Jansson, also beloved for bringing the Moomin characters to life, wrote the definitive Summer book, and not just because of the title. "The Summer Book manages to make you feel good as well as wise, without having to make too much effort...[it] says so much that we want to hear in such an accessible form, without ever really saying anything at all."
– The Independent (London) | | Read more → | | | | Valeria Luiselli is an evening cyclist. A literary tourist in Venice, searching for Joseph Brodsky's tomb. An excavator of her own artifacts, unpacking from a move. In essays that are as companionable as they are ambitious, she uses the city to exercise a roving, meandering intelligence, seeking out the questions embedded in our human landscapes. | | Read more → | | | A constellation of connected characters provides a snapshot of Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora in North America from French colonization to life after the war. ... A brief, moving meditation on the nature of truth, memory, humanity, and violence: a powerful work of art.
– Kirkus Reviews | | Read more → | | | | The mysteries of kinship (families born into and families made) take disconcerting and familiar shapes in these refreshingly frank short stories. A family is haunted by a beast that splatters fruit against its walls every night, another undergoes a near-collision with a bus on the way home from the beach. Mothers are cold, fathers are absent – we know these moments in the abstract, but Lima-born writer Adaui makes each as uncanny as our own lives: close but not yet understood. | | Read more → | | | | Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life – and humanity's place in the world. Acutely relevant to our times in light of the coronavirus pandemic, In the Company of Men explores critical questions about how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice. | | Read more → | | | | And as summer comes to an end….The first in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet: Autumn. A luminous meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth, Autumn casts an eye over our own time: Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d'esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art. Autumn is wide ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories. | | Read more → | | | | |
