The Sun Also Rises – E. Hemingway – 251
pages
The
basis for the novel was Hemingway's 1925 trip
to Spain. The setting was unique and
memorable, showing the seedy café life in Paris, and the excitement of the
Pamplona festival, with a middle section devoted to descriptions of a fishing
trip in the Pyrenees. Equally unique was Hemingway's spare writing style,
combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and
action.
On
the surface the novel is a love story between the protagonist
Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him impotent—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley.
Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his
friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to
lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona. The novel is a roman à clef;
the characters are based on real people and the action is based on real events.
In the novel, Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation",
considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I,
was resilient and strong. Additionally, Hemingway investigates the themes of
love, death, renewal in nature, and the nature of masculinity.
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Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and
named one of the ten best books of the year.
Having hit bestseller lists
from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this
wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary
stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the
university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the
culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from
family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the
personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this
tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
As
the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of
unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of
prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov,
a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming
postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove
factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And
then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. His adored daughter, has grown from a loving,
quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager capable of an outlandishly
savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the
longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk.
Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its
characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
After four
harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and
takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey
from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes
once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings
a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, afte...more
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to
Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a
day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat
comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom
brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two
miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on
the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
Tomwants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss. The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.
Tomwants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss. The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.
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The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
- 396 Pages
It all
starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his
room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party
he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The Mayor is going to be there. The press is
going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not… Slowly but surely Allan
climbs out of his bedroom window, into the
flowerbed (in his slippers) and...more
It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly
in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway
to begin. The Mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But,
as it turns out, Allan is not… Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his
bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And
so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several
murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades
unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier life in which – remarkably – he
helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian
tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many
key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe,
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a fun
and feel-good book for all ages.
Published July 12th 2012 Translated from Swedish
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