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We Are Still Here edited by Nahid Shahalimi
A collection of first-hand accounts from courageous Afghan women who refuse to be silenced in the face of the Taliban.
After decades of significant progress, the prospects of women and girls in Afghanistan are once again dependent on radical Islamists who reject gender equality. When the United States announced the end of their twenty-year occupation and the Taliban seized control of the country on August 15, 2021, a steep regression of social, political, and economic freedoms for women in the country began.
But just because a brutal regime has taken over doesn't mean Afghan women will stand by while their rights are stripped away. In We Are Still Here, artist and activist Nahid Shahalimi compiles the voices of thirteen powerful, insightful, and influential Afghan women who have worked as politicians, journalists, scientists, filmmakers, artists, coders, musicians, and more. As they reflect on their country's past, stories of their own upbringing and the ways they have been able to empower girls and women over the past two decades emerge. They report on the fear and pain caused by the impending loss of their homeland, but, above all, on what many girls and women in Afghanistan have already lost: freedom, self-determination, and joy.
The result is an arresting book that issues an appeal to remember Afghan girls and women and to show solidarity with them. Like us, they have a right to freedom and dignity, and together we must fight for their place in the free world because Afghanistan is only geographically distant. Extremist ideas know no limits.
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Toujours La France by Janine Marsh
Following on from her hugely popular books, My Good Life in France and My Good Year in France, ex-pat Janine Marsh shares more heart-warming and entertaining stories of her new life in rural France.
Since giving up their city jobs in London and moving to rural France over ten years ago, Janine and husband Mark have renovated their dream home and built a new life for themselves, adjusting to the delights and the peculiarities of life in a small French village.
Including much-loved village characters such as Mr and Mrs Pepperpot, Jean-Claude, Claudette and the infamous Bread Man, in Toujours La France Janine also introduces readers to some new faces and funny stories, as she and Mark continue their lives in this special part of northern France. With birthday parties, rural traditions, christenings and even a funeral, there is never a quiet moment in the Seven Valleys.
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The Fallout by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
On a cold day in Reykjavik, a baby goes missing from her pram. When the child's blanket washes up on the beach, and the mother is found dead, everyone's worst fears seem to have been realised.
Eleven years later, and detective Huldar and child psychologist Freyja are now working in the same police building, on the same team. Freyja believes that personal and professional relationships must remain separate, however hard that may be. But when a woman's dismembered body is found in a deserted car, her head missing, and Freyja and Huldar find themselves working on the same case, the secrecy around their affair threatens to crack. And when Freyja is accused of a serious breach of police protocol, will Huldar be able to help her? Meanwhile, their search to identify the body takes the case back into secrets of the past, and the unspoken crimes that bind three separate families.
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Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
The long-awaited first short story-collection by the author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, tales of weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence
With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material,” Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.
In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.
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Elizabeth Finch: A Novel by Julian Barnes
From the award-winning writer, a swift narrative that turns on the death of a vivid and particular woman, and becomes the occasion for a man's deeper examination of love, friendship and the mysteries of biography.
This novel of unrequited platonic love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Elizabeth Finch. When Neil, the narrator, takes her adult education class on Culture and Civilization, he becomes deeply fascinated by this private, withholding yet commanding woman. While other personal relationships and even his children drift from his grasp, Neil hangs tight to Finch and her unorthodox application of history and philosophy to the practical matters of daily living. Neil wants as much to figure her out as to please her intellectually, both impossible.
In Neil's story, readers are treated to everything they cherish in Barnes: his eye for the unconventional forms love can take, a compelling swerve into nonfiction (this time through Neil's obsessive study of Julian the Apostate, following the trail of crumbs Elizabeth Finch has left for him after she dies), and the forcefully moving undercurrent of history and biography as both nourishment and guide in our daily lives. Finch is a character who challenges the reader as much as her students to think for themselves, and leaves us searching for a way to deal with one of her simplest of ideas: "Some things are up to us, and some things are not up to us."
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The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
Named one of 2016’s most influential people by TIME Magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world’s most read and beloved writers. With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story.
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Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini
The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed responds to the heartbreak of the current refugee crisis with this deeply moving, beautifully illustrated short work of fiction for people of all ages, all over the world.
On a moonlit beach, a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summers of his childhood, recalling his grandfather's house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother's goat, the clanking of the cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs, with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee.
When the sun rises, they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.
Khaled Hosseini will donate author proceeds from this book to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and to The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund life-saving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe.
To learn more about UNHCR, please visit: unhcr.org/Khaled-hosseini
To learn more about The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, please visit: khaledhosseinifoundation.org
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Flights by Olga Tokarczuk | Jennifer Croft
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
AS FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." --Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." --Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
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Ties by Domenico Starnone
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
Translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, Ties is a compulsively readable and provocative novel about marriage and family by one of Italy's bestselling novelists.
Like many marriages, Vanda and Aldo's has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in their marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. It is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact.
Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award, The Strega.
Winner of The Bridge Prize for Best Novel 2015