Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1068
Book Description
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Author: David MitchellPublisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0307375269
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 497
Book Description
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable. The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?” A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author. Praise for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet “A page-turner . . . [David] Mitchell’s masterpiece; and also, I am convinced, a masterpiece of our time.”—Richard Eder, The Boston Globe “An achingly romantic story of forbidden love . . . Mitchell’s incredible prose is on stunning display. . . . A novel of ideas, of longing, of good and evil and those who fall somewhere in between [that] confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive.”—Dave Eggers, The New York Times Book Review “The novelist who’s been showing us the future of fiction has published a classic, old-fashioned tale . . . an epic of sacrificial love, clashing civilizations and enemies who won’t rest until whole family lines have been snuffed out.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post “By any standards, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a formidable marvel.”—James Wood, The New Yorker “A beautiful novel, full of life and authenticity, atmosphere and characters that breathe.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
If He Had Been with Me
Author: Laura NowlinPublisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402277849
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...
A Journey Through Ruins
Author: Patrick WrightPublisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191580082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
A unique evocation of Britain at the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule, A Journey Through Ruins views the transformation of the country through the unexpected prism of every day life in East London. Written at a time when the looming but still unfinished tower of Canary Wharf was still wrapped in protective blue plastic, its cast of characters includes council tenants trapped in disintegrating tower blocks, depressed gentrifiers worrying about negative equity, metal detectorists, sharp-eyed estate agents and management consultants, and even Prince Charles. Cutting through the teeming surface of London, it investigates a number of wider themes: the rise and dramatic fall of council housing, the coming of privatization, the changing memory of the Second World War, once used to justify post-war urban development and reform but now seen as a sacrifice betrayed. Written half a century after the blitz, the book reviews the rise and fall of the London of the post-war settlement. It remains one of the very best accounts of what it was like to live through the Thatcher years.
Threaten to Undo Us
Author: Rose Seiler ScottPublisher: Promontory Press Incorporated
ISBN: 9781773740232
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
As Hitler's Third Reich crumbles and Stalin's army advances, German civilians in the Eastern territories are forced to flee for their lives. Leaving her dying mother, Liesel and her four young children hope they can make it from their home in Poland across the Oder River to safety. But all that awaits them is terror and uncertainty in a brutal new regime that threatens to tear Liesel's family apart. With her husband a prisoner of war in Russia and her children enslaved, Liesel's desire for hearth and home is thwarted by opposing political forces, leaving her to wonder if they will ever be a family again.
The German House
Author: Annette HessPublisher: HarperVia
ISBN: 9780062910301
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
As seen in the New York Times Book Review. A December 2019 Indie Next Pick! Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess's international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator--caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power--as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation's past. If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth? For twenty-four-year-old Eva Bruhns, World War II is a foggy childhood memory. At the war's end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied bombings. But that was two decades ago. Now it is 1963, and the city's streets, once cratered are smooth and paved. Shiny new stores replace scorched rubble. Eager for her wealthy suitor, Jürgen Schoormann, to propose, Eva dreams of starting a new life away from her parents and sister. But Eva's plans are turned upside down when a fiery investigator, David Miller, hires her as a translator for a war crimes trial. As she becomes more deeply involved in the Frankfurt Trials, Eva begins to question her family's silence on the war and her future. Why do her parents refuse to talk about what happened? What are they hiding? Does she really love Jürgen and will she be happy as a housewife? Though it means going against the wishes of her family and her lover, Eva, propelled by her own conscience , joins a team of fiery prosecutors determined to bring the Nazis to justice--a decision that will help change the present and the past of her nation.
Nineteenth Century
Author: Nineteenth Century and After
Author: The General Deception
Author: DECEPTION.The Nineteenth Century
Author: Temple & Contemplation
Author: CorbinPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136142347
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427
Book Description
First published in 1986. This volume brings together five lectures which were originally delivered at different sessions of the famous Eranos Conferences in Ascona, Switzer□land. Henry Corbin himself had outlined the plan for this book, whose title suggests that these diverse studies converge on a common spiritual centre.