From the outset of this atmospheric, often nail-biting, story, the reader knows that s/he is in the hands of a mastercraftsman, a writer at the peak of her powers who is able to involve the reader in a story of escalating tension and heart-quickening suspense. After only one page, I was completely caught up in the action, holding on for dear life and “riding the dragon” as Miyabe introduced her unusual characters and their even more unusual problems. Shogo Kosaka, an investigative reporter at Arrow magazine, is driving through a typhoon late at night, nearly blinded by the rain, when he almost strikes a small, teenaged boy, huddled next to his bicycle on the side of the road. When the police suggest that Shogo and Shinji take refuge in a nearby all-night restaurant and small inn, Shogo takes their advice. He becomes unnerved when Shinji tells him the name of the cat belonging to a missing child, the name of the man at the front desk, and personal information about the desk clerk’s relationship with the waitress, things he should have no way of knowing. Later Shinji confides the truth–that he is different, “open,” and he can “scan” people to know what they are thinking.
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Over 2.5 million people in Scandinavia have seen this film, making it the first film in Scandinavian history ever to break the $100 million mark for European ticket sales, and US fans of Stieg Larsson’s bestseller of the same name may propel the film to similar records here. The R-rated film tells the story of Mikael Blomqvist, a disgraced journalist for Sweden’s Millenium magazine who accepts an invitation from an elderly businessman to investigate the disappearance of his niece Harriet, thirty-seven years ago. No trace of her has ever turned up, and the old man fears that a member of his family may have murdered her.
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Written by July, a Jamaican slave, The Long Song is a family history, one irrevocably tied to Amity Plantation, where July, the mulatto daughter of Kitty, a slave, and a Scottish overseer, has lived with her mother, accompanying her as she works the plantation in the 1820s. July, while still a child, eventually catches the eye of Caroline Mortimer, the widowed sister of John Howarth, owner of Amity, and she decides to train July as her maid. Wresting her without warning from Kitty, who has no legal rights to her child, Caroline renames the child “Marguerite” and sets about training her. As July grows and learns to manipulate the self-centered Caroline, Caroline herself becomes less “English,” less “civilized,” and even more autocratic, until she resembles the plantation owners themselves, regarding their workers as property, not as humans.
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Winner of major literary awards throughout France, where author Caryl Ferey lives, Zulu is a powerful novel set in South Africa in the early 1990s when the country was in its transition between the rule of apartheid, governed by white Boers, and the rule of Africans, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, newly released from prison. The transition is not exactly smooth, and the transfer of power is not automatic. The ANC (African National Congress, under Mandela) needs the former white rulers to maintain control in many areas—and, presumably, to preserve the peace–and these whites quickly establish their own militias to protect themselves and to act on “infractions” or threats to the “peace” as they see it. To the surprise of many, the defeat of apartheid inspires other African movements, like Inkatha, also to challenge the ANC, leading to civil conflict for power within the black movements. Ordinary black citizens become unsure where their loyalties really lie, and as violence grows, not only between the conflicting black movements but also among the conservative Boers and the black community, no one can be really sure where the violence afflicting the cities really originates.
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From the opening pages of this kaleidoscopic debut novel, Canadian author Jaspreet Singh works his magic, setting the opening scene on a train from Delhi to Srinagar, in Kashmir. A born story-teller, gifted with the ability to describe the sights, sounds, and smells of his many Indian settings, Singh also creates, at the same time, lively characters and interconnected plot lines which span two generations. Anyone who has read other novels concerned with the partition of India and the perennial conflicts between mostly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan over the fate of Kashmir knows how complex and emotionally fraught these conflicts are, but Singh explores the conflict through the eyes of Kirpal (Kip) Singh, a chef who once worked for Lt. Gen. Ashwini Kumar, formerly chief of the Northern Command in Kashmir. With his limited focus, Kip is able to convey all the tensions and conflicts of the area without getting bogged down in the logistical technicalities. His vision is personal, and because he is an honorable person, he becomes the conscience of the novel.
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