Atonement book by Ian McEwan
Peter Ibbetson
People invent stories to defend or promote themselves, to entertain or challenge or plead with their audience, to offer some vision of the world as it should be, and to…
Fiction
The John Fante Reader edited by Stephen Cooper
Sadly, it is one of the curses of their trade that great novelists often lead lives that resemble bad novels. Like a romance novel or a mystery, the literary pantheon…
O Rouse Up, Young Men of the New Age book by Kenzaburo Oe
Since the birth of his mentally handicapped son Hikari more than 30 years ago, Kenzaburo Oe has often drawn on the challenge of raising the boy for literary inspiration. Several…
The Shell Collector book by Anthony Doerr
Anthony Doerr likes to list. It’s a style that becomes quickly apparent in the first few stories of The Shell Collector and then continues throughout his collection. Sometimes the lists…
My Name is Red book by Orham Pamuk
While the name Orhan Pamuk may not currently arouse great interest in American literary circles, his Turkish compatriots recognize him as one of their nation’s most important thinkers. His work…
The Same Sea book by Amos Oz
“Life goes on. One way or another everyone gets left alone,” is the prescriptive claim of The Same Sea, stated with a tone of resignation. There is little indignation in…
Conscious And Verbal book by Les Murray
Conscious and Verbal: Poems 1996-2000 signals a change in the verses of poet Les Murray. While traces of the man known for his rugged, political poems can still be found,…
The Death of Vishnu book by Manil Suri
Manil Suri’s first novel, The Death of Vishnu, is a mélange of social commentary, romance-novel lust, the mundane, the comic, and the unbelievable. Blending fantasy and reality, the author focuses…
The Procedure book by Harry Mulisch
In the beginning, Harry Mulisch created The Procedure. And though it sounds much like a John Grisham paint-by-statutes legal thriller, it is something with infinitely greater ambition. Mulisch, author of…
Swift as Desire book by Laura Ezquivel
I was able to finish Laura Esquivel’s latest novel only because I loved her previous one, Like Water for Chocolate, a charming magical realist story about unsatisfied desires. Like Water…