A haunting and powerful story about war-torn Africa, a mystical orphan boy, and the power of narrative to give a chaotic world order. In the hot African night a single gunshot cracks the silence. Jos Antonio traces the sound to the stage of the local theatre company, where he finds Nelio, the young prophetical leader of the city's street kids, crumpled in blood. Nelio refuses to be taken to the hospital but instead tells Jose his life's story: how bandits raided his village, his daring escape, and his struggle to survive on the streets. Jos is irrevocably changed. He becomes the Chronicler o... View More...
Originally published in 1951, this novel tells of a young girl living with her deeply religious grandparents in pre-war Vyborg--before it became part of the Soviet Union. Leena hates school, loves music and rain, and wanders through the town in a state of childish enchantment. "Like a spruce cone, a child falls into a world where logical disorder replaces magical order, and there you are―in trouble, we'll agree." The world she inhabits features multiple layers of reality, and this is reflected in the novel's artful narrative: life and death are reflections of each other, and reality is m... View More...
" Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante." --SlateA Penguin Classic Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century. The trilogy, however, is more than a journey into the past. Undset's own life--her familiarity with Norse sagas and folklore and with a wide range of medieval literature, her experiences as a daughter, wife, and mother, and her deep religious faith--profoundly influenced her writing. Her grasp of the connections between... View More...
Arriving in Northern Finland after the Second World War, Gunnar Huttunen buys a dilapidated mill on the Suukoski rapids of the Kemijoki River. An Ignatius Reilly of the Finnish 1940s, Gunnar is an eccentric outsider swimming against society's current. Prone to rapid mood swings and a general lack of decorum, he is feared and reviled by village notables for his wayward manner--most noticeably his indulgent nighttime howling, which he gets up to when he "feels the need to do something special," and to which he is joined in delirious chorus by the local dogs. The miller's situation rapidly spiral... View More...
Arriving in Northern Finland after the Second World War, Gunnar Huttunen buys a dilapidated mill on the Suukoski rapids of the Kemijoki River. An Ignatius Reilly of the Finnish 1940s, Gunnar is an eccentric outsider swimming against society's current. Prone to rapid mood swings and a general lack of decorum, he is feared and reviled by village notables for his wayward manner--most noticeably his indulgent nighttime howling, which he gets up to when he "feels the need to do something special," and to which he is joined in delirious chorus by the local dogs. The miller's situation rapidly spiral... View More...
A celebrated bestseller in Sweden, and the winner of the prestigious Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize, The White City is an arresting story of betrayal and empowerment as a criminal's girlfriend is left behind to pick up the pieces of her imploded existence. Karin knew what she was getting herself into when she fell for John, a high-flying wheeler-dealer. But she never imagined things would turn out like this: John is gone and the coke-filled parties, seemingly endless flow of money, and high social status have been replaced by cut telephone lines, cut heat, and cut cash. All that remains of K... View More...
