“Hilarious” is certainly not a word that immediately comes to mind when thinking of Icelandic writing. Arnaldur Indridasson, the most famous contemporary writer in Iceland, pens mysteries which are among the darkest, gloomiest, and most haunting ever written, the pinnacle of Nordic noir. Clearly, life in Iceland can be tough. So when I stumbled across The Pets, by Bragi Olafsson, in the “used” section of my favorite bookshop, I was amazed to see it described as “hilarious”—a book written by a young author who still lives in Iceland and who manages to find humor, even slapstick humor, in life in this cold, dark country. Main character Emil Halldorsson has been away in London, celebrating his million-kronur lottery win (about $8500) with a two-week vacation from the hardware store where he works. While he is gone, a man in an anorak and a plastic bag visits his house but does not leave a message. When Emil returns, he recognizes who it is, and when the man breaks in, Emil hides under the bed, at which point the man makes himself at home and invites all Emil’s friends to a party. Hilarious, indeed.
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As in his prize-winning novel Waiting for an Angel, Nigerian author Helon Habila here emphasizes the power of the press to keep people honest—or more honest than they would be without reporters watching and reporting on their actions. Rufus, a young reporter with an uncertain job future, and Zaq, an alcoholic who was once one of the best reporters in Nigeria, are searching for Isabel Floode, the wife of a British petroleum engineer, who has been kidnapped by militants and held for ransom. Nine days have passed since the two reporters and their boatman left Port Harcourt, and all the other journalists looking for her have given up, but these two continue to follow the river in a small canoe, looking for clues and trying to make contact with those who may be holding Mrs. Floode. No one knows (or will say) how to reach the rebels who hold her captive, and no firm or reliable demands have been made for ransom. As Rufus becomes frustrated by delays, the veteran Zaq must, at one point, remind him to keep his eye on the real goal of their trip: “Forget the woman and her kidnappers for a moment. What we really seek is not them but a greater meaning. Remember, the story is not the final goal….The meaning of the story [is], and only a lucky few ever discover that.” Outstanding novel of the problems spawned by the oil industry and corruption in Nigeria.
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Nigeria in the 1990s, the setting for this novel, was a police state of such sadistic violence, with human rights abuses so staggering, that the country was expelled from the Commonwealth of Nations, and virtually every other country had sanctions against it. Focusing primarily on Lomba, a journalist and frustrated novelist, who, in the opening chapter is a starving political prisoner in a Lagos jail, author Helon Habila jumps back and forth in time, introducing us in succeeding chapters to the lives of ordinary citizens of Lagos, men and women, including Lomba himself, living on Poverty Street, trying to maintain some semblance of hope in an increasingly hopeless world. Lomba, jailed for two years without a trial as the novel opens, has gone beyond anger, which he describes as “the baffled prisoner’s attempt to re-crystallize his slowly dissolving self,” and entered “a state of tranquil acceptance” of his fate. When the jailer finds the poems and journal entries he has written and hidden, he persuades Lomba to write some love poems for the better-educated woman he is courting. A brief ray of hope flickers when the woman recognizes Lomba’s cryptic messages and comes to the prison to meet him.
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In this Ned Kelly Award winner from 2007, Adrian Hyland begins his series about Emily Tempest, who is part white, part aborigine. As a child living with the aborigines at Moonlight Downs while her white father worked at the Moonlight cattle station, Emily was a happy member of the community until she violated a taboo and was then sent to school in the white world for the next ten years. Much has changed upon her return to the community. Adrian Hyland creates an atmospheric and dramatic first novel which moves at warp speed, filled with action and excitement. At the same time, he also invites contemplation of the natural world and the lives of the aborigines who identify with nature on a visceral, even mystical, level.
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In his fourth novel featuring Dr. Quirke, a Dublin pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family with unusual insights into forensics, Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, writing as “Benjamin Black,” reveals yet another grim side of Dublin life in the early 1950s. When Dublin Detective Inspector Hackett investigates the gruesome death of “Diamond Dick” Jewell, a wealthy man whose head had been blown off in what was thought to be a suicide, he calls Quirke, who has helped him on several occasions in the past and who agrees that this death had to have been murder. “Few outside the family circle and few inside it, either, considered his demise a cause for sorrow.” As Hackett investigates, he finds himself relying on Quirke more and more, since Quirke has access to the elite of Dublin society, people who know all the powerbrokers in the business community, in politics and the church, and on both sides of the law. Whom you know is more important than legal fine points, and Hackett trusts Quirke to provide him with information he might not otherwise obtain.
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