I'm taking a pause here to celebrate some of the most interesting reads that have been arriving in the mail lately. Oh, the riches before me...
Dusk and Other Stories (Random House)
By James Salter
Introduction by Philip Gourevitch
The new Modern Library edition of Salter's classic of short fiction represents an opportunity for me to actually read stories by Salter that are not "Dusk" (which happens to be the only fiction of his that I've read). Do I like his work? I'm not really sure. But this is a good opportunity to find out. This is a slim (160 page) hardcover edition of a collection that was first published 25 years ago and won the PEN/Faulkner award. It seems to be the only story collection that James Salter has ever written.
Hygiene and the Assassin (Europa Editions)
By Amélie Nothomb
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Amélie Nothumb is a prolific and celebrated Belgian writer and Hygiene and the Assassin was her first novel, published in 1992. Europa Editions is bringing it into English translation for the first time in November 2010. The book, which won the Foirnier and René-Fallet prizes, follows a reclusive, dying novelist who has granted five journalists a rare interview. Only one of them is his match: the one who has actually read all his books, and also discovered secrets from the writer's past. Since Hygiene and the Assassin was released when she was 25, Northumb has published seventeen books (that is, one a year) to much acclaim. She is translated into more than thirty languages. Tin House describes her as "a phenomenon in France ... The French have completely adopted her, doting on her as on one of their own for nearly twenty years, yet her work has been overlooked in the United States."
The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for the Baroque Masterpiece (House of Anansi)
By Eric Siblin
House of Anansi describes The Cello Suites as "part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery," unfolding over 250 years with the strange story of one of Bach's most haunting and beloved music pieces. Word has it that this is an especially beautifully written book as well. This is Siblin's first book, though the Montreal-based journalist has been writing about music and culture for years. He doubles as a director of documentaries. The Cello Suites won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction and the McAusian First Book Prize. It was shortlisted for the Writer's Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Award, and British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-fiction.
The Sun Magazine
July 2010 edition
Always an uncommonly provocative and beautiful publication, this issue of The Sun features, among other things, an interview with Malidoma Some on rites of passage, writing by Aldous Huxley on those famous "doors of perception," readers telling stories about pretending, Gillian Kendall struggling with yoga and meditation, and new fiction by two writers I'm eager to discover. I subscribe to a lot of excellent magazines, but The Sun remains a stand-out.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House)
By David Mitchell
Now on his third novel, Mitchell is doing rather well for himself. The Irish writer is a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the "Best Young British Novelist" according to Granta, and even TIME Magazine piped up by naming him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. What else is there to say? Oh, right, the actual book: it opens in 1799 in Nagasaki Harbor during the long years of the self-contained Japanese empire. The harbor is the nation's one portal to the wider world and home to farthest post of the Dutch East Indies Company. Here, Jacob de Zoet enters, with five years to earn his fortune before returning to Holland and earning the hand of a wealthy fiancee. "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."
Fish: A History of One Migration (Russian Life)
By Peter Aleshkovsky
Translated from the Russian by Nina Shevchuk-Murray
Despite the implications of the title, this is actually a work of fiction. Fish follows Vera ("Faith" in Russian) in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union as she journeys from an Estonian community in the center of the world's largest continent to tumultuous Moscow. She is nicknamed "Fish" by her boor of a husband, because he thinks she is "cold and unfeeling." The publisher reports that the "male author's choice of a first-person, female narrator (extremely rare in Russia) makes Fish all the more significant." It also proclaims that this is "the first Russian novel to grapple with post-Soviet colonial 'otherness' without transposing it into a fantastic, post-apocalyptic realm or reducing it black-and-white conflicts of the popular detective genres." I expect to be reviewing this title for the August 2010 issue of The Collagist.
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