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.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories is a collection of four of Wilde's short stories: "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," "The Sphinx without a Secret," "The Canterville Ghost," and "A Model Millionaire." Originally published in various London magazines in 1887, the pieces were eventually collected and published in book form in 1891. In these stories, generally described as social satires, Wilde parodied what he considered American naïveté as well as the cultural and social snobbery associated with the British aristocracy. Critics praise Wilde's literary achievement with these stories - particularly "The Canterville Ghost" and "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime"--But note the relative neglect of his short fiction in light of the notoriety of his dramas and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
One night in the Bronx a millionaire, Sherman McCoy, and his mistress have an accident. The next day a young Black is in hospital in a coma as McCoy heads for disaster. His humiliation is at the centre of a satire on the decaying class, racial and political structure of New York in the 1980s.
