Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833631
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.
Sadness Is a White Bird
Author: Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501176285
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
**A Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist** **A National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Debut Fiction** In this “nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written” (Michael Chabon) debut novel, a young man prepares to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where—four days after his nineteenth birthday—Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell and recalls the series of events that led him there. Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith—the twin daughter and son of his mother’s friend. From that morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage, while also feeling love for those outside of your own family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever. “Unflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexity” (Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man’s attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501176285
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
**A Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist** **A National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Debut Fiction** In this “nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written” (Michael Chabon) debut novel, a young man prepares to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where—four days after his nineteenth birthday—Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell and recalls the series of events that led him there. Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith—the twin daughter and son of his mother’s friend. From that morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage, while also feeling love for those outside of your own family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever. “Unflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexity” (Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man’s attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.
A Shelter for Sadness
Author: Anne Booth
Publisher: Holiday House
ISBN: 1682634280
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
This poignant and heartwarming story explores the many faces of sadness and addresses the importance of mental health in a child-friendly way. A small boy creates a shelter for his sadness so that he can visit it whenever he needs to, and the two of them can cry, talk, or just sit. The boy knows that one day his sadness may come out of the shelter, and together they will look out at the world and see how beautiful it is. In this timely consideration of emotional wellbeing, Anne Booth has created a beautiful depiction of allowing time and attention for difficult feelings. Stunningly atmospheric illustrations by David Litchfield personify sadness as a living being, allowing young readers to more easily connect with the story's themes of emotional literacy.
Publisher: Holiday House
ISBN: 1682634280
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
This poignant and heartwarming story explores the many faces of sadness and addresses the importance of mental health in a child-friendly way. A small boy creates a shelter for his sadness so that he can visit it whenever he needs to, and the two of them can cry, talk, or just sit. The boy knows that one day his sadness may come out of the shelter, and together they will look out at the world and see how beautiful it is. In this timely consideration of emotional wellbeing, Anne Booth has created a beautiful depiction of allowing time and attention for difficult feelings. Stunningly atmospheric illustrations by David Litchfield personify sadness as a living being, allowing young readers to more easily connect with the story's themes of emotional literacy.
The Stars Are Not Yet Bells
Author: Hannah Lillith Assadi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084462
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND NPR Through the scrim of fading memory, an elderly woman confronts a lifetime of secrets and betrayal, under the mysterious skies of her island home Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of WWII, impressionable young Elle Ranier leaves New York City to forge a new life together on the island with her new husband, Simon. There they will live for decades, raising a family while waging a quixotic campaign to find the source of the mysterious blue offshore light—and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk beneath the surface. Fifty years later, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island—and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did her husband’s business, now shuttered, survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of Gabriel—the handsome, raffish other man who came to the island with them and risked everything to follow the lights? Darkly romantic and deeply haunting, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells pulls us into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084462
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND NPR Through the scrim of fading memory, an elderly woman confronts a lifetime of secrets and betrayal, under the mysterious skies of her island home Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of WWII, impressionable young Elle Ranier leaves New York City to forge a new life together on the island with her new husband, Simon. There they will live for decades, raising a family while waging a quixotic campaign to find the source of the mysterious blue offshore light—and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk beneath the surface. Fifty years later, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island—and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did her husband’s business, now shuttered, survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of Gabriel—the handsome, raffish other man who came to the island with them and risked everything to follow the lights? Darkly romantic and deeply haunting, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells pulls us into a story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.
Dance of Seduction
Author: Sabrina Jeffries
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061741086
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
She vowed to resist . . . It's difficult enough for Lady Clara Stanbourne to run her London home for reformed young pickpockets without having to contend with a criminal rightnext door! The mysterious Morgan Pryce is obviouslydealing in stolen property, and she will never allowthe handsome scoundrel to lead the children astray.Pryce is very much mistaken if he believes her adelicate rose he can wilt with passionate, unspokenpromises. Now if only Clara could douse the fieryyearning the charming cad ignites inside her. His heated caresses . . . This bold, beautiful temptress is indeed a distraction—and Morgan wishes he could tell the exquisite Clarathe truth: that he is working undercover to break upa notorious crime ring. His mind should be on hisduty—not wondering how it would feel to hold Clarain his arms and taste her luscious lips. But nowthat she has entered into his most dangerous game,Morgan knows he must have her, despite the veryreal peril to his secret mission—andto his heart.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061741086
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
She vowed to resist . . . It's difficult enough for Lady Clara Stanbourne to run her London home for reformed young pickpockets without having to contend with a criminal rightnext door! The mysterious Morgan Pryce is obviouslydealing in stolen property, and she will never allowthe handsome scoundrel to lead the children astray.Pryce is very much mistaken if he believes her adelicate rose he can wilt with passionate, unspokenpromises. Now if only Clara could douse the fieryyearning the charming cad ignites inside her. His heated caresses . . . This bold, beautiful temptress is indeed a distraction—and Morgan wishes he could tell the exquisite Clarathe truth: that he is working undercover to break upa notorious crime ring. His mind should be on hisduty—not wondering how it would feel to hold Clarain his arms and taste her luscious lips. But nowthat she has entered into his most dangerous game,Morgan knows he must have her, despite the veryreal peril to his secret mission—andto his heart.
On Beauty
Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218118
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews 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.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218118
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews 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.
The Beauty and the Sorrow
Author: Peter Englund
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307739287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594
Book Description
An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like. In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund’s collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, The Beauty and Sorrow brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307739287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594
Book Description
An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like. In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund’s collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, The Beauty and Sorrow brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.
Dandelions
Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224104
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138
Book Description
A fascinating discovery, Kawabata’s unfinished final novel Dandelions is a great master’s last word A fascinating discovery, Dandelions is Kawabata's final novel, left incomplete when he committed suicide in 1972. Beautifully spare and deeply strange, Dandelions explores love and madness and consists almost entirely conversations between a woman identified only as Ineko's mother, and Kuno, a young man who loves Ineko and wants to marry her. The two have left Ineko at the Ikuta Clinic, a mental hospital, which she has entered for treatment of somagnosia, a condition that might be called “seizures of body blindness.” Although her vision as a whole is unaffected, she periodically becomes unable to see her lover Kuno. Whether this condition actually constitutes madness is a topic of heated discussion between Kuno and Ineko’s mother: Kuno believes Ineko's blindness is actually an expression of her love for him, as it is only he, the beloved, she cannot see. In this tantalizing book, Kawabata explores the incommunicability of desire and carries the art of the novel, where he always suggested more than he stated, into mysterious and strange new realms. Dandelions is the final word of a truly great master, the first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224104
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138
Book Description
A fascinating discovery, Kawabata’s unfinished final novel Dandelions is a great master’s last word A fascinating discovery, Dandelions is Kawabata's final novel, left incomplete when he committed suicide in 1972. Beautifully spare and deeply strange, Dandelions explores love and madness and consists almost entirely conversations between a woman identified only as Ineko's mother, and Kuno, a young man who loves Ineko and wants to marry her. The two have left Ineko at the Ikuta Clinic, a mental hospital, which she has entered for treatment of somagnosia, a condition that might be called “seizures of body blindness.” Although her vision as a whole is unaffected, she periodically becomes unable to see her lover Kuno. Whether this condition actually constitutes madness is a topic of heated discussion between Kuno and Ineko’s mother: Kuno believes Ineko's blindness is actually an expression of her love for him, as it is only he, the beloved, she cannot see. In this tantalizing book, Kawabata explores the incommunicability of desire and carries the art of the novel, where he always suggested more than he stated, into mysterious and strange new realms. Dandelions is the final word of a truly great master, the first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize.
The Sadness of Beautiful Things
Author: Simon Van Booy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525504869
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy. Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these masterfully written tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives, but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better. “Van Booy’s stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking.” —Los Angeles Times "Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525504869
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy. Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these masterfully written tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives, but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better. “Van Booy’s stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking.” —Los Angeles Times "Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain