Literary Fiction Political

Layla James, a recent graduate and budding photographer, never knew anything about her father except that he named her for the iconic song by Eric Clapton. Her mother - steeped in a political activism that Layla rejects - kept their past shrouded in secrecy, and when she dies of cancer, she leaves only an enigmatic letter - the first in a series that will lead Layla through a cross-country network of '60s radicals and closer to the bombshell at the heart of her parents' past.

Roaming India in 1939 and the early 1940s, two flawed but extraordinary men latch onto each other with shocking consequences as each follows an ill-fated quest for “enlightenment.” Moses, a Polish Jew, is fleeing both the Nazis and his own failed marriage; Sahadeva, an itinerant Hindu monk, is trying to resolve his crisis of religious belief. Both men find themselves embroiled in hardship, shame, and chaos, stumbling into scandal and ultimately tragedy.

Set in a fictitious post-colonial African nation, the discovery of the body of a drowned prostitute leads to an exploration of the conflict between an individual and the modern African state. A gripping study of truth, silence, and the abuse of power. A young woman runs into the sea and drowns. The last man who spoke to her, a curious individual known as Bukuru, is asked to account for her suicide. His shocking revelations land him in court.

In a darkened cell, a brutally deposed dictator lies crippled - deprived of his power, his freedom and his eyes. On the edge of utter despair, his only companion is the young boy who brings him his meagre rations, a mere child who fears his own shadow. But to one who has held and lost the highest power, one thing alone is crystal clear: even emperors were mere children once. Ten years later the new ruler's son watches uneasily over his father's empire.

She is a painter. He is a poet. Their art bridges time.

It is 1978. Merle is in her first year at the Corcoran School of Art, catapulted from her impoverished Appalachian upbringing into a sophisticated, dissipated art scene. It is also 1870. The teenage poet Arthur Rimbaud is on the verge of breaking through to the images and voice that will make his name. The meshed power of words and art thins the boundaries between the present and the past—and allows these two troubled, brilliant artists to enter each other’s worlds.

Timely and unique, Jia is the first novel about present-day North Korea to be published in the West. It is easily a YA crossover novel as Jia follows the adventures of an orphaned young woman, Jia in the 1970s and 1980s - bitterly tumultuous times for North Korea and China. Jia has the grace of a dancer but the misfortune of coming from a politically suspect family.

Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned, and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many "Mimic Men".

Published at the height of the McCarthy era, Norman Mailer's audacious novel of socialism is at once an elegy and an indictment, a sinuous moral thriller and an intellectual slugfest. Wounded during World War II, Mike Lovett is an amnesiac, and much of his past is a secret to himself. But when Lovett rents a room in Brooklyn, he finds that his housemates have secrets of their own: one betrays a husband no one ever sees; another may have been a Communist executioner.

The year is 2002. Weekly news magazines dominate the political agenda in New York and Washington. A young journalist named Michael M. Hastings is an intern at The Magazine, wet behind the ears, the only one in the office who has actually read his coworkers' books. He will stop at nothing to turn his internship into a full-time position and has figured out just who to impress: Nishant Patel, the international editor, and Sanders Berman, managing editor - both vying for the job of editor-in-chief.

Le maccarthysme a beau déferler sur l'Amérique au tournant des années cinquante, Ira Ringold se croit à l'abri de la chasse aux sorcières. Non seulement parce que son appartenance au Parti communiste est ignorée même de ses amis, mais surtout parce que l'enfant des quartiers pauvres de Newark, l'ancien terrassier au lourd passé, s'est réinventé en Iron Linn, vedette de la radio, idéale réincarnation de Lincoln, et heureux époux de Eve Frame, ex-star du muet.

Set in Iran at the end of the 19th century in the Persian royal court of the Qajars, In the Palace of Flowers is an atmospheric historical novel about Jamila, an Abyssinian slave who stands at the funeral of a Persian nobleman, watching the rites with empty eyes. In that very moment, she realizes that her life will never be acknowledged or mourned with the same significance. The fear of being forgotten, of being irrelevant, sets her and Abimelech, a fellow Abyssinian slave and a eunuch, on a path to find meaning.

1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo’s hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand Westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.

June 26, 1947. Headlines across America report that an aviator from Idaho witnessed nine pulsating lights flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any aircraft built by humankind. Days later, a desperate Chicago pool hustler, inspired by the news, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream search for a possible extraterrestrial sign. From those he inspires along the way to the Cascades comes a new community - “The Seekers” - devoted to creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a thing of the past.

Yada wächst als Bürgerin einer schwimmenden Stadt in der Ostsee auf. Ihr Vater, ein libertärer Tech-Unternehmer, hat die Seestadt als Rettung vor dem Chaos entworfen, in dem die übrige Welt versinkt. In den Jahren seit ihrer Gründung ist ihr Glanz vergangen, Algen und Moos überwuchern die einst spiegelnden Flächen. Yadas Vater fürchtet, sie könne das Schicksal ihrer Mutter ereilen, die vor ihrem Tod an einer rätselhaften Krankheit litt. Und Yada macht eines Tages eine Entdeckung, die alles ins Wanken bringt.

Die heimatlose Erzählerin verlässt New York, um am Internationalen Gerichtshof als Dolmetscherin zu arbeiten. Als sie Adriaan kennenlernt, scheint Den Haag zur Antwort ihrer Sehnsüchte zu werden. Doch dann verschwindet er zu seiner Noch-Ehefrau und hinterlässt nichts als Fragen. Fragen, die sich zu einem existenziellen Abgrund auftun, als sie für einen angeklagten westafrikanischen Kriegsverbrecher dolmetschen muss und zweifelt: Was ist kalkulierte Lüge, was Wahrheit? Glauben nur noch die Naiven an Gerechtigkeit? Wer kann über wen richten? Wer legt unsere Weltordnung fest?

Il romanzo narra la storia di Pablo, un giovanotto piccolo-borghese che trascorre tutto il suo tempo dietro il banco di un negozio dove si vendono tabacchi e alla sera suona la chitarra con gli amici. Pablo però si sente solo soprattutto dopo che l'amico Amelio ha avuto un grave incidente con la moto insieme a Linda, la sua ragazza, e non può più muovere le gambe.

Forester Gethin Thomas is struggling to make ends meet in his rural hometown in North Wales. Bright, charming, but unambitious, the thing that keeps him going is Ty Gwydr, a beautiful lakeside house that he keeps an eye on for absent English owners. The house has been empty for so long he's come to think of it as his own. That is until the owners decide to sell, sending Geth into freefall.

Who is Yahya Bas? Revolutionary poet, notorious jihadist, misbegotten son, self-styled idiot-boy. When the enigmatic Yahya finds himself languishing in a detention center after fleeing the conflict in Syria, he has many questions to face. What was he doing in the desert? Why did he betray his home country? What led him to write the incendiary verses that launched him into international infamy? Mister, his interrogator, wants answers. So Yahya resolves to tell his own story, in his own words, and on his own terms.

L'Impero che Marco Aurelio ha ereditato è giunto alla sua massima espansione e mantenere la pace che ha regnato sotto Antonino Pio è ormai impossibile: dopo la guerra contro i Parti, ora sono i Germani a minacciare Roma premendo da nord.Nel 167 d.C., l'Imperatore filosofo dà inizio alle guerre marcomanniche sotto auspici infausti e ben presto il suo progetto di stabilizzare i confini settentrionali si scontra con il leggendario furor teutonicus. Ma non è solo la spaventosa forza di quelle popolazioni a sfibrare le legioni romane.

The Mexican American War has ended, but in a California divided between two nations, Anglo squatters continue to antagonize citizens of Mexican descent by making claims on their land. Against this charged backdrop, the lives of the Alamar family - the rightful owners of a San Diego ranch - become politically, economically, and romantically entwined with a family of New England settlers, the Darrells. Inspired by experiences in her own life, Ruiz de Burton insightfully captured a troubling time in American history - a period of intense corruption, greed, racism, and classism.