This memoir by Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen explores the complicated position of shared and divided loyalties. The book leans into the paradoxes of the immigrant experience especially the emotionally charged position of someone born in Vietnam now living in the USA. It avoids the usual platitudes of the immigrant memoir and extends the discussion onto broader critical ideas of colonialism, resistance and identity. The writing is powerful.
The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
A wonderfully imaginative novel of a distopian future. In a world brought too collapse by a rampant capitalist biotech the characters make their way across a blighted landscape. Sounds grim indeed, but there is humor as well as pathos and the beautifully crafted writing lifts you up into the swirl of events where past and present intersect and loop back again. The first in the 3 volume MaddAddam Trilogy that I never wanted to end.
By the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and ALIAS GRACE
*
Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility.
*
Praise for Oryx and Crake:
'In Jimmy, Atwood has created a great character: a tragic-comic artist of the future, part buffoon, part Orpheus. An adman who's a sad man; a jealous…
The author takes us on Captain Cook's last voyage that started in London in 1776, sailed around Africa calling at New Zealand before heading north visiting Hawaiian Islands, Tahiti and Tonga. He left tropical delights to head further north, charged with finding a Northwest Passage and reached the icy waters of the Chukchi Sea. He returned to the Hawaii where he was killed by native Hawaiians. The author does a fine job of detailing the voyage, and dealing with the power relations in the colonial contacts. It is a narrative history that is critical of the colonial underpinnings of the journey. The central idea that Cook was suffering mental decline as the voyage progressed is more asserted than proven. One point of criticism: For a voyage narrative it seems odd and very annoying that there is no map.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.
“Hampton Sides, an acclaimed master of the nonfiction narrative, has taken on Cook’s story and retells it for the 21st century.”—Los Angeles Times
On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest…
Offers a profound and incisive analysis of the underlying factors that culminated in the assault on the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. The book delves into structural trend within the USA to provide a broader and deeper context for comprehending the uprising. The compelling. narrative is essential reding for all those interest in the contemporary USA.
