Literary Fiction Political

A CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR An urgent, fiercely intelligent debut novel about "two couples, an ocean apart—one wounded by a war crime, the other just starting to reckon with being implicated in it.... An insightful book about the slow, zigzag work of healing that nonetheless...

Abbey Mei Otis's short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, and more. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the 12 stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

Anthony Swofford follows his international best-seller Jarhead with an unforgettable first novel -- a powerful story about a youth spent on a U.S. air base in Japan and the gritty neon streets just outside it, where the Japanese underworld lurks and a rebellious young girl finds herself in great...

A female psychiatrist at a state mental hospital finds herself at the center of a shadowy conspiracy in this dark and twisting tale of psychological suspense from the author of The Absence of Mercy. Menaker State Hospital is a curse, a refuge, a prison, a necessity, a nightmare, a salvation...

In this powerful novel of love and family, a doctor named Paris follows a nurse to a country on the brink of civil war. When a confrontation does break out, they are swept up by rebel forces and separated. The nurse, Helen, is pregnant; she escapes, but Paris is left behind, imprisoned by rebels as war rages. A narrative of brutal power about parental bonds, forgiveness, and identity, The Colonial Hotel recasts for the 21st century the ancient story of Paris, Helen, and Oenone.

London 2030. When a postman knocks on his door, the news he delivers will cause 70-year-old Anthony Pablo Rubens to reflect on all the many sadnesses and joys of the past, while he begins to prepare for the surprises of the future. The past still revolves around the moment in the summer of 1984 when young Anthony first realized he had fallen in love.

1962-2001: corre lungo quarant'anni di storia italiana il racconto di questo romanzo. È la storia di due poliziotti, David Montorsi e Guido Lopez, uno giovane e incorrotto, l'altro logorato dal mestiere. Ma è anche la storia di due uomini di Stato: Enrico Mattei che col suo jet solca le speranze del popolo italiano, e Henry Kissinger, signore della pace e della guerra, burattinaio che muove i fili del mondo.

This astute, entertaining literary thriller features Helena Marsh, an art authenticator hot on the trail of an extorted painting in Budapest, skirting the law to return it to its rightful heir. When wealthy octogenarian Geza Marton hires art expert Marsh to buy back his family's Titian painting, she flies to Budapest to close what she expects will be a reasonably simple sale. But nothing is ever simple in this beautiful, flawed city where corruption abounds. Helena discovers that there are multiple bidders for the painting, including some dangerous Slavs.

Told in stark, unsparing detail, Haffner's story delves into the illicit underworld of Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, describing how these blood brothers move from one petty crime to the next, spending their nights in underground bars and makeshift hostels, struggling together to survive the harsh realities of gang life and finding in one another the legitimacy denied them by society.

As Soomro moves his characters from urban Karachi to rural Abad to the faraway escape of London, Todiwala consistently and attentively distinguishes the changing cast with practiced ease." - Booklist A charged, hypnotic debut novel about a boy’s life-changing summer in rural Pakistan: a story...

A young congressman discovers a mysterious stuffed aardvark on his doorstep and sets out on a journey to find out what it means in this "weird, wonderful" novel about the secrets we keep from ourselves and their history-shaping consequences (Esquire). It's early one morning on a hot day in...

"Read this now, because everyone you know will be talking about it by early 2019." —Washington Post From the award-winning author of Ways to Disappear, a taut, timely story about what a powerful politician thinks he can get away with and the group of misfits who finally bring him down. On an...

In a crumbling neighbourhood in New Delhi, a child waits for a mother to return home from work. And, in parallel, in a snow-swept town in Germany on the Baltic Sea coast a woman, her memory fading, shows up at a deserted hotel. Worlds apart, both embark, in the course of that night, on...

High season is coming to an end, and fishing guide Jake Trent suddenly has some time on his hands. As the ex-lawyer ponders rekindling his romance with park ranger Noelle Klimpton, a surprise call from a long-lost love lights up his phone.

It's been years since law school graduation, when Jake last saw Divya Navaysam. Now a DC lobbyist, Divya wants Jake to come to Washington for a consulting job - immediately.

Ishmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off to the crazy, ominous kingdom of HARRY SAM - a miserable and dangerous place ruled for thirty years by Harry Sam, a former used car salesman who wields his power from his bathroom throne. In a land of a thousand contradictions peopled by cops and beatniks, black nationalists and white liberals, the crusading Bukka Doopeyduk leads a rebellion against the corrupt Sam in a wildly uproarious and scathing satire....

In his debut, Dancing Arabs, Sayed Kashua established himself as one of the most daring voices of the Middle East. In his searing new novel, a young Arab journalist returns to his hometown - an Arab village within Israel - where his already vexed sense of belonging is forced to crisis when the village becomes a pawn in the never-ending power struggle that is the Middle East. Hoping to reclaim the simplicity of life among kin, the prodigal son returns home to find that nothing is as he remembers: Everything is smaller; the people are petty and provincial.

In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponders modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics.

Adam Gorozpe, a respected businessman in Mexico, has a life so perfect that he might as well be his namesake in the Garden of Eden - but there are snakes in this Eden too. For one thing, Adam's wife, Priscila, has fallen in love with the brash director of national security - also named Adam. Another unlikely snake is the little Boy-God who's started preaching in the street wearing a white tunic and stick-on wings, inspiring Adam's brother-in-law to give up his job to follow this junior deity and implore Adam to do the same.

Set at the turn of the 21st century in China along the Tumen River, which separates northeast China and North Korea, The Ginseng Hunter follows the daily life of a Chinese ginseng hunter, who lives alone in the valley, spending his days up in the mountains looking for ginseng and preparing for winter. He is little aware of the world outside until shadowy figures hiding in the fields, bodies floating in the river, and rumors of thievery and murder begin to intrude on his cherished solitude.

It is the year 1307 and the ancient Order of the Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon is in grave danger. The King of France and Pope Clement V are plotting its destruction and scheming to appropriate the Order's most sacred and dangerous secret. This is taken away by Etienne de Congost, a battle-weary but incorruptible man who flees through a world in ruin, dodging plots and papal spies in a life-and-death struggle. Will he keep the secret from the evil hands of king and pope?