Мигель Сихуко3.4 Впервые на русском - дебютный роман, получивший (по рукописи) "Азиатского Букера", премию Паланки (высшая литературная награда Филиппин) и премию Хью Макленнана (высшая литературная награда Квебека), вышедший в финалисты премий Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal (Канада), Prix Jan Michalski (Швейцария), Prix Courrier International (Франция) и Премии стран Британского содружества, а также попавший в список лучших книг года по версии "Нью-Йорк таймс".
В ясный зимний день из Гудзона вылавливают тело Криспина Сальвадора - некогда знаменитого филиппинского писателя, давно переселившегося в Нью-Йорк, постоянного фигуранта любовных, политических и литературных скандалов. Что это - несчастный случай, убийство или самоубийство? Известно, что он долгие годы работал над романом "Сожженные мосты", призванным вернуть ему былую славу, разоблачить коррумпированных политиков и беспринципных олигархов, свести счеты с его многочисленными недругами. Но рукопись - пропала. А Мигель - студент Криспина и его последний друг - решает во что бы то ни стало отыскать ее, собирая жизнь Криспина, как головоломку, из его книг, интервью и воспоминаний. И постепенно возникает ощущение, что биография автора, с неизбежными скелетами в шкафах, - это метафора жизни целой страны, где выборы могут украсть, а народные протесты - слить, где президент ради сохранения власти готов инсценировать террористическую угрозу, а религиозные лидеры слабо отличимы от уголовных авторитетов…
"Впечатляющий дебютный роман, который, начинаясь как увлекательный детектив, оборачивается смелым и глубоким исследованием культурной идентичности и самой природы художественного вымысла". The New Yorker
"Роман в духе раннего Филипа Рота, выстроенный, как лучшие фильмы М. Найта Шьямалана… Мигель Сихуко мастерски провоцирует читателя". The Dallas Morning News
Yu Hua4.1 A bestseller in China, recently short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and a winner of France’s Prix Courrier International, Brothers is an epic and wildly unhinged black comedy of modern Chinese society running amok.
Here is China as we’ve never seen it, in a sweeping, Rabelaisian panorama of forty years of rough-and-rumble Chinese history that has already scandalized millions of readers in the author’s homeland. Yu Hua, award-winning author of To Live, gives us a surreal tale of two brothers riding the dizzying roller coaster of life in a newly capitalist world. As comically mismatched teenagers, Baldy Li, a sex-obsessed ne’er-do-well, and Song Gang, his bookish, sensitive stepbrother, vow that they will always be brothers--a bond they will struggle to maintain over the years as they weather the ups and downs of rivalry in love and making and losing millions in the new China. Their tribulations play out across a richly populated backdrop that is every bit as vibrant: the rapidly-changing village of Liu Town, full of such lively characters as the self-important Poet Zhao, the craven dentist Yanker Yu, the virginal town beauty (turned madam) Lin Hong, and the simpering vendor Popsicle Wang.
With sly and biting humor, combined with an insightful and compassionate eye for the lives of ordinary people, Yu Hua shows how the madness of the Cultural Revolution has transformed into the equally rabid madness of extreme materialism. Both tragic and absurd by turns, Brothers is a monumental spectacle and a fascinating vision of an extraordinary place and time
Кавери Намбисан0.0 A poignant, unsettling and incisively thought-provoking new novel by critically acclaimed author—Kavery Nambisan
"The poor will not go away. There are too many of them. Looking for work, for food, for a place to live, a place to shit. And what do people like you, the Vaibhav people, say? “Stop dirtying our neighbourhood.” You will soon be asking the government to throw us out of here. Why? A Right to Shit card. That’s what we need. The Right to Live…You want the people here to accept kindness on your terms. You do it as a favour, an apology for being rich. Is it any wonder that the beggar who accepts your coin and touches it to his forehead has nothing but hatred for you?"
Simon Jesukumar, an ageing widower, aspires to do something worthwhile with what remains of his circumscribed, frustratingly blameless, cocooned middle-class life. His aspirations are stirred by his nagging guilt about the slum next door—incongruously and deludedly named ‘Sitara’. The welloff residents of his colony use the inhabitants of Sitara for menial jobs but ignore their real needs.
Simon’s friendship with his errand boy Velu, and the strangely gifted Thatkan, propels him towards others from the slum—Swamy, the schoolteacher who is also the butcher; ‘Doctor’ Prince who has no medical degree; the belt-buckle factory owner who employs children to melt brass
for buckles; Tailorboy, who has thirteen fingertips to please women; the bizarre and inscrutable Baqua; and Nayagan the Leader, optimistically called ‘Merciful Diamond’, whose party bosses consider Sitara to be nothing more than a captive vote bank.
As the story plunges into the heart of the slum—bringing the most unlikely individuals to the brink of collision—Simon begins to understand that good intentions and small acts of kindness achieve little when faced with the problems of a stratum of humanity he knows next to nothing about.
Simon’s dilemma is ours: how can, and how should, the rich (and the not-so-rich) help the poor?
Сиддхартх Шангви0.0 Star photographer Karan Seth is in Bombay to immortalize the city in a unique photo-record of its hidden faces until tragedy strikes and he is drawn into a Fitzgeraldian world of sex, crime and politics. Utterly disenchanted, he abandons the camera and Bombay and heads to England. Yet, like the flamingoes of Sewri, who unfailingly give in to the strange, haunting pull of the great metropolis, Karan too knows that he must return to his old loves. The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is at once a razor-sharp depiction of contemporary urban society and an affecting tale about love's betrayals and the redemptive powers of friendship.
Альфред Юсон0.0 An earlier manuscript titled “The Music Child” was shortlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize in 2008. Alfred A. Yuson’s previous novels are Great Philippine Jungle Energy Cafe and Voyeurs & Savages.
Again, this third novel explores the marvels skirting the boundaries of realism, or goes much farther beyond after establishing adequate suspension of disbelief. Genres are blurred in the crafting of long fiction that is both poetry and prophecy. This the author does with visionary whimsy.
In this narrative, the central protagonist’s wondrous voice is stilled time and again by the deaths of his loved ones. Bereft of song, the boy finally learns to speak, then learns to turn the words of others into music on paper. The processes of mimicry and extrapolation result in an extended poetic suite that invents legends as well as a mythical conflict involving the imperialism of languages.
The music child’s extraordinary talents are matched by those of the young mahjong queen who can’t be beaten in the game since the angels of her youth speak through her fingers.
Around them, foreign friends and relations representing former colonizers provide a framework of discovery, while themselves dancing to the historic chorus of destiny in the magical East.
The music child and the mahjong queen endear themselves to one another through the palpable vocabulary of flowers.
