Published by Random House, 2017, 380 pages. The 2000 elections in the US are underway. A man and his three adult sons move to New York from an unnamed city in an unnamed country. Armed with new, classical names—Julius Nero Golden and his sons Petronicus or Petya, Lucius Apuleius or Apu (a nod to his …
Category: Fiction
No sweet song, this
Lullaby by Leila Slimani translated from the French by Sam Taylor Published by Faber & Faber, 2017, 224 pages. Original version published in 2016. Review by Usha Raman I encountered Leila Slimani and her work in the New York Times Review of Books, months before the English translation came to market. My fingers raced across the …
The Known World: Edward P. Jones
Published by Amistad, 2003, 400 pages. A little-known fact about slavery in the United States is that a few black people owned slaves. In some cases, freed blacks bought their parents, spouses or children, but there were others who owned slaves for economic reasons.[1] This is the story that Edward P. Jones tells us in …
A Land Without Jasmine: Wajdi Al-Ahdal
Translated from Arabic by William Maynard HutchinsPublished by Garnet Publishing, 2012, 94 pages. Original version published in 2008. Over the last year, Yemen has been in the news, its people suffering the ravages of war and famine. I realized that I knew very little about the country, especially what it had been like to live …
Uncommon Type: Tom Hanks
Published by Vintage, 2017, 415 pages. Tom Hanks is one of the best actors working today—he slips into the skin of a character, making him completely believable. I’m a big admirer of his acting, so when this book came out, I was curious: is he as good a writer as he is an actor? The …
The Rosie Project: Graeme Simsion
Published by Simon & Schuster / Penguin, 2013, 368 pages. Don Tillman, a geneticist at an Australian university, is not only intelligent and good-looking but a decent cook to boot. He decides that he needs a wife, which you would think shouldn’t be hard. But Don’s manner tends to put women off. He tends to …
The Man Who Loved Dogs: Leonardo Padura
Translated from Spanish by Anna KushnerPublished by Bitter Lemon Press / Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 2014, 592 pages. Original version published in 2009. “If the social dream and economic utopia supporting it had become corrupt to the core, what remained of the greatest experiment man had ever dreamed of?” It is easy to forget today …
The Long Way Home: Louise Penny
Published by Minotaur Books / Thorndike Press, 2014, 400 pages. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There's power enough in Heaven to cure a sin-sick soul.” On the surface, this seems like a regular whodunit. But it is more than that—a story about losing and finding yourself, about art and …
All the Light We Cannot See: Anthony Doerr
Published by Scribner / Fourth Estate, 2014, 531 pages.Review by Thomas Peak and Susanne Gjønnes Set during the darkness of World War II, All the Light We Cannot See is a powerful and emotional novel. It follows a young boy and a girl caught up on each side of the whirlwind of Nazism and war. …
Catching Thunder—The True Story of the World’s Longest Sea Chase: Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter
Translated from Norwegian by Diane Oatley.Published by Zed Books, 2018, 400 pages.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes This true-life crime novel, Catching Thunder: The Story of the World’s Longest Sea Chase, is the dramatic account of Sea Shepherd’s 110-day long international pursuit of the pirate fishing vessel Thunder. Sea Shepherd is a group of activists committed …
