Welcome to our book review site www.go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
I Called Him Necktie
"Probe[s] deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes . . . A compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship" (Ruth Ozeki, award-winning author of A Tale for the Time Being). Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually, he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, who shows up every day in a suit and tie to...
Ich nannte ihn Krawatte
Nur wenige sorgfältig gewählte Worte benötigt Milena Michiko Flašar, um ihre Figuren zum Leben zu erwecken, nur wenige Szenen, um ganze Schicksale zu erzählen. Ein junger Mann verlässt sein Zimmer, in dem er offenbar lange Zeit eingeschlossen war, tastet sich durch eine fremde Welt. Eine Bank im Park wird ihm Zuflucht und Behausung, dort öffnet er die Augen, beginnt zu sprechen und teilt mit einem wildfremden Menschen seine Erinnerungen. Der andere ist viele Jahre älter, ein im Büro angestellter Salaryman wie Tausende. Er erzählt seinerseits, über Tage und Wochen hinweg, Szenen eines Lebens voller Furcht und Ohnmacht, Hoffnung und Glück. Beide sind Außenseiter, die dem Leistungs...
A Very French Christmas
Joyeux Noël: "[An]endearing collection of Christmas stories from ten of France's most esteemed writers―past and present―skillfully translated." ― Foreword Reviews This collection brings together the best French Christmas stories of all time, featuring classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed twentieth century authors Irène Némirovsky and Nobel Prize winner Anatole France and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jean-Philippe Blondel. With a holiday spirit conveyed through sparkling Paris streets, opulent feasts, wandering orphans, kindly monks, homesick soldiers, oysters, crayfish, ham, bonbons, flickering desire, and more than a little wine, this collection encapsulates Christmas à la française—delicious, intense and unexpected.
Who Is Martha?
“Vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom . . . A brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte” (Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology). In this poignant yet rollicking novel, ninety-six-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski forgoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski too has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale is “a book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child’s faith [that] astonishes to the very end” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung).
A Very Russian Christmas
A collection of short Christmas stories by some of Russia's greatest nineteenth and twentieth century authors—several appearing in English for the first time. Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, this collection offers a holiday feast of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy; Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales; Chekhov's unmatchable skills are on full display in his story of a female factory owner and her wretched workers; Klaudia Lukashevitch delights with a sweet and surprising tale of a childhood in White Russia; and Mikhail Zoshchenko recounts madcap anecdotes of Christmas trees and Christmas thieves in the Soviet Era—a time when it was illegal to celebrate the holiday in Russia. There is no shortage of imagination, wit, or vodka on display in this collection that proves, with its wonderful variety and remarkable human touch, that nobody does Christmas like the Russians.
A Very Italian Christmas
Classic and contemporary Christmas stories by great writers from Boccaccio to Strega Prize winner Anna Maria Ortese to Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda. The third in the very popular Very Christmas series, this volume brings together the best Italian Christmas stories of all time in a vibrant collection featuring classic tales and contemporary works. With writing that dates from the Renaissance to the present day, from Boccaccio to Pirandello, as well as Anna Maria Ortese, Natalia Ginzburg, and Grazia Deledda, these literary gems are filled with ancient churches, trains whistling through the countryside, steaming tureens, plates piled high with pasta, High Mass, dashed hopes, golden crucifixes, flowing wine, shimmering gifts, and plenty of style. Like everything the Italians do, this is Christmas with its very own verve and flair, the perfect literary complement to a Buon Natale italiano. Includes stories by: Luigi Pirandello ·• Camillo Boito • Matilde Serao • Anna Maria Ortese • Andrea De Carlo • Grazia Deledda • Giovanni Verga • Giovanni Boccaccio • Natalia Ginzburg
Allmen and the Dragonflies
"In the honorable vein of elegant, gentleman thieves, comes Allmen, the colorful protagonist of Suter's beautifully observed, deliciously fun novel" (Noah Charney, author of The Museum of Lost Art). Johann Friedrich von Allmen, a bon vivant of dandified refinement, has exhausted his family fortune. Forced to downscale, Allmen inhabits the garden house of his former Zurich estate, attended by his Guatemalan butler, Carlos. When not reading novels by Balzac and Somerset Maugham, he plays jazz on a Bechstein baby grand. Allmen's fortunes take a sharp turn when he meets Jojo, a stunning blonde whose lakeside villa contains five Art Nouveau bowls created by renowned French artist Émile Gallé an...
All Backs Were Turned
"An existential fable" from the uncompromising Polish author of Killing the Second Dog, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe ( The New York Times). In this novel of breathtaking tension and sweltering love, two desperate friends on the edge of the law—one of them tough and gutsy, the other small and scared—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov's recently married younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov's business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It...
Moving the Palace
"A Middle Eastern heart-of-darkness tale that flows like a dream . . . Crackling with razor-sharp humor" ( The New York Times). At the dawn of the twentieth century, a young Lebanese explorer leaves the Levant for the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. The protagonist soon takes charge of this hoard of architectural fragments, ferrying the dismantled landmark through Sudan, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula, attempting to...
Neapolitan Chronicles
This prizewinning collection of stories and essays set in post-WWII Naples is "required reading for [Elena] Ferrante fans" ( Kirkus Reviews). A classic of European literature, this superb collection of fiction and reportage is set in Italy's most vibrant and turbulent metropolis—Naples—in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Depicting the widespread suffering and brutal desperation that plagued the city, it comprises a mix of masterful storytelling and piercing journalism. This book, with its unforgettable portrait of Naples high and low, is also a stunning literary companion to the great neorealist films of the era by directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. From a...
