Africa is a place which retains what most of the world has lost: space, roots, traditions, awesome beauty, true wilderness, rare animals and extraordinary people. In this wonderful and haunting collection of stories, Kuki Gallmann rediscovers the Kenya that she knows and loves, where every day brings challenge and adventure, mystery and magic.
Tom Wolfe’s modern American satire tells the story of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street “Master of the Universe” who has it all — a Park Avenue apartment, a job that brings wealth, power and prestige, a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress. Suddenly, one wrong turn makes it all go wrong, and Sherman spirals downward in a sudden fall from grace that sucks him into the ravenous heart of a New York City gone mad during the go-go, racially turbulent, socially hilarious 1980s. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Een Duitse soldaat, een Amerikaanse soldaat – en geen van beiden haalt de trekker over. Deze ogenschijnlijk simpele daad van barmhartigheid op een Frans slagveld tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog beïnvloedt het nageslacht van twee zeer verschillende mannen. Geïnspireerd door een waar gebeurd verhaal laat Simon Van Booy zien hoe de levens van uiteenlopende mensen met elkaar verbonden zijn: de Duitse infanterist Hugo, zijn eenzame buurjongetje Danny, de blinde museumcurator Amelia en haar grootvader, de Joods-Amerikaanse piloot John. Gaandeweg wordt duidelijk welke rol ze spelen in elkaars leven, en dat alleenzijn een illusie is.
The ruthlessly engrossing and beautifully rendered story of the Brodskys, a family of artists who realize, too late, one elemental truth: Creation’s necessary consequence is destruction. Each member of the mercurial clan in Adam Mansbach’s bold new novel faces the impossible choice between the people they love and the art that sustains them. Tristan Brodsky, sprung from the asphalt of the depression-era Bronx, goes on to become one of the swaggering Jewish geniuses who remakes American culture while slowly suffocating his poet wife, who harbors secrets of her own. Nina Hricek, a driven young Czech photographer escapes from behind the Iron Curtain with a group of black musicians only to find herself trapped yet again, this time in a doomed love affair. And finally, Tris Freedman, grandson of Tristan and lover of Nina, a graffiti artist and unanchored revolutionary, cannibalizes his family history to feed his muse. In the end, their stories converge and the survival of each requires the sacrifice of another. The End of the Jews offers all the rewards of the traditional family epic, but Mansbach’s irreverent wit and rich, kinetic prose shed new light on the genre. It runs on its own chronometer, somersaulting gracefully through time and space, interweaving the tales of these three protagonists who, separated by generation and geography, are leading parallel lives.
Tales for an accelerated culture
Three twenty-something young adults, working at low-paying, no-future jobs, tell one another modern tales of love and death.
Shahid, a clean-cut young man from the provinces, comes to London after the death of his father. In the capital he falls in love with Deedee Osgood, a college lecturer, and finds himself passionately embroiled in a spiritual battle between liberalism and fundamentalism. The Black Album is set in the London of 1989, the year after the second summer of love and the year of the infamous fatwah was imposed on Salman Rushdie. It is a thriller for the rave generation by one of the most praised and influential writers of the times.
It was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing im-moderately at everything that was said to her.
