Fiction 2008-2010

• Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. Algonquin Books Chapel Hill: 2008. Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura and their children to live on a farm in the Mississippi Delta after World War 11. He is a traditional Southerner who is emotionally tied to the region where he grew up. Henry's younger brother, Jamie, returns from the Air Force and lives with them on the farm. Conflicts arise due to Jamie's hard drinking, free-wheeling life style and his friendship with a local black World War II veteran, Ronsel. The reader witnesses a struggle between traditional Southern culture and newer values which evolve after the War. Sharecropper blacks were treated as second class citizens, and both Laura and Jamie challenge Henry's acute racism. This debut novel, winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize, introduces the work of a talented American novelist. hillaryjordan.com

• The Glimmer Palace By Beatrice Colin. Riverhead Books ( Penguin Books, USA) New York: 2008. In the backdrop of Germany at the turn of the 20th century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite, the daughter of an unwed cabaret dancer, is orphaned as an infant. "Tiny Lil", as she is known, spends her childhood at a Catholic orphanage, where her acting talents are first revealed. The novel follows the rags to riches story of "Lidi," who will become a famous German silent film actress. The reader is transported into the unstable world of a poor orphaned girl who rises to great success despite the historical difficulties surrounding her. The author has worked as a freelance journalist for The Guardian and has written plays for The BBC.

• Trauma by Patrick McGrath. Alfred A. Knopf New York: 2008. Charlie Weir, a New York psychiatrist, is involved in an affair with Agnes, his remarried ex-wife. His marriage with Agnes ends after her brother Danny, Charlie's patient, commits suicide. Charlie also begins another relationship with Nora, who eventually becomes his mistress. The two affairs are complicated by unresolved conflicts with his indifferent mother and a father who abandoned him as a young boy. Eventually, Charlie's haunted psyche reemerges to a point where his own emotional stability is endangered. A surprising resolution appears in the final pages of this gripping psychological drama. The author has written two novels, Asylum, and Spider, and two collections of stories.

• Chasing Windmills by Catherine Ryan Hyde. Flying Dolphin Press Random House New York: 2008. Sebastian and Maria meet fortuitously one night on a New York subway train. They do not speak, but there is an instant connection between them. Sebastian attempts to find Maria again on the subway, and their eventual meeting will develop into a clandestine relationship. The father of Maria's two children is abusive to her. Sebastian is home-schooled and bounded in his apartment by his controlling father. They both need to escape their repressive lives and begin a new life far from New York City. Although they do escape their confining lives, their well-earned renewal will take a poignant turn in this wonderfully captivating novel. The author is an acclaimed novelist and award winning short story writer. Her novels include Love in the Present Time, Walter's Purple Heart, Funerals for Horses, Electric God, and Pay it Forward, which was an ALA Young Adult Book of the Year in 2001.

• Size of the World by Joan Silber. W.W.& Norton Company New York: 2008. A rich encompassing novel about the lives of individuals who leave their families to live abroad. The stories appear unconnected: an army engineer who troubleshoots airplanes in the Vietnam War; a single mother from Miami who adventures with her daughter into Mexico; a Floridian tin prospector and his sister living in pre World War ll Siam; a New Jersey woman who defies her Sicilian born parents by following her Muslim huband to live in Thailand. These sinuous tales have a common thread: the main characters in the book are subtly linked. The reader will be transported into an exotic fictional landscape. The author has been a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, and the Story Prize for her previous novel, Ideas of Heaven. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, and Ploughshares. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence University.

• Other Lives by Andre Brink. Sourcebooks Landmark Naperville, Illinois: 2008. A bizarre and socially penetrating book about contemporary South Africa. Three related stories focus on the lives of an artist, an architect, and a classical pianist. David, a teacher in a stable, childless marriage, finds that the regrets in his life are erased as he undergoes a sci-fi transformation in which he is now an artist married to a woman of color and lives with their children in a cottage. Steve, a successful wealthy architect, looks in the mirror after a shower and discovers that he has become a black man and suddenly burdened with different social parameters. Derek, a professional pianist and accompanist, is in love with a dangerous, bewitching opera singer who refuses to have sex with him. The lives of the main characters underpin the enormity of the new racial paradigm of contemporary South Africa. The author masterfully paints a surreal portrait of a post apartheid society struggling to come to terms with itself. He has been nominated thrice for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice for the Booker Prize. The author has written over 20 books, and has been an academic for over 40 years. He has also a translator of works into Afrikaans.

• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steve Galloway.Riverhead Books New York: 2008. A powerful novel about the lives of four people during the siege of Sarejevo. A local cellist witnesses the murder of twenty-two innocent people attempting to buy bread at a market during the siege. Despite the threat of sniper attacks, he performs outside for twenty-two days to commemorate their loss. His story is interwoven with "Arrow" a young female sniper assigned to protect him; Dragan, an older man, who is aimlessly walking to eat at the bakery where he works; Kenan, a family man, who is perilously making the journey to get drinking water at a local brewery. The intensity of the war has brought their lives to a surreal point: in defending their lives from death, they have lost their grip on life. The main characters all eventually come to the same resolution: they will not let the war rob them of their humanity. The author teaches creative writing at The University of British Columbia.

• The Eye of Leopard by Henning Mankell. The New Press New York: 2008. Copyrighted 1990 by the author, translated from Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Hans Olofson leaves Sweden as a young man in 1969 and departs for a new life in Zambia. He leaves behind an alcoholic father in a remote Swedish village and a failed attempt at studying law at a university. Africa immediately presents a culture shock: the white landowners wield power through intimidation and bribery of local officials; the native African sense of time is radically different. Hans eventually becomes the foreman of an egg farm. He is overcome by a moral obligation for social justice and attempts to deal with the natives differently than his white peers. Riddled by threats from the natives and disease, he must come to grips with his own value system and the reality of his precarious life on the farm. Hans struggles to resolve his past as the novel flashes back and forth from his upbringing in Sweden to issues with his contemporary life. The author has written the Kurt Wallendar mystery series, and has received the German Tolerance Prize, the Macallan Golden Dagger and has been a three time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Prize. Steven T. Murray has translated three of the author's books, and is a former editor-in-chief of Fjord Press.

• America, America by Ethan Canin Random House New York: 2008. The editor of a small town newspaper narrates the story of his upbringing during the Nixon years. Corey Sifter is the only son of a working class family. An influential local land owner, Liam Metarie, hires him as a yard boy on his estate. Liam is quite impresssed with Corey's work ethic, and paves the way for his scholarship to an elite private school. Corey eventually becomes an aide to Henry Bonwiller, a powerful liberal New York Senator who is running for the Presidency, and strongly supported by Liam Metarie. Corey witnesses the dealings of the rich and powerful firsthand- life lessons are drawn from his experiences as an observer of this political veil of duplicity. The core values of his mother and father, however, sustain him during these vast changes in his life. The author is a physician and has written six books of fiction, including story collections, Emperor of the Air, The Palace Thief, and the novels For Kings and Planets, and Carry Me Across the Water. He is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop.

• Stealing Fatima by Frank Gaspar. Counterpoint Press Berkeley, CA: 2009. Manny Furtado is the priest of a small Portuguese-American fishing town in Massachusetts where he grew up. Shortly before serving in Vietnam, Manny and a friend, Sarafino, steal a beloved statue of Our Lady Of Fatima from their church and bury it in the woods. The statue has not been recovered. Father Manny is currently suffering from substance and medication abuse dating from an injury incurred during military service. After a number of years, Sarafino, stricken with AIDS, shows up at the church unexpectedly, and asks for refuge from the law. Sarafino is hidden quietly in the church under the watchful care of Manny. This delicate enveloping novel grapples with the mysteries of faith and the challenges of doubt which accompany it. The quietude of this peaceful New England town is in reality a baptism of fire for Manny and the people who surround him. The author grew up in Provincetown, MA, a Portuguese American community. He has won numerous awards for his writing, including the Morse Prize for Poetry, and a a National Endowment Fellowship in Literature. His web site is frankgaspar.com.

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Amy Einhorn Books ( Penguin.com) New York: 2009. The novel is set in the early 1960's during the emerging civil rights movement. Skeeter Phelan, a gangly young white woman who lives on a cotton farm in Jackson, Mississippi, contacts the Ladies Home Journal in New York about a possible editing position. A dismissive reply from the editor suggests for her to gain more experience by writing about personally engaging subjects. Skeeter begins a journey secretly writing and editing a book about the lives of black domestics working in affluent white households in Jackson. The largely uncivil intensity of the color line comes to full light in the book. The life perspective of both Skeeter and the black domestics who relate their stories are irrevocably changed in the aftermath of the book's publication. This modern American classic will enlighten readers of all ages and cultural backgrounds. The author was raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked in magazine publishing and marketing in New York. This is her first novel. Her web site is kathrynstockett.com

• Appassionata by Eva Hoffman. Other Press: 2009. Isabel Merton is an Argentinian born concert pianist, whose life is centered in her music. The tempo of her life becomes disrupted when she has an affair with a Chechen political radical, Anzor, who disarms her inner protective shell. Anzor is her antithesis- outwardly passionate, recklessly emotional, and ambigiously directed towards his revolutionary cause. Eventually, her relationship with Anzor threatens her raison d'être, bringing her core of being to a halt. The struggles of this emotionally conflicted artist will resonate with readers who are classical musicians. The has worked as a senior editor at New York Times, where she was also a literary critic. Her books include: Lost in Translation, Exit into History, Shtetl, The Secret, and After Such Knowledge.

• Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sánchez Piñol. Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem. Cannongate Books Edinburgh, London, New York, Melbourne: 2009. Originally published in Spain in 2005 as Pandora Al Congo by Edicions La Campana. Marcus Garvey is in jail awaiting trial for the murders of two sons of a British Duke during an expedition in the African Congo prior to World War I. Garvey escaped the Congo alone, and afterwards, in a drunken state, confessed to the murders. His attorney hires Thomas Thomson, a young ghost writer, to write a story about Garvey which will help to exonerate the defendant, who claims to be innocent. We are swept into tall tales of the jungle and into a realistically subterranean world deep within Africa. This is a tightly wound, magnetic story which ends with an ironic twist. The author is an anthropologist and a writer. His first novel is Cold Skin. It was awarded the Ojo Critico Narrativa prize on its original publication in Catalan in 2003.

• City of Strangers by Ian Mackenzie. Penguin Books New York: 2009. First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker Paul and Ben Metzger's father, a former leader in the American Nazi party, is on his deathbed. An unresolved conflict with their father's past creates a stronger bond between them. Paul's life is further complicated when he experiences a chance violent encounter outside his apartment; one of the attackers is wounded by him. The threat of retaliation by the unwounded attacker eventually leads to an entanglement which will irreversibly change the lives of the two brothers. This is an enveloping first novel. A sense of tragedy and modern urban futility grip the story. Masterfully written- an excellent contribution to contemporary New York fiction.

• LowBoy by John Wray. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux New York: 2009. At the beginning of this kaleidoscopic novel, sixteen year old Will Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic who has escaped from his court ordered confinement, is riding on a New York subway train. Will's hospitalization occurred after he pushed his former girlfriend Emily onto a subway track as a subway car was speeding towards their station. Miraculously, Emily was saved. Violet, Will's Austrian born, emotionally removed mother, is helping Ali Lateef of the NYPD search for Will. The roller coaster world of a psychologically damaged and sexually charged teenager intensifies as we led into the netherworld of Will's psyche and his surrounding milieu. In the course of the novel, his disturbed mother uncovers her own inner psyche and helps to destabilize the insecure personal world of the police officer who frantically hunts for her son. This is a novel where insanity is translucent and erases its borders with normalcy. The highly talented author has written two acclaimed novels: Right Hand of Sleep, and Cannan's Tongue. He was named one of Granta Magazine's best of young American novelists in 2007.

• Doghead by Morten Ramsland. St. Martins Press New York: 2009. Translated from Danish by Tina Nunnally. A Norwegian family has its own special tale of disfunctionality. The whimsical alcoholic Asklid is a survivor of a concentration camp. Although he is considered a "war hero," there is a hidden undisclosed murkiness to his past. His wife Bjork, a daughter of a prosperous ship owner, marries Asklid at the end of the war. Their topsy turvy marriage produces offspring with their own peculiar problems of disfunction. This neurotically captivating novel is the author's first book to be published in English. The novel was a best seller in Denmark where it won four major literary awards including the prestigious Golden Laurel Prize. It also won the Premio Berto and The Premio Edoardo Kihlgren second prize in Italy.

• The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill New York: 2010. Rabbi Eliezer Ben Zephyr, a revered holy man, is discovered in frozen in ice outside his village in 1899. He is not buried- but kept in his frozen state in the village ice house and guarded by the ice house proprietor. His body is entrusted to the proprietor's descendants, and is eventually transported to Memphis, Tennessee, where the frozen Rabbi defrosts and wakes up from his 100 year state of suspended animation. Bernie Karp, the overweight and socially awkward son of the guardian family, discovers the newly awoken Rabbi. The Rabbi quickly adapts to his modern world. Instead of continuing as an ascetic sage, he becomes a businessman, and peddles his religious learning at a spiritual center where he is a mystical guru of a devoted cult of both Jewish and non-Jewish followers. Bernie, however, takes the Rabbi's former spiritual path by delving into the Kabbalah and traveling to other realms in out of body experiences. This meshuggah novel will enrapture many readers. It is outlandishly entertaining while subtly addressing the conflict of materialism and religion. The author is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award and has written several novels and novellas. He is a teacher at Skidmore College.

• Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld. Schocken Books New York: 2010. Eleven year old Hugo is entrusted to the care of his mother's childhood friend, Mariana, a prostitute, in the depths of World War II. Hugo is hidden in a closet in her brothel in order to evade the Nazis who are hunting for escaped Jews. He lives in a dream-like state which juxtaposes his reality with visions of departed loved ones. Thrust from caring affluent surroundings, he is surviving both the onslaught of the war and the irrevocable changes which will confront him. The novel itself flows like the consciousness of the main character: dreams and reality intersect and often cannot be separated. The author has written more than forty books, and has received numerous awards and honors including the National Jewish Book Award and the Prix Medicis Etranger.

• The Lady Matador's Hotel by Christina Garcia. Scribner (Simon & Schuster), New York:2010. The novel revolves around the lives of six men and women in the capital of an unnamed Central American city who are in close proximity at the same hotel. The central character is a Japanese Mexican-American Matadora who is in the city for a bull fight. Suki is exotic and desired by the male characters in the novel. She is a former medical student with a strong sexual appetite coupled with a passion for challenging death. Won Kim is a notorious Korean factory owner who is living in the hotel with his pregnant teenage mistress and awaits the delivery of his new child. Aura, a former revolutionary, works quietly in the hotel cafe and is occasionally visited by the apparition of her dead brother, who incites her to kill a Colonel Abel, another hotel guest. Martin, a Cuban poet, has come to the capital to adopt a local baby. The adoptions are overseen by Gertrudis, a high powered attorney confronted with a looming scandal. The inter linking of the characters lives engulfs the reader: the author has a definitive talent for this kind of writing in her novels. There is a grand cohesion to this style- a signature combination of storytelling and character analysis. The author has written four other novels. Dreaming in Cuban was a National Book Award finalist. She has also written children's books, anthologies, and poetry. Her web site is cristinagarcianovelist.com

• Sunset Park by Paul Auster. Henry Holt and Company New York: 2010. Miles Heller is estranged from his family in New York, and currently employed as a trash-out worker of abandoned homes in southern Florida. He is a Columbia University drop-out, the son of a well-known art house publisher, Morris Heller, and a famous stage actress, Mary-Lee Swann. Miles is contacted by a former high school friend, Bing Nathan, with an offer to squat in an abandoned house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is forced to leave Florida suddenly, and moves into the house in Sunset Park with Bing and two female housemates. A kaleidoscope of characters collides with Mile's life as he struggles to redeem himself from his tortured past. This is possibly the author's finest novel: lucidity and bizarreness thread the story. The author has written The New York Trilogy, Leviathan, Invisible, and other important novels. He received the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay, Smoke, and the Prix Medicis Etranger for Leviathan. Additionally, the author has a book of collected poems, illustrated books, and edited The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry.

• Fall of the Giants( The Century Trilogy) by Ken Follett. Dutton Publishers(Penguin USA) New York: 2010. A historical saga of class division, war and romance in the World War I era. Billy Williams is a young coal miner in a small town in Wales. His family is strongly socialist, and his father is a leader of the workers. The coal mine is owned by the local aristocrat, Earl Fitzherbert, who also employs Billy's sister, Ethel, as a maid in his household. "Fitz" and Ethel become romantically involved, and Ethel, an upcoming presence in the household, is forced to move to London. World war is threatening, and Fitz participates in higher echelon discussions regarding Britain's entry into the war. At the same time, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, are living in Czarist Russia and are trying to emigrate to the United States. In the prelude before the war, there are great tensions between the Russian monarchy and the people. The lives of the brothers exemplify this conflict. The characters of the novel find themselves entangled together in the web of history and some of their lives briefly touch. This is a well-researched novel, and the tenor of this epoch rings clearly to the reader. The popular author has written many novels including Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, and On Wings of Eagles.

• What is Left The Daughter by Howard Norman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt New York: 2010. Seventeen-year-old Canadian Wyatt Hillyer is orphaned after both his parents commit suicide within hours of each other in Halifax, Nova Scotia during the World War ll era. He moves in with his aunt and uncle in rural Middle Economy, Nova Scotia, and is apprenticed by his uncle as a toboggan maker. Tilda, who was adopted by them at the age of two, is also living in the household. Wyatt falls deeply in love with Tilda, who is dating Hans, a German exchange student. Wyatt's uncle is resentful of Han's German background. There is tension in the household which leads to tragic consequences and a depressing aftermath. The reader is privy to the intimacies of Nova Scotian small town life during this era. This is an exquisitely moving novel, despite the tragedies and conflicts which absorb it. The author was nominated for the National Book Award for The Northern Lights in 1987, and The Bird Artist in 1994. His other novels are The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. He teaches at the University of Maryland.

• The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison. Simon & Schuster New York : 2010. An extraordinary debut novel by one of America's most gifted young writers. Stella is living in New York and working at a thankless job as an assistant to an inspirational author. She also travels to Connecticut to care for her aging grandmother, Lucy, who falls ill and dies during the Christmas holidays. As Lucy is dying, she confesses about her daughter who is no longer in contact with the family. After her grandmother's death, Stella travels to Nevada to locate her Aunt, who is living in a trailer park in Nevada and has a personal history of prostitution and alcoholism. Stella moves with Tilly to San Francisco to help her recover from alcoholism and start a new life with her son, Abe. A story of individual struggle ensues, accompanied by an undertone of intense interplay between the female characters. Although men are on the periphery in this novel, this book will be especially poignant to male readers, who are often socially excluded from the dynamics of female relationships. The author has been published in Best New American Voices 2008, A Public Space and The Black Warrior Review. She is a graduate of Harvard University, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her web site is lesliejamison.com.

• Symphony in White by Adriana Lisboa. Translated from the Portuguese by Sarah Green. Texas Tech University Press Lubbock, Texas: 2010. Clarice, an alcoholic sculptress, and Tomas, an artist, and a former lover of Clarice's sister Maria Inês, are living on the remains of her father's property in rural Brazil. Clarice and Tomas struggle with the failure of their lives as Maria Inês leads a seemingly carefree affluent life in urban Brazil. The brittle sadness of Clarice and Maria Inês' upbringing and eventual maturity captivate the reader throughout the novel and find closure by unveiling a dark family secret. The author has written nine books, including four novels and a collection of short stories. She received the Jose Saramago prize for this book (Simfonia em branco) in 2003.

• The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow. Algonquin Books: 2010. Rachel, the daughter of a African-American GI father and a Danish mother, survives a family suicide attempt when her mother jumps off a city roof with her two siblings. She goes to live in Portland, Oregon after recovering, and is raised by her paternal grandmother. We become entrenched in Rachel's life and the web of characters encircling her. She is forced to confront the cultural stigma of her biracial parentage and learns to live in an African-American world in which she is not fully integrated. This is a stellar debut novel, and is the winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize. The author is a graduate of of Standford University, Columbia University's Graduate School Journalism, and Yale Law School. She has been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, and other publications. The author's web page is heidiwdurrow.com.

• Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson; translated from the German by Damion Searls. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux New York: 2010. The book was originally published in 1947 and translated to celebrate the author's 100th birthday. Kim and Marie are hiding a Jewish fugitive from the Nazis in wartime Holland. They are ordinary citizens with little knowledge of Jews. The experience of hiding Nico, a perfume salesman before the war- pierces their existence. He dies of pneumonia while in hiding. Their marriage and mundanity are challenged by the possibility of becoming hunted by the authorities. The lives of Kim and Marie are no longer commonplace as result of their immersion in the horrors of war. The author published his first novel in 1933 and was in the Dutch resistance during World War ll. He pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children as a psychologist. This is the first English translation of the book which was published in 1947. The author has also written The Death of an Adversary.

• Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff. Harper Collins Publishers Jane Charlotte is recruited by the "Bad Monkeys," an organization which clandestinely removes "irredeemable" persons from society. She discovers that her brother Phil is involved in a leadership position in The Troop, Bad Monkey's nemesis. Jane attempts to locate Phil, in order to convince him to leave the Troop. This stunning, crazed plot reads like a high action sci-fi movie and climaxes into an unsuspected twist. The reader will most likely agree with the suggestion on the front cover:"Buy it, read it, memorize it, then destroy it..." Matt Ruff is the author of The Fool on the Hill and Set This House In Order. which won the James Tiptree Jr. Award, The Washington State Book Award and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The author is also a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship.