Author Ha Jin, who was born in the People’s Republic and lived there until he left to attend college in the United States in 1985, offers a unique perspective on Chinese culture, different from that which appears in most “Chinese” novels written for an American audience. Setting this novel primarily in a POW camp in South Korea, where Chinese and North Korean troops, captured by US and South Korean soldiers, have been separately interned during the 1950s war, Ha Jin focuses on the different attitudes each group has toward home, country, and each other. Through Yu Yuan, a young soldier from the Chinese Communist army, Ha Jin shows how differently Yuan evaluates his life and his obligations but how similarly he holds to ideals of friendship, justice, honor, and love.
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Although most people know that World War I began in 1914, far fewer know that while that war was being fought in Europe, a million Armenians were being exterminated by the Turks. In a series of massacres over a period of more than twenty years, most notably between 1894 and 1915, the Armenians were forced from their land, marched across barren plains under deplorable conditions, and subjected to depredations from which death was often a merciful release. Author Judith Mitchell seizes on the fact that many Armenian-Americans fought in the war in Europe but were also committed to making Turkey pay for its crimes against their families and culture. She creates a fascinating plot which brings to life the efforts by Armenians in Europe and America to address the wrongs done to them by bringing the Turkish leaders of the massacres to justice, either legal or ad hoc.
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Author Elizabeth Kostova’s unusual debut novel combines her ten years of scholarly research on Vlad Tepes, the Impaler of Wallachia, sometimes known as Drakulya, with the stories that have become part of local folklore in Bulgaria and Rumania, and the legends created and perpetuated by Bram Stoker (in his novel Dracula). A sadistic prince from the mid-fifteenth century who killed up to 15,000 of his own people, often impaling them on stakes and leaving them to die horrible deaths, Vlad terrified his enemies from the Ottoman Empire, though it was Stoker who created the belief that he was a vampire. Historians and scholars will be fascinated by the detailed information revealed in this novel as the three main characters uncover key information about Vlad/Drakulya. Though the story is often exciting—and has a conclusion which packs a wallop–the novel involves serious, scholarly research, and the “novel’s” characters themselves are undeveloped.
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The first of Brazilian author Verissimo’s novels to be translated into English, The Club of Angels is a fascinating, carefully detailed, and darkly humorous study of ten deaths, the deaths of ten gourmands following their favorite meals. The men have been friends for more than twenty years, meeting once a month for sumptuous feasts together. They represent all levels of society and have achieved differing degrees of professional success, enjoying and respecting each other because of their shared love of food and their long friendship. Playing with the reader’s perceptions from the outset, Verissimo writes with tongue firmly in cheek, the ironies piling up as the deaths continue. His observations about life and death, about men and their friendships, and about our responsibilities, if any, to each other add depth to this unusual novel. The ending, which extends the concept of “orgiastic release” to its logical conclusion, will satisfy even the most jaded reader.
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Posted in 9c-2009 Reviews, Argentina, Brazil, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir on Jan 18th, 2011
One of the most original and delightful novels of 2005, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is simultaneously a literary detective thriller, a parody of the detective story, and an anti-detective story. Taking its title (and one of its primary images) from Elizabethan writer John Dee, who wrote that if an orangutan were given enough time, he would eventually produce all the books in the world, the novel takes place in Buenos Aires, where an international group of Edgar Allan Poe specialists gathers for a meeting of the mysterious Israfel Society.Brazilian author Luis Fernando Verissimo creates as his narrator, a 50-year-old man named Vogelstein, who has led a cloistered life, “without adventures or surprises.” He believes that he has been called to the conference by destiny–“some hidden Borges”–and the convenient death of his cat confirms this belief. When a real murder occur, the speaker and Borges team up to solve the mystery. Hilarious, clever, and very literary. (On my Favorites list for 2005)
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