Современная зарубежная литература
Различные книги в жанре Современная зарубежная литератураThe Shooting
Meet the most hated woman in America: Jenny Sanders (also known as the country’s most successful gun control advocate). On her way to New York City, to the site of yet another shooting, she encounters one of her many opponents. Their shocking collision will plunge you directly into the world of James Boice’s fourth and most urgent novel.It begins with Lee Fisher, a boy raised as a patriot and native son who cannot escape the influence of his troubled father. The heir to a massive family fortune, Lee struggles to find his place in the world. By the time a stranger walks through the unlocked door of his New York City penthouse, Lee is as terrified by his own isolation as he is by the threat posed by the intruder. The stranger — unarmed teenager Clayton Kabede — carries with him an immigrant story as profound as the American experience itself.Refugees and militia men, Russian physicists and inner city teens, Rikers Island inmates and Second Amendment repealists, beat cops and $1000-per-hour defense attorneys — James Boice delivers an unprecedented portrait of contemporary America through the prism of a single shooting.
The Sadness
Broke and homeless at 30, Kelly Enright flees Arizona. Returning to her hometown of Portland, ME, her only plan is to track down her estranged but well-off father. But her twin brother, Max, is living in their deceased mother's home, and if anyone's more screwed up than Kelly, it's disheveled, misanthropic Max.Max has just one obsession: film. In particular, his own unfinished project from a decade earlier, which he believes is a masterpiece in the making. He dreams of completing it, but there’s a major problem: Evelyn, his actress and muse, has recently disappeared. After seeing her name in the credits of a famous cult film shot in their hometown, Max thinks Evelyn's disappearance has something to do with the film, and an upcoming festival devoted to it.Kelly's arrival upsets Max's plans for finding Evelyn. Enter Penelope Hayward, the film's star and Kelly's high school best friend. Now a major Hollywood star, Penelope arrives in Portland as the festival's guest of honor.As Max's search for his lost leading lady becomes increasingly, absurdly self-destructive, Kelly must help her brother, who has never recovered from their mother's death.
Seahorse
Nem was not like his college classmates. Instead of crowding around a TV set, Nem opted for lonely walks where he could indulge his passion for photography, until the night he saw Nicholas, a young professor from London, with another male student. The affair is passionate and brief. When Nicholas returns to London, Nem must move on. He graduates and soon finds success as a critic in Mumbai’s burgeoning art world. Then comes an invitation to speak to artists in London, and the past is suddenly resurrected. As London's cosmopolitan art scene envelops Nem, he is haunted by the possibilities of a life with Nicholas. But Nicholas eludes Nem, avoiding a reunion with his old student, but leaving clues that lead to someone else: Myra, a woman Nem thought was Nicholas's sister. Brought together by their love for Nicholas, Nem and Myra embark on a surprising friendship.Janice Pariat explores the concept of emotional memory with the inquisitive mind of a scientist and the prowess of a poet. Rich, immersive prose drives a story with international scope, one that seeks answers to the age-old mystery of what binds us to others, and how we can ever let them go.
Year of the Goose
As China's economy booms, so does its corporations, but none are as successful as the Bashful Goose Snack Company. Founded by Papa Hui, the company is a national treasure, as is his beloved pet goose who steadfastly remains at his side. Papa Hui's daughter, Kelly, is desperate to prove herself, and jealous of that wretched goose. Kelly heads up the corporate responsibility department where she builds a fat camp for children.All of the children are killed in a series of gruesome accidents, but the government views the project as a success— the province is no longer the nation's leader in childhood obesity. With all of the nation's obese children cured of their fatness, albeit by death, Kelly returns to the city where hair tycoon Wang Xilai plucks her extensions from Lulu, the woman with the most lustrous hair in China.When Papa Hui is brutally murdered, chaos ensues. Wang and Kelly are both alternately accused. His goose is left to his own devices, and certainly does not want to remain loyal to a corpse. Lulu flees the tumultuous hair business and becomes the mistress of a politician, who scandalously remains faithful to his wife. Lulu encounters a turtle, who was once a tibetan monk, and eventually escapes to a hipster idyll, an oasis for millionaires where she lives with three witches and learns their ways.Unbeknownst to Lulu, this model village for tycoons has two new residents. Wang has descended into madness and is holding Kelly Hui hostage in a small shed. In the absurdist satirical tradition of the great contemporary Chinese author Mo Yan, comes a searing and whimsical portrayal of tycoon culture as CEOs run wild in an oligarchical tabloid-driven society, not unlike our very own.
Rus Like Everyone Else
Rus is a creature of habit. His mother abandoned him years earlier, leaving him with a shabby, un-permitted apartment and a debit card, from which he withdraws money everyday to purchase his Starbucks drink. When Rus is told by a government agency that his apartment is illegal and not fit for a human occupation, his simple life is turned upside down. For the first time, the unemployed, child-man Rus learns about something truly awful: taxes. Realizing that the debit account is almost empty, Rus panics, and what is left is stolen by a smooth talking Russian submarine captain.As Rus capitulates to the demands of society and gets a job with the help of a controlling new girlfriend, a local postal worker surveys the other residents of the neighborhood from her apartment window. It is through her omniscient voice that we learn about «everyone else.» A secretary struggles to make human connections, or even conversations, while her affair with her lawyer boss isn't helping matters. A delivery man wants to make a name for himself, but his ambitions don't seem to match his immigrant status. A lonely bachelor struggles to overcome his paranoia, and may finally triumph at a rally for the Queen. An old woman named Mrs. Blue compulsively steals hand creams to compensate for the cancellation of her favorite program. And there, inside Mrs. Blue's TV, the star of the soap opera begins to question her existence, as something clearly has gone awry. And at the center of it all is Rus – a sweet and inexperienced soul whose journey captures the daily isolation and confusion most of us are desperately pretending not to notice.Debut novelist Adriansee weaves together the intersecting lives of neighbors struggling to live in the modern condition, in a world of corporate sameness and forced interactions, perfectly capturing the struggle for individuality in the post-recession zeitgeist.
Florence in Ecstasy
A young American woman arrives in Florence from Boston, knowing no one and speaking little Italian. But Hannah is isolated in a more profound way, estranged from her own identity after a bout with starvation that has left her life and body in ruins. She is determined to recover in Florence, a city saturated with beauty, vitality, and food—as well as a dangerous history of sainthood for women who starved themselves for God. Hannah joins a local rowing club, where Francesca, a welcoming but predatory Milanese, and Luca, a seemingly steady Florentine with whom she becomes involved, draw her into Florence’s vibrant present: the complex social dynamics at the club, soccer mania, eating, drinking, sex, an insatiable insistence on life. But Hannah is also rapt by the city’s past—the countless representations of beauty, the entrenched conflicts of politics and faith, and the lore of the mystical saints, women whose self-imposed isolation and ecstatic searches for meaning through denial illuminate the seduction of her own struggles.Both sides pull Hannah in: challenging her, defeating her, lifting her up. And when a figure from her past life in Boston reappears, threatening the delicate balance of her present, Hannah’s feverish personal excavation becomes caught up with the long history of women’s contention with body and spirit, desire and death. A vivid, visceral debut echoing the novels of Jean Rhys, Elena Ferrante, and Catherine Lacey, Florence in Ecstasy gives us an arresting new vision of a woman’s attempt to find meaning—and find herself—in an unstable world.
The Show House
Quirky Orlando retirees Thaddeus and Cheryl, and adoptive parents Steven and Peter, come together for a family weekend in Orlando, where Cheryl anxiously hopes to repair the dysfunctional and toxic relationship between her husband and their son. When news of a serial killer that targets gay men at nightclubs rocks their community, over-worked pharmacist Laila grows concerned for her handsome and arrogant younger half-brother, Alex, who has been missing for several months. Meanwhile, the calculating murderer’s own life begins to spiral out of control as he unwittingly falls for a would-be victim. Overwhelmed by meeting his granddaughter Gertie for the first time, Thaddeus kidnaps her in order to take her to Disney World setting off a wild goose chase where these intertwined families finally collide.
Broken Ground
2011 Outstanding Title, University Press Books for Public and Secondary School LibrariesBroken Ground employs a construction project in the Oregon desert as the basis for a story with far-reaching political and moral implications. Hank Lafleur has been sent to supervise the project, which is a prison-for-profit financed by a multinational corporation under government contract, and meant to house felons, illegal immigrants, and, as Lafleur comes to learn, political prisoners from Latin America. Broken Ground is remarkable for its prophetic vision of the hollow securities promised by incarceration and of the effects of «privatization» as an armature of American imperialism – in both the domestic and international realms.
Roadless Homelands
In this wry collection, Baroness Melody Von Smith explores our need for a place to call home, either literally or figuratively, and how this need is directly tied to our identity. <br><br>In "The Ocean doesn't Want Me Today", it is a physical place–Downeast Maine–that provides solace for the young woman contending with her mother's suicide by learning to be a lobsterman. In "The Snows of Jake Manjaro," it is Jake's all-consuming vocation as a war journalist that defines, preserves, and ultimately consumes him. "Yes, This is A Fine Promotion," (adapted from a stage play of the same name) features a young man who meets himself on a subway train in Chicago, while in "The High Price of the Wild Truth," a beach bum slowly transforms into his once-famous television character, a hired vigilante killer. <br><br>These stories–blunt, funny, and deceptively simple–showcase the Baroness's knack of capturing the wonderful ridiculousness of being human. Her characters are unforgettable, her realities fantastic, and her dialogue both crackling and crackerjack. All this, woven with a gentle, quirky satire and an odd optimism, makes for a wild ride with a satisfying splashdown. <br>
President of the United Wastes
This is your unique handbook to become a/the President, and stay, never leave.