Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini
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Translated from the Italian by John Cullen
Nominated by:
Bibliotecca Nazionale Centrale de Roma, Rome, Italy
Publisher of Nominated EditionChatto & Windus ISBN 0701176776
ABOUT THE BOOK
Timoteo: high-flying career as a surgeon, beautiful wife, luxurious apartment, villa by the sea - he seems the epitome of success and glamour. But then his daughter falls off her scooter and is rushed to the hospital in a coma. A colleague operates on her head injuries and, while the agonised Timoteo awaits the outcome, he holds the reader in the vice-like grip of his confession. For, beneath the veneer of his apparently charmed life, there is a story of squalor, degradation, deceit and strange passion. The story of a doomed love affair with a woman who, from the moment Timoteo meets her, undermines everything he thought he knew about himself. Mazzantini's chilling portrait of a supremely self-assured man losing control has taken readers by storm across the world. Highly atmospheric, subtly disturbing, it keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. In the end, the suspense of wondering whether Timoteo's daughter will live is overtaken by the question of deciding just how much pity her guilty father deserves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Mazzantini was born in Dublin and now lives in Rome. She trained as an actress but left the stage to concentrate on writing. Don't Move is her second novel and won the prestigious Strega Prize. She has three children and is married to the actor Sergio Castelitto, who will star, alongside Penelope Cruz, in the forthcoming film of the book.
Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh
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Nominated by:
New York Public Library, USA
Publisher of Nominated EditionW.W. Norton ISBN 0393057925
ABOUT THE BOOK
This brilliant novel chronicles the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II. Central to the story is one Chinese family: Claude, raised to be more British than the British and ashamed of his own heritage; his father, Humphrey, whose Anglophilia blinds him to possible defeat and his wife's dalliances; and the redoubtable Grandma Siok, whose sage advice falls on deaf ears.Expatriates, spies, fifth columnists, and nationalists-including the elusive young woman Ling-Li-mingle in this exotic culture as the Japanese threat looms. Beset by the horror of war and betrayal and, finally, torture, Claude must embrace his true heritage. In the extraordinary final paragraphs of the novel, the language itself breaks into Chinese. With penetrating observation, Vyvyane Loh unfolds the coming-of-age story of a young man and a nation, a story that deals with myth, race, and class, with the ways language shapes perceptions, and with the intrigue and suffering of war.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vyvyane Loh was born in Malaysia and grew up in Singapore. She holds undergraduate and medical degrees from Boston University, and she graduated from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She now lives outside Boston,
The Swallows of Kabulby Yasmina Khadra
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Translated from the French by John Cullen
Nominated by:
New York Public Library, USA
Cleveland Public Library, USA
Tampere City Library, Finland
Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway
Publisher of Nominated EditionNan A. Talese / Doubleday ISBN 0385510012Heinemann ISBN 043401141
ABOUT THE BOOK
Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen's dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq's wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure.Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice. The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul, who took a feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by the army. He is the author of two other books published in English, In the Name of God and Wolf Dreams. He lives in France.
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl
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Translated from the Danish by Anne Born
Nominated by:
Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark
Publisher of Nominated EditionHarcourt ISBN 0151010439
ABOUT THE BOOK
Irene Beckman appears to have a perfect life: two grown children, a house in a prosperous suburb of Copenhagen, and a successful career as a family lawyer. She is cool, sophisticated, and still exotically good-looking, the dyed hair her only concession to time.
Then her husband announces that he's leaving her, and her mother reveals some unexpected information about Irene's father. Suddenly, Irene Beckman is neither wife nor daughter. Nor, she realizes, is it at all clear who she has been all these years. It is time to find out.
An Altered Light is another fascinating exploration of the nature of chance and relationships-between parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and strangers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jens Christian Grøndahl is one of the most celebrated and widely read novelists in Europe today. He has written plays, essays, and twelve novels, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Copenhagen
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
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Nominated by:
City of Johannesburg Library & Information Services, South Africa
Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek, Brussels, Belgium
Publisher of Nominated EditionFaber & Faber ISBN 0571221807
ABOUT THE BOOK
Jugnu and his lover, Chanda, have disappeared.
Though unmarried, they had been living together, embracing the contemporary mores of the English town where they lived but disgracing themselves in the eyes of their close-knit Pakistani community. Rumours about their disappearance abound, but five months go by before anything certain is known. Finally, on a snow-covered January morning, Chanda's brothers are arrested for the murder of their sister and Jugnu.
Shock and disbelief spread through the community, and for Jugnu's brother, Shamas, and his wife, Kaukab, it is a moment that marks the beginning of the unravelling of all that is sacred to them. As the novel unfolds over the next twelve months, we watch Kaukab struggle to maintain her Islamic piety, as the effects of the double murder prove increasingly corrosive to the life of her family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nadeem Aslam is the author of the award-winning novel Season of the Rainbirds. He lives in the UK.
Havoc, in its Third Yearby Ronan Bennett
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Nominated by:
Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland
Newcastle Libraries & Information Service, England
Waterford County Library, Ireland
Publisher of Nominated EditionBloomsbury Publishing ISBN 0747562490Simon & Schuster ISBN 0743258568
ABOUT THE BOOK
England in the 1630s: an unsettled country in turbulent times. People are gripped by fear: fear of crime and disorder, of foreign invasion, of Catholic conspiracies, of the vagrant poor. In a town in northern England a group of Puritan reformers tightens its hold on the lives of the inhabitants.
John Brigge is the local coroner, a respected man who wants nothing more than to work his farm and be with his wife, now expecting their first child. But when he is called to investigate an infanticide, Brigge finds himself drawn unwillingly into a vicious power struggle. Katherine Shay, a fiery Irishwoman, stands accused of killing her baby. The Puritan faction demands her immediate execution. Brigge suspects their haste has little to do with justice. What are they hiding? Does he really want to know? Against a background of looming crisis and paranoia, Brigge is torn between the desire to protect his family and the need to see justice done. And he is haunted by the mystery of Katherine Shay.
Powerful, dramatic and utterly gripping, Havoc, In Its Third Year is a superb novel. Its canvas is large, its characters full-blooded, its atmosphere apocalyptic. Like the best historical novels, it vividly captures the period yet resonates with the present.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ronan Bennett was brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the author of three novels, The Second Prison, Overthrown by Strangers, and, most recently, The Catastrophist, shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Novel Award. He has also written screenplays for film and television. Ronan lives in London with his family.
Graceland by Chris Abani
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Nominated by:
Stockholm Public Library, Sweden
Publisher of Nominated EditionFarrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0374165890
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this dazzling debut by a singular new talent, the sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria, provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis, a teenage Elvis impersonator hoping to make his way out of the ghetto. Broke, beset by floods, and beatings by his alcoholic father, and with no job opportunities in sight, Elvis is tempted by a life of crime. Thus begins his odyssey into the dangerous underworld of Lagos, guided by his friend Redemption and accompanied by a restless hybrid of voices including The King of Beggars, Sunday, Innocent and Comfort. Ultimately, young Elvis, drenched in reggae and jazz, and besotted with American film heroes and images, must find his way to a GraceLand of his own. Nuanced, lyrical, and pitch perfect, Graceland is a remarkable story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria where the trappings of American culture reign supreme.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Abani's fiction and poetry has been widely anthologized. His latest book, Kalakuta Republic, is a collection of poetry based on his experience as a political prisoner in Nigeria, and received the PEN USA West Freedom-to-Write Award and the Prince Claus of the Netherlands Award.
The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe
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Nominated by:
Liverpool Libraries and Information Services, England
Publisher of Nominated EditionViking ISBN 0670892548
ABOUT THE BOOK
Set against the backdrop of the Millennium celebrations and Britain's increasingly compromised role in America's war against terrorism, The Closed Circle lifts the lid on an era in which politics and presentation, ideology and the media have become virtually indistinguishable. Darkly comic, hugely engaging, and compulsively readable, it is the much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Coe's bestselling novel The Rotters' Club, and reintroduces us to the characters first encountered in that book. But whereas The Rotters' Club was a novel of innocence, The Closed Circle is its opposite: a novel of experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1961. His novels include The Rotters' Club, The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death and What a Carve Up!, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger.
The Master by Colm Tóibín
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Nominated by:
Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland
Cork City Libraries. Ireland
Limerick City Library, Ireland
Edinburgh City Libraries & Information Services, Scotland
Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, Leuven, Belgium
State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand
Cape Town Central Library, South Africa
Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota, Colombia
Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA
Free Library of Philadelphia, USA
Hartford Public Library, USA
Kansas City Public Library, USA
Minneapolis Public Library, USA
San José Public Library, USA
Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County, USA
Publisher of Nominated EditionPicador ISBN 0330485652Scribner ISBN 0743250400
ABOUT THE BOOK
In The Master, Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly alive and vibrant in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955 and lives in Dublin. He is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time.
The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton
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Nominated by:
Edmonton Public Library, Canada
Calgary Public Library, Canada
Publisher of Nominated EditionGaspereau Press ISBN 1894031911
ABOUT THE BOOK
In a small town in the mountains, a young boy is given a suitcase filled with battered old books. So begins a lifelong pursuit of the elusive creature known as the logogryph. Describing imaginary books and alternate realities, Wharton explores the mysterious alchemy called reading, and along the way summons a cast of characters that includes duelling margin scribblers, a dislodged protagonist, and an unforgettable family that becomes one man's mythology.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Wharton is an author and creative writing instructor at the University of Alberta. He has published two previous award-winning novels, Icefields (1995), and Salamander (2001). Thomas lives in Edmonton with his wife and three children. He is currently at work on a new novel.Copyright © 2005 Dublin City Public Libraries
