Are You Somebody?

Are You Somebody?
Are You Somebody?

‘Drinking means bad breath and crusted shirt-fronts and bottles of milk wolfed down as a meal and waking in the morning on a pile of coats with noclean knickers and being thin, being cold, being sick’

O’Faolain, a journalist for the Irish Times, was asked to collect her columns for publication, but the introduction she sat down to write eventually expanded into this beautifully cadenced and moving memoir, into which many of the columns have been folded. The second of nine children, O’Faolain lived a bohemian childhood with little money and many books. Her father, a well- known journalist in Ireland, left to her mother the responsibility for their children. O’Faolain’s mother read voraciously and drank with a similar appetite, often neglecting her children. O’Faolain explores the role of women in Ireland and how gender has affected her life. O’Faolain’s candor made a deep impression when the book was published in Ireland; it quickly landed on the bestseller list, staying at the top for 20 weeks. A testament to a full and passionately lived life–all the more affecting because of that life’s vividly described imperfection and pain.

related links

wiki O’Faolain
interview (NPR)
pink slip

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The Question of Bruno

The Question of Bruno by Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon moved to the U.S. from Bosnia in the early 1990s, prior to the siege of Sarajevo. He swiftly learned English and began writing, in his adopted language, stories about the traumas of immigrant experience and the pain of witnessing the war from his American exile. His impressive debut, The Question of Bruno, may lack the fluency and imaginative élan of Kundera and the linguistic density and sophistication of Conrad (both of whom Hemon specifically invokes), yet these stories have a haunting power that lingers long after a first reading.

related links

The Question of Bruno at Random House
NYT book review
first chapter

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The Three-Arched Bridge

The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare

It’s the fourteenth century Balkans, and water transportation has recently been monopolized by a shady outfit called “Boats and Rafts” that imposes standard tolls for water crossings. Our fictitious monk-narrator acts as interpreter when two strangers appear in the realm and offer to build a bridge across the dangerous river that separates and possibly protects the land from the surrounding empires. Much to the dismay of Boats and Rafts, the proposal is accepted. As the construction progresses, suspicion surrounding the bridge grows even more quickly, and eventually unexplained events begin to occur. Against a deftly drawn historical backdrop and with carefully layered modern political commentary, Kadare’s narrative explores economics, mythology, community, and translation with wit and intelligence.

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Ali and Nino

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

Ali and Nino, first published in Vienna in 1937, is one of the enduring romantic novels of the century. An involving tale of love challenged by war, often compared to Romeo and Juliet and Dr. Zhivago, it is as much a story of love as it is a portrait of two exotic cultures. Ali Khan is an Islamic boy from Azerbaijan with his ancestors’ passion for the desert and warrior legends, but his lover Nino, a beautiful Christian girl from Georgia, is the child with a more European sensibility. At once an unforgettable tale of love, adventure and personal heroism, Ali and Nino has persisted in readers’ memories just as the strange background of its author’s life has continued to perplex all who look into it.

 

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Geeks

Geeks by Jon Katz

by Jonathan Katz

Jesse and Eric are roommates in Idaho, nineteen-year old working-class kids who have virtually no social lives. They spend every cent on their computers, and every spare moment online. Jesse and Eric are geeks–suspicious or disdainful of authority figures, proud of their status as outsiders, fervent in their belief in technology. Geeks tells the story of how these young men are using technology to change their lives, to construct new futures and find a new community where they can belong. (excerpted from the back of the book, copyright 2000, Jon Katz.)

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