Amazon.co.uk Review"Namma" meaning bride is the first-hand account of Kate Karko, a designer from London and her husband Tsedup, a Tibetan nomad. The couple met, fell in love and married in India where Kate was travelling and Tsedup was living in exile. After an absence of nine years, four of which were spent in London waiting for the right documents to come through, Tsedup was finally able to return to his family on the roof of the world.With very limited grasp of the Amdo dialect, Kate throws herself into life with her new family. She keeps an open mind to all new experiences and approaches her time with the nomads with enduring positivity-not many erstwhile city dwellers would have been able to cope with the complete lack of personal space and the constant smell of burning yak dung. Kate's position within the family group gave her remarkable access to nomadic life in the 21st century and full-colour photographs help bring her descriptions of her numerous in-laws to life. The reader is left with the impression of a beautiful country and a proud people whose cultural heritage is under threat of extinction. Indeed, the reality of nomadic life does not quite match up with Kate's early romantic imaginings:The nomads were a tough and diligent people but now the men had been rendered impotent. Because of the fences there was no reason to herd the animals and it was more difficult for bandits to attack an enclosed encampment. Their role in the family had been all but erased. The new laws had tragically accomplished their goal of nomad domestication.Given the author's emotional involvement with the family and the many difficulties she must have encountered during her six-month stay with the Amdo tribe, her pervasive objectivity is something of a disappointment. The reader learns very little, for example, about the real impact of her stay on her relationship with her husband or of the more day-to-day frustrations. Despite such minor flaws, Namma remains an absorbing insight into a deeply spiritual yet fun-loving people, written by a woman whose son has become a bridge between two worlds. -Simon Priestly -This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Geographical Magazine'Fascinating read… a glimmering insight into the nomadic lifestyle inherent to the country'

A Carl Streator, periodista de mediana edad, le han encargado que escriba una serie de artículos sobre la muerte súbita infantil, un tema que le resulta familiar pues él mismo perdió a su hijo en circunstancias extrañas. En el transcurso de la investigación descubre que en todas las casas donde ha muerto un bebé (o un niño, o un adulto) hay un ejemplar del mismo libro: una antología de poemas africanos que contiene una nana letal. Esta canción mata a aquel que la escucha; de hecho, su poder es tal que ni siquiera es necesario recitarla, con tan solo memorizarla y odiar a alguien intensamente, cae fulminado. Helen Hoover Boyle, agente inmobiliaria especializada en vender casas encantadas, también tenía un hijo que murió en circunstancias similares al de Streator. El periodista y la agente inmobiliaria emprenderán, acompañados por la secretaria de Helen, Mona, aficionada al esoterismo, y el novio de esta, Oyster, un ecologista ultrarradical, un viaje por carretera con el fin de destruir todos los ejemplares del libro y encontrar el grimorio original del que procede el hechizo. Con Nana damos la bienvenida a una nueva familia nuclear, un grupo disfuncional hasta extremos arrebantes. Y a una hilarante alegoría sobre la información y el poder.

The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing.In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin — an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College — decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history.At once epic and intimate, Nanjing Requiem is historical fiction at its most resonant.

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

Žinomas visame pasaulyje Amerikos rašytojas Džonas Irvingas kritikų lyginamas su didžiaisiais romanistais Ch. Dickensu, G. Flaubert’u, L. Tolstojumi, S. Rushdie ir G. Grassu. „Našlė vieneriems metams“ – „įdomiausias ir įtikimiausias kūrinys po „Pasaulio pagal Garpą“ („New York Times“). Pirmą kartą pagrindinė Dž. Irvingo romano veikėja – moteris, Ruta Koul. Ji yra rašytoja, pasaulyje pripažinta bestselerių kūrėja. Autorius meistriškai pasakoja apie įtampos kupiną jos gyvenimą, kuris rutuliojasi per 37 metus keliose šalyse ir žemynuose. Gyvenimą, kuriame neapsieita be išsiskyrimų, vienatvės ir atsižadėjimų. „Našlė vieneriems metams“ – tikrasis Džonas Irvingas. Knygoje rasime visko: romantiškos ir šiurkščios meilės istorijų, skaudžių, nepermaldaujamų, lemtingų mirčių, groteskiškų scenų, stulbinančių ir šokiruojančių minčių – žodžiu, gyvenimo. Tai knyga apie meilės troškimą ir ilgesį, netgi „pasaulyje pagal Garpą“.

One of the most anticipated international debuts of 2004, David Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories lives up to its buzz with numerous award distinctions and a sheaf of praise from reviewers and readers. These are stories that capture the immigrant experience with wit and deep sympathy, recalling the early work of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth. An exquisitely crafted collection from a gifted young writer.A dazzling debut, and a publishing phenomenon: the tender, savagely funny collection from a young immigrant who has taken the critics by storm.Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before May 2003, when Harper’s, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, America thus met the Bermans—Bella and Roman and their son, Mark—Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.Told through Mark’s eyes, the stories in Natasha possess a serious wit and uniquely Jewish perspective that recall the first published stories of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, not to mention the recent work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, and Adam Haslett.

Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before last May, when Harper's, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, these magazines introduced America to the Bermans-Bella and Roman and their son, Mark-Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.Told through Mark's eyes, and spanning the last twenty-three years, Natasha brings the Bermans and the Russian-Jewish enclaves of Toronto to life in stories full of big, desperate, utterly believable consequence. In "Tapka" six-year-old Mark's first experiments in English bring ruin and near tragedy to the neighbors upstairs. In "Roman Berman, Massage Therapist," Roman and Bella stake all their hopes for Roman's business on their first, humiliating dinner in a North American home. Later, in the title story, a stark, funny anatomy of first love, we witness Mark's sexual awakening at the hands of his fourteen-year-old cousin, a new immigrant from the New Russia. In "Minyan," Mark and his grandfather watch as the death of a tough old Odessan cabdriver sets off a religious controversy among the poor residents of a Jewish old-folks' home.The stories in Natasha capture the immigrant experience with a serious wit as compelling as the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, or Adam Haslett. At the same time, their evocation of boyhood and youth, and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family, recalls the first published stories of Bernard Malamud, Harold Brodkey, Leonard Michaels, and Philip Roth.

"Native Believer stands as an important contribution to American literary culture: a book quite unlike any I've read in recent memory, which uses its characters to explore questions vital to our continuing national discourse around Islam."— New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice"M.'s life spins out of control after his boss discovers a Qur'an in M.'s house during a party, in this wickedly funny Philadelphia picaresque about a secular Muslim's identity crisis in a country waging a never-ending war on terror."— O, the Oprah Magazine"[A] poignant and profoundly funny first novel….Eteraz combines masterful storytelling with intelligent commentary to create a nuanced work of social and political art."— Booklist"Eteraz's narrative is witty and unpredictable…and the darkly comic ending is pleasingly macabre. As for M., in this identity-obsessed dandy, Eteraz has created a perfect protagonist for the times. A provocative and very funny exploration of Muslim identity in America today."— Kirkus Reviews"In bitingly funny prose, first novelist Eteraz sums up the pain and contradictions of an American not wanting to be categorized; the ending is a bang-up surprise."— Library Journal"Who wants to be Muslim in post-9/11 America? Many of the characters in Ali Eteraz‘s new novel Native Believer have no choice in the matter; they deal in a variety of ways with issues of belonging and identity in a society bent on categorizing, stereotyping, and targeting Muslims."— KPFA Pacifica"Ali Eteraz’s fiction has encompassed everything from the surreal and fantastical to the urgently political. Native Believer, his debut novel, explores questions of nationality, religion, and the fears and paranoia in American society circa right now.— Vol. 1 BrooklynIncluded in John Madera's list of Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 at Big Other"Ali Eteraz has written a hurricane of a novel. It blows open the secrets and longings of Muslim immigration to the West, sweeping us up in the drama of identity in ways newly raw. This is no poised and prettified tale; buckle in for a uproariously messy and revealing ride."— Lorraine Adams, author of The Room and the Chair"Merciless, intellectually lacerating, and brutally funny, Native Believer is not merely a Gonzo panorama of Muslim America-it's one of the most incisive novels I've ever read on America itself. Eteraz paints our empire with the same erotic longing and black, depraved wit that Nabokov used sixty years ago in Lolita. But whereas Nabokov's work was set in the heyday of America's cheerful upswing, Eteraz sets the country in the new, fractious world order. Here, sex, money, and violence all stake their claims on treacherously shifting identities-and neither love nor god is an escape."— Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing BloodAli Eteraz's much-anticipated debut novel is the story of M., a supportive husband, adventureless dandy, lapsed believer, and second-generation immigrant who wants nothing more than to host parties and bring children into the world as full-fledged Americans. As M.'s life gradually fragments around him-a wife with a chronic illness; a best friend stricken with grief; a boss jeopardizing a respectable career-M. spins out into the pulsating underbelly of Philadelphia, where he encounters others grappling with fallout from the War on Terror. Among the pornographers and converts to Islam, punks and wrestlers, M. confronts his existential degradation and the life of a second-class citizen.Darkly comic, provocative, and insightful, Native Believer is a startling vision of the contemporary American experience and the human capacity to shape identity and belonging at all costs.

The debut novel from critically-acclaimed and New York Times — bestselling author Chang-rae Lee.In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American — a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.His most recent book, On Such a Full Sea, will be published in January 2014.

Красота смерти…Эстетика мрачного и изысканного стиля «Natura Morta» эпохи позднего маньеризма, перенесенная в наши дни…Элегантная, изысканная, блистательно-циничная проза, концептуальная в самом высоком смысле слова.Гибель ребенка…Гибель Помпеи…Заупокойные службы…

Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake, and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly.In a precise writing style that is both subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. Natural Histories is the winner of the 3rd Ribera del Duero International Award for Short Narratives, an important Spanish literature prize.

Naujojo Hampšyro miestelyje užaugę Vinas Beris ir Meri Beits, įsidarbinę toli nuo namų, viešbutyje prie jūros, tarytum pirmąkart pamato vienas kitą ir nusprendžia susituokti. Tuo pat metu Vinas iš gyvūnų dresuotojo, Vienos žydo, kurį visi vadina Froidu, dar nusiperka senstelėjusį meškiną ir motociklą. Netrukus vienas po kito gimsta ir penki Berių vaikai. Kol Vinas su meškinu gastroliuoja po šalį, kad užsidirbtų pinigų studijoms Harvarde, jo žmona, padedama senelio, Ajovos Bobo, augina vaikus.

It’s the summer of 1999 when the two children of wealthy video game executive Jose Francisco Vivar, Alicia and Bruno, go missing in the beach town of Matanza. Long after their disappearance, the people of Matanza and the adjacent towns of Navidad consistently report sightings of Bruno — on the beach, in bars, gambling — while reports on Alicia, however, are next to none. And every story and clue keeps circling back to a man named Boris Real. .At least that’s how the story — or one of many stories, rather — goes. All of them are told by a journalist narrator, who recounts the mysterious case of the Vivar family from an underground laboratory where he and six other “subjects” have taken up a novel-game, writing and exchanging chapters over email, all while waiting for the fear-inducing drug hadón to take its effect, and their uncertain fates.A literary descendent of Roberto Bolaño and Andrés Neuman, Carlos Labbé’s Navidad and Matanza is a work of metafiction that not only challenges our perceptions of facts and observations, and of identity and reality, but also of basic human trust.“Carlos Labbé’s [Navidad & Matanza] begins to fuck with your head from its very first word — moving through journalese, financial reporting, whodunit, Joseph Conrad, Raymond Chandler, Nabokov to David Lynch.”—Toby Litt

An acclaimed, award-winning comic novel about truth, lies and storytelling, with an unforgettably unreliable narrator, translated from its innovative Swiss vernacular back into the Glaswegian that was its original inspiration.Known only as ‘the goalie’, the novel’s narrator is always taking the blame. He’s just been released from jail, having kept schtum during a drugs bust at his local pub. The goalie is a sucker for a good story, he lives and breathes them, is forever telling stories to himself and anyone who’ll listen.He returns to his hometown broke, falling in love with Regi, a barmaid. On a trip together to Spain, to hook up with his shady mates, Regi realises that this obsession with storytelling has its downsides, the goalie all too ready to believe the yarns his so-called friends spin.Naw Much of a Talker is a charming, hilarious tour through the goalie’s anecdotes. Storytelling is his way of avoiding problems and conflict, his crowning achievement and tragic flaw. Regi concludes that it isn’t a woman the goalie needs, but an audience.Inspired by a six month residency in Glasgow, Pedro Lenz harnesses his considerable powers as a performer and oral storyteller in this powerful and unforgettable celebration of the rhythms and musicality of the spoken word.

Nazi Literature in the Americas was the first of Roberto Bolaño's books to reach a wide public. When it was published by Seix Barral in 1996, critics in Spain were quick to recognize the arrival of an important new talent. The book presents itself as a biographical dictionary of American writers who flirted with or espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition.Nazi Literature in the Americas is composed of short biographies, including descriptions of the writers' works, plus an epilogue ("for Monsters"), which includes even briefer biographies of persons mentioned in passing. All of the writers are imaginary, although they are all carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds. Ernesto Perez Mason, for example, in the sample included here, is an imaginary member of the real Oriacute;genes group in Cuba, and his farcical clashes with Joseacute; Lezama Lima recall stories about the spats between Lezama Lima and Virgilio Pintilde;era, as recounted in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Mea Cuba. The origins of the imaginary writers are diverse. Authors from twelve different countries are included. The countries with the most representatives are Argentina and the USA.

Egils LukjanskisNe jau katru dienuDivi garstāsti un viens romānsTrešā iespēja. Tev blakus. Atsacīšanās. NE JAU KATRU DIENURīga »Liesma« 1987Recenzents Broņislavs Tabūns Mākslinieks Arvīds JegersLu 40/ Lukjanskis L.Ne jau katru dienu: Divi garstāsti un viens romāns / Māksi. A. Jegers. — R.: Liesma, 1987. — 336 lpp., il.Egils Lukjanskis (dz. 1937. g.) bezgalīgi tic cilvēkam, un, ja 51s cil­vēks — gan rakstura sastrēgumstundās. gan arī ārējo apstākļu mezglojumu ietekmēts — nonāk ētiskā konfliktā, visbiežāk tomēr pats ar sevi. autors mēģina palidzēt visam tam labajam, kas lidz pēdējam brīdim vēl atrodams jebkurā cilvēkā. Droši vien tāpēc populārais latviešu padomju rakstnieks savus romānus un stāstus veido klaji uzskatamus, sulīgiem melnbaltiem krāsu triepieniem, sižetiski saistošus.© Izdevniecība «Liesma», 1987

An exquisite debut novel that brilliantly captures the lives and romances of young expatriates in newly democratic Prague.It’s October 1990. Jacob Putnam is young and full of ideas. He’s arrived a year too late to witness Czechoslovakia’s revolution, but he still hopes to find its spirit, somehow. He discovers a country at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, and a picturesque city overflowing with a vibrant, searching sense of possibility. As the men and women Jacob meets begin to fall in love with one another, no one turns out to be quite the same as the idea Jacob has of them — including Jacob himself.Necessary Errors is the long-awaited first novel from literary critic and journalist Caleb Crain. Shimmering and expansive, Crain’s prose richly captures the turbulent feelings and discoveries of youth as it stretches toward adulthood — the chance encounters that grow into lasting, unforgettable experiences and the surprises of our first ventures into a foreign world — and the treasure of living in Prague during an era of historic change.

A propulsive, “chilling” (Lee Child) novel exploring the dangerous fault lines of female friendships, Necessary People deftly plumbs the limits of ambition, loyalty, and love.

One of them has it all. One of them wants it all. But they can’t both win.

Stella and Violet are best friends, and from the moment they met in college, they knew their roles. Beautiful, privileged, and reckless Stella lives in the spotlight. Hardworking, laser-focused Violet stays behind the scenes, always ready to clean up the mess that Stella inevitably leaves in her wake.

After graduation, Violet moves to New York and lands a job in cable news, where she works her way up from intern to assistant to producer, and to a life where she’s finally free from Stella’s shadow. In this fast-paced world, Violet thrives, and her ambitions grow—but everything is jeopardized when Stella, envious of Violet’s new life, uses her connections, beauty, and charisma to get hired at the same network. Stella soon moves in front of the camera, becoming the public face of the stories that Violet has worked tirelessly to produce—and taking all the credit. Stella might be the one with the rich family and the right friends, but Violet isn’t giving up so easily. As she and Stella strive for success, each reveals just how far she’ll go to get what she wants—even if it means destroying the other person along the way.

Upon recovering from a prolonged illness, an author is invited to a literary gathering in Jerusalem that turns out to be a most unusual affair. In the conference rooms of a luxury hotel, as bombs fall outside, at times too close for comfort, he listens to a series of extraordinary life stories: the saga of a chess-playing duo, the tale of an Italian porn star with a socialist agenda, the drama of a Colombian industrialist who has been waging a longstanding battle with local paramilitaries, and many more. But it is José Maturana — evangelical pastor, recovering drug addict, ex-con — with his story of redemption at the hands of a charismatic tattooed messiah from Miami, Florida, who fascinates the author more than any other. Maturana’s language is potent and vital, and his story captivating.Hours after his stirring presentation to a rapt audience, however, Maturana is found dead in his hotel room. At first it seems likely that Maturana has taken his own life and everybody seems willing to accept this version of the story. But there are a few loose ends that don’t support the suicide hypothesis, and the author-invitee, moved by Maturana’s life story to discover the truth about his death, will lead an investigation that turns the entire plot of this chimerical novel on its end.In Necropolis, Santiago Gamboa displays the talent and inventiveness that have earned him a reputation as one of the leading figures in his generation of Latin American authors.

Comment conquérir une femme totalement insaisissable et indomptable. Un tête-à-tête torride, un duel sentimental et érotique. Voici un roman parfois comique, souvent grinçant et inquiétant, ressemblant à une course-poursuite, au style unique et à la langue rapide.