by Richard Ford

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Ecco; First Edition (2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061692042
ISBN-13: 978-0061692048

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”

Then fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons’ parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents’ arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents’ robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.

About the author

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944. He has published six novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, A Multitude of Sins and, most recently, The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes. Richard Ford lives in Maine with his wife, Kristina Ford. Photo credit: Laura Wilson.

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von Wolfgang Herrndorf

Taschenbuch: 256 Seiten
Verlag: rororo; Auflage: 19 (1. März 2012)
Sprache: Deutsch
ISBN-10: 3499256355
ISBN-13: 978-3499256356

“Ein klappriges Auto kam die Straße runtergefahren. Es fuhr langsam auf unser Haus zu und bog in die Garagenauffahrt ein. Eine Minute stand der hellblaue Lada Niva mit laufendem Motor vor unserer Garage, dann wurde der Motor abgestellt. Die Fahrertür ging auf, Tschick stieg aus. Er legte beide Ellenbogen aufs Autodach und sah zu, wie ich den Rasen sprengte. ‹Ah›, sagte er, und dann sagte er lange nichts mehr. ‹Macht das Spaß?›”

Mutter in der Entzugsklinik, Vater mit Assistentin auf Geschäftsreise: Maik Klingenberg wird die großen Ferien allein am Pool der elterlichen Villa verbringen. Doch dann kreuzt Tschick auf. Tschick, eigentlich Andrej Tschichatschow, kommt aus einem der Asi-Hochhäuser in Hellersdorf, hat es von der Förderschule irgendwie bis aufs Gymnasium geschafft und wirkt doch nicht gerade wie das Musterbeispiel der Integration. Außerdem hat er einen geklauten Wagen zur Hand. Und damit beginnt eine Reise ohne Karte und Kompass durch die sommerglühende deutsche Provinz, unvergesslich wie die Flussfahrt von Tom Sawyer und Huck Finn.

“Man lacht viel, wenn man ‘Tschick‘ liest, aber ebenso oft ist man gerührt, gelegentlich zu Tränen. ‘Tschick’ ist ein Buch, das einen Erwachsenen rundum glücklich macht und das man den Altersgenossen seiner Helden jederzeit schenken kann.”  – Gustav Seibt, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Eine Geschichte, die man gar nicht oft genug erzählen kann, lesen will.”  – Tobias Rüther, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

“‘Tschick‘ ist ein schöner, trauriger Abenteuerroman aus dem rätselhaften deutschen Osten, der nur einen Nachteil hat: Dass er viel zu schnell zu Ende geht.” – Jörg Magenau, Deutschlandradio

“Auch in fünfzig Jahren wird dies noch ein Roman sein, den wir lesen wollen. Aber besser, man fängt gleich damit an.” – Felicitas von Lovenberg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Man sieht die Welt mit anderen Augen nach diesem Buch.” – Rolling Stone

Über den Autor

Wolfgang Herrndorf, 1965 in Hamburg geboren, hat Malerei studiert und unter anderem für die «Titanic» gezeichnet. 2002 erschien sein Debütroman «In Plüschgewittern», 2007 der Erzählband «Diesseits des Van-Allen-Gürtels» und 2010 der Roman «Tschick», der zum Überraschungserfolg des Jahres avancierte. Wolfgang Herrndorf wurde u.a. mit dem Deutschen Erzählerpreis (2008), dem Brentano-Preis (2011), dem Deutschen Jugendliteraturpreis (2011), dem Hans-Fallada-Preis und dem Leipziger Buchpreis (2012) ausgezeichnet.

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by Karen Maitland

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Penguin (26 February 2009)
ISBN-10: 0141031913
ISBN-13: 978-0141031910

The year is 1348 and the first plague victim has reached English shores. Panic erupts around the country and a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the deadly disease, unaware that something far more deadly is,  in fact, travelling with them.

The ill-assorted company — a scarred trader in holy relics, a conjurer, two musicians, a healer and a deformed storyteller — are all concealing secrets and lies. And at their heart is the strange, cold child — Narigorm — who reads the runes. But as law and order breaks down across the country and the battle for survival becomes ever more fierce, Narigorm mercilessly compels each of her fellow travellers to reveal the truth … and each in turn is driven to a cruel and unnatural death.

“[Maitland] brings to life a medieval England of muddy streets and half-naked children fighting each other for pieces of dog dung to sell to the tanners, as sheep-stealers swing purple-faced from the gallows … She neatly catches the spirit of primitive superstition that governed every aspect of 14th century life and then rolls on with it for her own story-telling ends … Company of Liars is a richly evocative page-turner which brings to life a lost and terrible period of British history, with a disturbing final twist worthy of a master of the spine-tingler, such as Henry James.”–Daily Express, UK

“Transports readers back to the days of the Black Death … Paying homage to The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, this is a gripping read … As a reader you are taken as close to the plague as you would ever wish to go.” —Bookseller

“Karen Maitland has dug into some obscure corners of medieval history to produce an almost parallel universe: a place where myth, magic, and superstition take over as the established order breaks down, but a world that nevertheless rings true. On top of that, she has fashioned a compelling mystery story that should appeal to a much wider readership than historical fiction fans … Compelling.” —Daily Mail, UK

About the author

Karen Maitland (born 1956 in England) is a British author of medieval thriller fiction. Maitland has an honours degree in Human Communication and doctorate in Psycholinguistics.Her works include The White Room published in 1996by Yorkshire Art Circus, Company of Liars, published in 2008 by Delacorte Press; The Owl Killers, published in 2009 by Michael Joseph; and The Gallows’ Curse published by Penguin in 2011.

She has worked as a writer and editor on a number of cross-cultural books including “Poems of Cultural Diversity” and “Cinders in the Wind”.

Maitland is dyslexic and resides in medieval city of Lincoln not very far from Sherwood Forest. – source: Wikipedia.com

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by David Bezmozgis

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (March 27, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1250002516
ISBN-13: 978-1250002518

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title

Summer, 1978. Brezhnev sits like a stone in the Kremlin, Israel and Egypt are inching towards peace, and in the bustling, polyglot streets of Rome, strange new creatures have appeared: Soviet Jews who have escaped to freedom through a crack in the Iron Curtain. Among the thousands who have landed in Italy to secure visas for new lives in the West are the members of the Krasnansky family — three generations of Russian Jews.

There is Samuil, an old Communist and Red Army veteran, who reluctantly leaves the country to which he has dedicated himself body and soul; Karl, his elder son, a man eager to embrace the opportunities emigration affords; Alec, his younger son, a carefree playboy for whom life has always been a game; and Polina, Alec’s new wife, who has risked the most by breaking with her old family to join this new one. Together, they will spend six months in Rome — their way station and purgatory. They will immerse themselves in the carnival of emigration, in an Italy rife with love affairs and ruthless hustles, with dislocation and nostalgia, with the promise and peril of a new life. Through the unforgettable Krasnansky family, David Bezmozgis has created an intimate portrait of a tumultuous era.

Written in precise, musical prose, The Free World is a stunning debut novel, a heartfelt multigenerational saga of great historical scope and even greater human debth. Enlarging on the themes of aspiration and exile that infused his critically acclaimed first collection, Natasha and Other Stories, The Free World establishes Bezmozgis as one of our most mature and accomplished storytellers.

About the author:

David Bezmozgis is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. David’s stories have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Harpers, Zoetrope All-Story, and The Walrus. His first book, Natasha and Other Stories, was published in 2004 in the US and Canada and was subsequently translated into fifteen languages. Natasha was a New York Times Notable Book, one of the New York Public Library’s 25 Books to Remember for 2004, and an Amazon.com Top 10 Book for 2004. Natasha was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award (UK), the LA Times First Book Award (US), and the Governor General’s Award (Canada). It won the Toronto Book Award and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for First Book. In the summer of 2010, David was included in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 issue, celebrating the twenty most promising fiction writers under the age of forty.

The Free World, David’s first novel, was published in April 2011 in the U.S. Canada, the UK, and Holland. Subsequent translations will appear in Germany, Italy, France, Israel and Spain.

Born in Riga, Latvia, David immigrated to Toronto with his parents in 1980. — credit: Amazon.com

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by Kathleen Winter

Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat; Original edition (January 4, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080217082X
ISBN-13: 978-0802170828

Wayne, born into the harsh, rural landscape of Labrador, Canada, in 1968, is a hermaphrodite. It is his father who ultimately decides to raise him as a male and names him. Only Wayne’s parents and their friend Thomasina Baikie, also present at his birth, are aware of his gender duality. The two women silently battle against Wayne’s father’s gender assignment, and as Wayne grows older, he must contend with the two genders struggling for dominance within him. His father, Treadway, a trapper who spends most of his time outdoors, works hard to steer Wayne away from his feminine side. His mother, Jacinta, becomes increasingly estranged from her husband as she mourns the loss of her female child. Following the tragic death of her husband and daughter, Thomasina travels the world and sends enticing postcards to Wayne of the world beyond his own.

A simple yet eloquent coming-of-age tale, this debut novel quietly questions our assumptions about gender by presenting us with a host of complex, evocative characters. A fantastic read that will appeal to fans of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002). — credit: Julie Hunt, Booklist

About the author:

Kathleen Winter (born February 25, 1960) is a Canadian short story writer and novelist.

Born in Bill Quay, near Gateshead in the north of England and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador, Winter began her career as a script writer for Sesame Street before becoming a columnist for The Telegram in St. John’s. Her debut short story collection, boYs, was published in 2007 and won that year’s Winterset Award and Metcalf-Rooke Award.

Her novel Annabel was published in 2010, and won the Thomas Head Raddall Award. It was a shortlisted nominee for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the 2010 Governor General’s Awards. It held the distinction of being the only novel to make the short list of all three awards in 2010. In 2011 it was shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction.

She lives in Montreal with her Québécois husband and is the sister of novelist Michael Winter. — credit: Wikipedia

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by Hilary Mantel
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (May 8, 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-0805090031

The sequel to Hilary Mantel’s 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn

Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne’s head?

Bring Up the Bodies is one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2012, one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of The Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2012

Description from Macmillan. Click here to download the reading guide for Bring Up the Bodies (PDF).

About the author:

Hilary Mantel was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, England on 6 July 1952. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Sheffield University. She was employed as a social worker, and lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, before returning to Britain in the mid-1980s. In 1987 she was awarded the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for an article about Jeddah, and she was film critic for The Spectator from 1987 to 1991.

Her novels, of which a number are also prize winners and notable works, include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), A Change of Climate (1994), An Experiment in Love (1995), The Giant, O’Brien (1998), and Beyond Black (2005).

In 2009, her novel Wolf Hall (2009) was the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award and 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The sequel to Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, was published in 2012 and won the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She is currently working on the third novel of the series. (Biography from the British Council)

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by Alina Bronsky; Tim Mohr (translator)
Europa Editions (26. April 2011); 304 pages
ISBN-10: 160945006X
ISBN-13: 978-1609450069

Rosa Achmetowna is the outrageously nasty and wily narrator of this rollicking family saga from the author of Broken Glass Park When she discovers that her seventeen-year-old daughter, “stupid Sulfia,” is pregnant by an unknown man she does everything to thwart the pregnancy, employing a variety of folkloric home remedies. But despite her best efforts the baby, Aminat, is born nine months later at Soviet Birthing Center Number 134. Much to Rosa’s surprise and delight, dark eyed Aminat is a Tartar through and through and instantly becomes the apple of her grandmother’s eye. While her good for nothing husband Kalganow spends his days feeding pigeons and contemplating death at the city park, Rosa wages an epic struggle to wrestle Aminat away from Sulfia, whom she considers a woefully inept mother. When Aminat, now a wild and willful teenager, catches the eye of a sleazy German cookbook writer researching Tartar cuisine, Rosa is quick to broker a deal that will guarantee all three women a passage out of the Soviet Union. But as soon as they are settled in the West, the uproariously dysfunctional ties that bind mother, daughter and grandmother begin to fray.

Told with sly humor and an anthropologist’s eye for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic. In her new novel, Russian-born Alina Bronsky gives readers a moving portrait of the devious limits of the will to survive.

About the author:

Alina Bronsky was born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. She moved to Germany when she was thirteen. Her debut novel, Broken Glass Park, was nominated for one of Europe’s most important literary awards, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, and was published by Europa Editions in 2010.

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