Lincoln in the Bardo is unlike any novel I’ve ever read (and I’ve been reading them for a very long time).
Through a collage of more than 100 voices — some historical, some fictional, some alive, some dead, some dead-but-not-departed — it assembles a picture of the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie’s death. At times comical, at others wrenchingly sad, Saunders’ book took me on a spiritual and emotional journey only he could have imagined, but which I will not soon forget.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns…
A
stellar example of what a literary master can do with a science fiction theme, Never
Let Me Go is a gripping novel that explores
fundamental questions about what it means to be human, one of my favorite
themes in any kind of fiction.
Through the consciousness of its young narrator,
it drew me into a world only subtly different from ours, but as that difference
became more apparent, it was also more disturbing. As I came to love and care
for the narrator and her two friends, Ishiguro gradually revealed their
terrible fate, one I found more difficult than the protagonists did to accept.
The book’s themes of injustice, class, love, and loss stayed with me long after
I finished reading it.
One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense…
Like many of Murakami's novels, Killing
Commendatore seamlessly blends conventional narrative with surrealism to
create a compelling tale of the artistic process, friendship, and heroic
rescue.
The book is one of his longer works and for me it was a delicious
voyage into his unusual world. If you are new to Murakami, this book may not be
the best place to start (consider Kafka on the Shore), but for fans of
the author like me, it provides a deep dive into his unique exploration of
humanity and reality, one from which I only reluctantly emerged after I turned
the final page.
The epic new novel from the internationally acclaimed and best-selling author of 1Q84.
In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a strange painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II…
Take a walk on
the wild side. 1970s New York was a mecca for artists,
musicians, and writers, drawn to its vibrant energy and creative opportunities.
It was also a place where poverty and urban decay made crime and violence an
everyday reality—and hope danced with despair.
In Street People: Invisible New York Made
Visible, words and pictures intertwine to create a rare immersion into a
world hiding in plain sight. This timeless portrayal of life on the margins is
accompanied by stark black-and-white images that expose the grit and beauty of
a city at its most raw and real. Experience this classic, strikingly
illustrated account of this turbulent time and its forgotten people. Witness invisible New York made visible.
