Akhil Sharma2.5 Ajay, eight years old, spends his afternoons playing cricket in the streets of Delhi with his brother Birju, four years older. They are about to leave for shiny new life in America. Ajay anticipates, breathlessly, a world of jet-packs and chewing-gum.
This promised land of impossible riches and dazzling new technology is also a land that views Ajay with suspicion and hostility; one where he must rely on his big brother to tackle classroom bullies. Birju, confident, popular, is the repository of the family's hopes, and he spends every waking minute studying for the exams that will mean entry to the Bronx High School of Science, and reflected glory for them all.
When a terrible accident makes a mockery of that dream, the family splinters. The boys' mother restlessly seeks the help of pundits from the temple, while their father retreats into silent despair - and the bottle. Now Ajay must find the strength of character to navigate this brave new American world, and the sorrows at home, on his own terms.
By turns blackly funny, touching, raw and devastating, Family Life is a vivid and wrenching portrait of sibling relationships and the impact of tragedy on one family from a boy's eye view.
Марлон Джеймс3.5 3 декабря 1976 года. Ямайка на пороге гражданской войны, а в гетто Кингстона льется кровь. В этот день «король регги» Боб Марли готовился к грандиозному концерту, призванному ослабить напряжение в ямайском обществе. Внезапно семеро стрелков, вооруженных автоматическим оружием, вломились к нему в дом и буквально изрешетили всё вокруг. Певец выжил – и даже провел концерт, несмотря на ранения в грудь и руку. Но неясные, темные слухи об этом покушении еще долго будоражили весь мир…
Javier Cercas0.0 In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent…
One summer's day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life.
Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept.
A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today.
Мэри Костелло0.0 She stood on the edge of the grass. She hovered between worlds, deciphering the ground, tracing in mid-air the hall, the dining-room, the stairs. She was despairingly close to home now, to the rooms and the voices that contained the first names for home. Memories abounded and her heart pounded and history broke in . . .
Growing up in the west of Ireland in the 1940s Tess is a shy introverted child. But beneath her quiet exterior lies a heart of fire. A fire that will later drive her to make her home among the hurly burly of 1960s New York.
Over four decades and a life lived with quiet intensity on Academy Street in upper Manhattan, Tess encounters ferocious love and calamitous loss. But what endures is her bravery and fortitude, and her striking insights even as she is 'floating close to hazard.'
Joyous and heart-breaking, restrained but sweeping, this is a profoundly moving story that charts one woman's quest for belonging amid the dazzle and tumult of America's greatest city. Academy Street establishes Mary Costello as one of Ireland's most exciting literary voices.
Дэйв Эггерс3.7 Томас – среднестатистический американец тридцати четырех лет – чувствует, что жизнь потеряла смысл, и пытается разобраться в себе и в обществе, в котором живет. Его голову разрывает от терзаний, страхов, несбывшихся планов и, самое главное, от вопросов. И есть только один способ найти ответы – спрашивать. Тогда Томас одного за другим похищает людей, с которыми хотел бы поговорить: астронавта, экс-конгрессмена, школьного учителя, собственную мать, полицейского, врача и даже случайную прохожую.
Почему астронавт не летит на Луну? Почему у государства нет на это денег, но пять триллионов долларов были только что потрачены на бессмысленную войну? Неужели двенадцать вооруженных до зубов полицейских могут окружить одного человека с ножом для стейков и исходом этого будет казнь на заднем дворе? Почему мать никогда не отдает должного его достижениям? И самое главное – как побороть отчаяние, найти себя и свое место в жизни?
Ответы должны быть честными, даже если причиняют боль.
Jenny Erpenbeck0.0 Winner of the Presigious Hans Fallada Prize and a bestseller in Europe, The End of Days offers a unique view on twentieth-century German history.
The End of Days, by acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,” each leading to a different death of an unnamed woman protagonist. How could it all have gone differently? the narrator asks in the intermezzos between. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early twentieth-century Hapsburg Empire. In the next chapter, the same girl grows up in Vienna, but her strange relationship with a boy leads to another death. In the next scenario, she survives adolescence and moves to Russia with her husband. Both are dedicated Communists, but our heroine is sent to a labor camp. She is spared in the next chapter with the help of someone’s intervention and returns to Berlin to become a respected writer. . . .
The End of Days is a brilliant novel of contingency and fate. A novel of incredible breadth, yet amazing concision, The End of Days offers a unique overview of German and German-Jewish history by “one of the finest, most exciting authors alive” (Michael Faber).
Мишель Лауб3.0 At the narrator’s elite Jewish school in a posh suburb of Porte Alegre, a cruel prank leaves the only Catholic student there terribly injured. Years later, he relives the episode as he examines the mistakes of his past and struggles for forgiveness. His father, who has Alzheimer’s, obsessively records every memory that comes to mind, and his grandfather, who survived Auschwitz, fills notebook after notebook with the false memories of someone desperate to forget.
This powerful novel centered on guilt and the complicated legacy of history asks provocative questions about what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century.
Сколастик Муказонга3.8 Руанда, начало 1970-х. В лицее Богоматери Нильской, недалеко от истока великой египетской реки, молодые девушки готовятся стать теми, кем их хотят видеть: хорошими женами, хорошими матерями, хорошими христианками. Их жизнь проходит в обыденных трудах и заботах. Но под кажущимся спокойствием тлеет расовая ненависть, которая может разгореться в любую секунду. "Этническая" квота ограничивает количество учеников, гонения множатся, а молитвы становятся отчаяннее. Что же сделают обитательницы лицея Богоматери Нильской, чтобы смело встретить новую эпоху лицом к лицу?
Jenny Offill3.5 They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation. They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, and what they want now. Written with the dazzling lucidity of poetry, Dept. of Speculation navigates the jagged edges of a modern marriage to tell a story that is darkly funny, surprising and wise.
Marilynne Robinson4.3 Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister and widower, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood of itinerant work. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand-to-mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a lucky knife to protect them. But despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life is laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to harmonize the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Orange Prize-winning Home, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence.
