother’s obsession with a sound that no one else can hear
One night, while lying in bed next to her husband, Claire Devon suddenly hears a low hum. This innocuous sound, which no one else in the house can hear, has no obvious source or medical cause, but it begins to upset the balance of Claire’s life. When she discovers that one of her students can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of people who also perceive the sound. What starts out as a kind of neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something much more extreme, with far-reaching, devastating consequences.
The Listeners is an electrifying novel that treads the thresholds of faith, conspiracy and mania. Compelling and exhilarating, it forces us to consider how strongly we hold on to what we perceive, and the way different views can tear a family apart.
Мириам Тэйвз3.8 Бабушка Эльвира провела в борьбе всю жизнь. Сначала она упорно отстаивала своё право на счастье и независимость, но даже теперь, несмотря на почтенный возраст и хрупкое здоровье, её борьба ещё не окончена, ведь её беременная дочь и маленькая внучка так в ней нуждаются.
Когда девятилетнюю Суив отстраняют от школьных занятий, неподражаемая Эльвира с готовностью берётся за обучение внучки. Она научит Суив считать, писать письма, читать рецепты лекарств, рыть могилы и разруливать конфликты с охранниками, но главное, она научит внучку самому сложному – как не проиграть в ежедневной изнурительной борьбе за себя и своих любимых, и как при этом не потерять вкус к жизни.
Ким Тхюи4.5 Kim Thúy's Em is a mesmerizing novel of profound power and tenderness, and an affirmation of the greatest act of resistance: love.
In the midst of war, an ordinary miracle: an abandoned baby tenderly cared for by a young boy living on the streets of Saigon. The boy is Louis, the child of a long-gone American soldier. Louis calls the baby em Hồng, em meaning little sister, or beloved. Even though her cradle is nothing more than a cardboard box, em Hồng's life holds every possibility.
Through the linked destinies of a family of characters, the novel takes its inspiration from historical events, including Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975, and the remarkable growth of the nail salon industry, dominated by Vietnamese expatriates all over the world. From the rubber plantations of Indochina to the massacre at My Lai, Kim Thúy sifts through the layers of pain and trauma in stories we thought we knew, revealing transcendent moments of grace, and the invincibility of the human spirit.
