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This powerful, sweeping novel continues the saga of Dshurukawaa, the Tuvan shepherd boy introduced in The Blue Sky. Torn between the onset of visions and pressure from his family to attend a state boarding school, the adolescent attempts to mediate the pull of spirituality and pragmatism, old ways and new. Taken from his ancestral home, he reunites with his siblings at a boarding school, where his brother also serves as principal. Soon he comes to understand that the main purpose of the school is to strip the Tuvans of their language and traditions, and to make them conform to party ideals. When tragedy strikes, Dshurukawaa begins to sense the larger import of his visions, and with it a possible escape. Tschinag's lyrical language, his striking characterizations, and his evocation of a singular way of life make The Gray Earth an unforgettable read and a worthy follow-up to The Blue Sky.
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature Abbas has never told anyone about his past; about what happened before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a Boots in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to. Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world. They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness. Hanna calls herself Anna now, and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend. She feels the relationship is h...
This fable of an indigenous Arctic people “offers profound considerations about stewardship of and people’s relationships to the natural world” (Publishers Weekly). Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows. Then one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, s...
From one of Norway’s leading writers, translated into English for the very first time, comes a transatlantic novel of dreams, sacrifice, and transformation set at the turn of the twentieth century. The year is 1874. Nesje is a recent widower with a young son, working as a haymaker on an estate in the town of Molde and steadily clearing his own small holding. Then he meets Serianna—an outsider, looking for work, who takes him fishing and smokes a pipe and is thoroughly unlike anyone he’s met before. Soon the two fall in love and marry, and Nesje begins to dream of a prosperous future. But prosperity is hard to come by. Some Norwegians—including Serianna’s spirited sister, Gjertine...
“Short, sharp, devastating, The Farther Shore is a literary machine gun . . . a winning debut that happens to be a war novel.” —Kansas City Star A small unit of soldiers from the US Army is separated from their command and left for dead. Their only option is to keep moving, in hope that they’ll escape the marauding gangs and clansmen who appear to rule the city. Josh, a young soldier, and his “battle buddies” are left to wander in this hostile territory. A series of nightmarish, often violent encounters leaves only a few of them alive. The Farther Shore is a short, stark war novel in which the characters are both haunting and inhuman, natives and invaders alike. The emerging stor...
Short fiction about people on the edge that “masterfully balances the absurd, the horrific, and the humorous” (Booklist). The characters in Inappropriate Behavior teeter on the brink of sanity, while those around them reach out in support, watch helplessly, or duck for cover. In their loneliness, they cast about for a way to connect, to be understood, though more often than not, things go horribly wrong. Some of the characters come from the darkest recesses of American history. In ‘Lubbock Is Not a Place of the Spirit,’ a Texas Tech student recognizable as John Hinckley, Jr. writes hundreds of songs for Jodie Foster as he grows increasingly estranged from reality. Other characters ar...
A boy’s nomadic life in Mongolia is under threat in a novel that “captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing beauty and brutality” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy comes of age, tending his family’s flocks on the mountain steppes and knowing little of the world beyond the surrounding peaks. But his nomadic way of life is increasingly disrupted by modernity. This confrontation comes in stages. First, his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school. Then the boy’s grandmother dies, and with her his connection to the old ways. But perhaps the greatest tragedy strikes...
From celebrated Belgian author Geneviève Damas, a modern fable about friendship, self-determination, and the power of words. Illiterate, isolated, and held at arm’s length by a bitter father, François Sorrente has spent his seventeen years within narrow confines. By day he tends the family farm’s pigs; by night he manages the household chores. Still, François can’t help but wonder about the wider world and his place in it. Who was his mother, who he remembers not at all? And why is the opposite shore of the river, where his beloved older sister disappeared many years ago, forbidden to him? Propelled by curiosity, François turns to the eclectic denizens of his town to help make sense of these mysteries. He begins reading lessons with a melancholy curé, falls into an affair with a village woman, and affectionately confides his secrets to a velvet-eared piglet named Hyménée. As François questions both his origins and the course of his life, he begins to unlock the true story of his mother and sister, and comes to reinvent himself. Exquisitely translated from the French by poet Jody Gladding, If You Cross the River is a magical debut.
Continuing the exciting adventures of The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight, this new book takes you to the snow-covered Himalayas, in search of the legendary Tibetan utopia of Shambhala. As you follow a child's instructions, are pursued by hostile Chinese agents, and look for a lost friend, you will experience a new awareness of synchronicity...and discover, hidden among the world's highest mountains, the secrets that affect all humanity. For Shambhala not only actually exists, but is destined to be found in our time-and will reveal powerful truths that can transform the world.
A stunning historical debut novel of gothic proportions, telling the tale of a father's obsession and the dark consequences. "The skin was smooth and bright as porcelain, but looked as if it would give to the touch. What manner of wood had he used? What tools to exact such detail? What paints, tints or stains to flush her with life?" So wonders the window dresser Colton Kemp when he sees the first mannequin of his new rival, a silent man the inhabitants of Marumaru simply call The Carpenter. Rocked by the sudden death of his wife in childbirth and left with twins to raise, Kemp hatches a dark and selfish plan to make his name and thwart his rival. What follows is a gothic tale of art and deception, strength and folly, love and transgression, which ranges fromfamily small-town New Zealand to the graving docks of the River Clyde in Scotland. Along the way we meet a Prussian strongman, a family of ship's carvers with a mysterious affliction, a septuagenarian surf lifesaver and a talking figurehead named Vengeance. Lives and stories will intertwine as fate takes its cruel trajectory, leaving you feeling as if waking from an unsettling dream.