b>b>Named a Best Book of the Year by The Times (UK) and the Los Angeles Public Library/b> br>br>Winner of the 2018 Goncourt Prize, this poignant coming-of-age tale captures the distinct feeling of summer in a region left behind by global progress./b>br>br>August 1992. One afternoon during a heatwave in a desolate valley somewhere in eastern France, with its dormant blast furnaces and its lake, fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin decide to steal a canoe to explore the famous nude beach across the water. The trip ultimately takes Anthony to his first love and a summer that will determine everything that happens afterward.br> br> Nicolas Mathieu conjures up a valley, an era, and the political journey of a young generation that has to forge its own path in a dying world. Four summers and four defining moments, from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to the 1998 World Cup, encapsulate the hectic lives of the inhabitants of a France far removed from the centers of globalization, torn between decency and rage.
In 1980s South Korea, 20-something Jung Yoon is forced to re-live the most intense period of her life, including the death of her beloved mother, first love and friendship, when she receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation. Original.
A breathtaking story of unfulfilled dreams, unexpected second chances, and love in a present-day France turning against itself, from the Goncourt Prize-winning author of
Hélène is approaching 40. Born in a small town in the east of France, she worked hard to leave it behind and achieve a life worthy of the glossy magazines she pored over as a teen. But now that she seemingly has it all-a husband and two daughters, a successful career, and a custom-designed house near Nancy-she feels unfulfilled, as though the years have passed her by.
Christophe just turned 40 and has never left his little corner of France, where he grew up with Hélène. No longer as handsome as he used to be, he's led an unassuming life, preferring to party with friends than to apply himself. These days, he's selling dog food, dreaming of playing hockey again like he did when he was 16, and living with his father and son-a quiet, indecisive existence, which could be seen as failure. And yet he fully believes that anything is still possible.
Through the story of how their two disparate lives intersect once more,
In this urgent, insightful essay, a respected historian places the Israeli-Palestinian war in context, challenging Western attitudes about the region.
Is the destruction of Gaza only a consequence of the October 7, 2023 attack, or is it also the outcome of a long process of dispossession and eradication? Do Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation? Is talking about genocide anti-Semitism? Enzo Traverso goes to the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by calling history into question and offers a critical interpretation that overturns the one-sided perspective from which we have become accustomed to observing what is happening in Gaza.
Israel is usually described as a democratic island in the middle of an obscurantist ocean, and Hamas as a movement inspired by bloodthirsty fanaticism. The destruction of Gaza is reminiscent of the golden age of colonialism, when the West perpetrated genocides in Asia and Africa in the name of its civilizing mission. Its essential assumptions remain the same: civilization versus barbarism, progress versus intolerance. Alongside the ritual statements about Israel's right to defend itself, no one ever mentions the Palestinians' right to resist decades-long aggression. But if a genocidal war is unleashed in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, it is our own ethical values and political norms that are tarnished: the assumptions of our moral conscience--the distinction between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrators and victims--risk being turned upside down. The October 7 attack was terrifying, but it must be analyzed and not just condemned. And we must do so by summoning all the critical tools of historical research. Should the war in Gaza end in a second Nakba, Israel's legitimacy will be permanently compromised. In that case, neither American weapons nor Western media, nor the distorted and outraged memory of the Holocaust will be able to redeem it.
B>b>An eloquent, powerful reckoning with incest and trauma, which made a profound impact with its denunciation of a prominent French public intellectual and the literary and political elite that enabled his abuse./b>/b>br>br>In February 2017, Camille Kouchner gathered with family in Sanary-sur-Mer to bury her mother, who died with none of her five children present. Her passing would stir up old emotions, ultimately leading Camille to publicly confront a long-held and corrosive secret: her stepfather sexually abused her twin brother when they were adolescents. This violation of the parent-child relationship was compounded by the complicity of their mother, who learned of her husbands actions and stood by him, shifting blame to Camille and her twin.br>;br>La Familia Grande poignantly explores the family dynamics of abuse, and the questions of guilt and shame surrounding it. Camille grapples with her own sense of responsibility--for not having stopped her stepfather at the time, and for agreeing to keep silent as her brother asked--and also considers the wider societal forces that have allowed influential men to commit such crimes and avoid the consequences for so long.
"A seminal text in the womenis movement." -Ethel S. Person, author of The Sexual Century "Still the most important work of feminist psychoanalytic exploration, its re-release is a celebratory occasion." -Eli Sagan, author of Freud, Women and Mortality "[The Mermaid and the Minotaur] continues to astonish us with the depth and wisdom of its psychoanalytic approach even as its major ideas have become as unobtrusively essential to psychoanalytic feminism as the atmosphere." -Jessica Benjamin, author of The Bonds of Love
In this unique work, Thomas Piketty presents a synthesis of his historical and comparative research on inequalities. Addressing topics as varied as education, inheritance, the climate crisis, the taxation of wealth, and gender disparities, it challenges the idea that there could be natural inequalities and shows that the march toward equality has always depended on political and social struggles.
;;;;;;;;;;; Adapted from Piketty's 2022 lecture at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac,
A timely, deeply personal biography of a Jewish leader whose questions for Israel have come back to haunt us with a vengeance.
Born in what is now Lviv, Ukraine, in 1869, Marcus Ehrenpreis was the secretary of Theodor Herzl at the first Zionist Congress in Basel;in 1897, a grand rabbi of Bulgaria during two Balkan wars, a diplomat in defense of Europe's minorities, a Swedish;author;compared to Joseph Conrad, the chief rabbi of one of Europe's few unscathed Jewish communities through the Nazi era. More than a biography of a man''s life and work, this book is a literary journey by award-winning Swedish Jewish writer and public intellectual Goran Rosenberg (
Andreas returns to his hometown in Switzerland to escape the monotony of his life in Paris and to rekindle a romance with his first love after his doctor reveals he may have lung cancer.
Zeruya Shalev is one of my favorite contemporary writers, her work always spiky and original, and Pain is a searing book, a wild and ravenous story of family entanglement and impossible yearning. -- Lauren Groff, author of Florida and Fates and Furies A powerful, astute novel that exposes how old passions can return, testing our capacity to make choices about what is most essential in life. Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her. Iris's marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated. Is this an impossible predicament, or on the contrary a scintillating revelation of the many ways life's twists and turns can bring us to a place we would never have expected to be?
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Observer, and Sydney Morning Herald. The true story of a love affair between two extraordinary women becomes a literary tour deforce in this novel that recreates the surrealist movement in Paris and the horrors of the two world wars with a singular incandescence and intimacy. In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As sisters they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail. Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dalí to André Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitlers occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy. Brilliantly imagined, profoundly thought-provoking, and ultimately heartbreaking, Never Anyone But You infuses life into a forgotten history as only great literature can.
B>b>The new novel from the acclaimed poet and publisher asks fundamental questions about love and sex, friendship and rivalry, desire and power, and the age-old dance of benevolence and attraction between teacher and student./b>/b>br>br>Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticuts renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.br>;;;;;;;;Then Leveretts headmaster asks Sam to help investigate a charge brought by one of his classmates that he was abused by a teacher. Sam is flooded with memories, above all of his overwhelming love for his friend Eddie and the support of his most inspiring mentor, Theodore Gibson.br>;;;;;;;;Sams search for the truth becomes a quest to get at the heart of Leverett, then and now. The school has changed enormously over the years, but at its core lie assumptions about privilege and responsibility untested for more than a century. And Sams assumptions about his own life are shaken, too, as he struggles to understand what really happened all those years ago.
B>b>A new story collection from one of Europes most exciting writers (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. /b>br>;/b>br>br>Georg is on the verge of retirement. No one notices him anymore at the office, and there is no dinner waiting for him at home. He seems to dissolve slowly and a nameless horror seizes him.br>;br>Sabrina is flattered when an artist approaches her. But when she sees herself as a work of art for the first time, she shudders.br>;br>David wants to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but he wont be using it today. Hes heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So hes started to lurk.br>;br>We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.
Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, this best-selling and warmly acclaimed Israeli novel examines the interconnected lives of its residents, whose turmoils, secrets, unreliable confessions, and problematic decisions reveal a society in the midst of an identity crisis. On the first floor, Arnon, a tormented retired officer who fought in the First Intifada, confesses to an army friend with a troubled military past how his obsession about his young daughter's safety led him to lose control and put his marriage in peril. Above Arnon lives Hani, known as "the widow," whose husband travels the world for his lucrative job while she stays at home with their two children, increasingly isolated and unstable. When her brother-in-law suddenly appears at their door begging her to hide him from loan sharks and the police, she agrees in spite of the risk to her family, if only to bring some emotional excitement into her life. On the top floor lives a former judge, Devora. Eager to start a new life in her retirement, Devora joins a social movement, desperately tries to reconnect with her estranged son, and falls in love with a man who isn't what he seems. A brilliant novelist, Eshkol Nevo vividly depicts how the grinding effects of social and political ills play out in the psyche of his flawed yet compelling characters, in often unexpected and explosive ways.
From the author of Drowned, a passionate psychological drama where questions of power and sexuality are brought to a head.
She works at Norrkoping Hospital, at the very bottom of the hierarchy: in the cafeteria, below the doctors, the nurses, and the nursing assistants. But she dreams of one day becoming a writer, of moving away and reinventing herself.
Carl Malmberg, an older, married doctor at the hospital, catches her eye. She begins an intense affair with him, though struggling with the knowledge that he may never be hers. At the same time, she realizes that their attraction to each other is governed by their differences in social status. As her doubts increase, the revelation of a secret no one could have predicted forces her to take her own destiny in hand.
A rewarding philosophical essay on memory, language, love, and the passage of time, from a Greek immigrant who became one of Swedens most highly respected writers Nobody should write after the age of seventy-five, a friend had said. At seventy-seven, struggling with the weight of writers block, Theodor Kallifatides makes the difficult decision to sell the Stockholm studio where he diligently worked for decades and retire. Unable to write, and yet unable to not write, he travels to his native Greece in the hope of rediscovering that lost fluidity of language.
In this slim memoir, Kallifatides explores the interplay of meaningful living and meaningful work, and the timeless question of how to reconcile oneself to aging. But he also comments on worrying trends in contemporary Europe--from religious intolerance and prejudice against immigrants to housing crises and gentrification--and his sadness at the battered state of his beloved Greece.
Kallifatides offers an eloquent, thought-provoking meditation on the writing life, and an authors place in a changing world.
Five cutting-edge scientists compete for 100 million and control of a new institute dedicated to eradicating Alzheimers in this edifying, Spurred by his wifes Alzheimers diagnosis and disenchanted with the slow progress in finding a cure, a rich Swiss businessman launches a contest for promising young neuroscientists who can think outside the box. Chosen for their scientific excellence and originality, they must travel throughout Europe in search of the answers to five fiendishly difficult riddles, each combining an enigmatic neuroscientific question with a geographical and historical challenge.
As their personal stories unfold, the competitors share their moments of elation and disappointment when they solve a riddle or reach a dead end. Soon a conspiracy materializes to threaten and endanger the scientists, which at first seems random, but then becomes increasingly deliberate and targeted.
The nature of the riddles and the talents of the competitors open a world of discovery for us too as we learn about some of the most pressing areas in current brain research, such as neurodegenerative diseases, stem cell grafts, artificial intelligence, drug addiction, genetics, and the mechanisms of memory. And as the candidates visit some of the great European cities--Prague, Vienna, Cordoba, Cambridge, Geneva, Venice--we also experience their beauty and intrigue.
Through the life of a remarkable woman--based on pioneering stage director Sun;Weishi;(19211968)--this epic novel immerses us in the multifaceted history of Chinas Communist Party.
A powerful, insightful account from the National Book Awardwinning author, who came of age during the Cultural Revolution.
As a promising young actress, Sun;Weishi;made the critical decision to pursue her studies in Moscow--with the blessing of her influential adoptive father, Zhou Enlai, and Mao himself. The valuable insights she gained there during World War II, most notably the significance of characters'' inner lives, would enable her to excel back in China, where she produced;works by Chekhov and Gogol, and other socially progressive dramas, such as an adaptation of
These dazzling stories from the internationally acclaimed author of
In the 1990s, a woman makes a living as a rental girlfriend for gay men. In a Harlem den, a travesti gets to know none other than Billie Holiday. A group of rugby players haggle over the price of a night of sex, and in return they get what they deserve. Nuns, grandmothers, children, and dogs are never what they seem...
These 9 stories are inhabited by extravagant and profoundly human characters who face an ominous reality in ways as strange as themselves.
A rich, joyful collection of poems on living and loving from the Booker Prize-winning author.
Freedom is the most precious commodity in the world. In this powerful collection, the celebrated novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet Ben Okri explores the beauty contained in each one of us--the freedom of our spirit, the child within. He recalls the death of his father, the sacrifices of his mother, the hidden river of Edinburgh, falling in love. He writes about Virgil and Mozambique, about ringing the bell for freedom, the dreams of Calliope and the full moon. He enters the fifth circle, sings of the roses of spring, and aligns the pyramids to the magic stars.
;;;;This is a gorgeous, exciting collection for everyone who loves Ben Okri's vibrant style, and a perfect introduction to new readers of his poetry.
When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be--until they find a love letter he wrote many years before, to a Burmese woman they never heard of. (This book was previously listed in Forecast .) Original.
