Books Around the World

One thing I like about certain days-- like birthdays and Christmas-- is that I get to dream about going on a book-buying spree finally. At the very least, I can expect to get book gift certificates!

In this case, lists like these become my source for inspiration of what books to get (aside from the usual speculative fiction/genre books I can find on the shelves). For this iteration of Books Around the World, I managed to doggedly go through the shelves and bins of various bookstores for interesting selections.

To wit (watch your step, this is a long post):

From Israeli author Joshua Sobol, here is Cut Throat Dog:

An enigmatic Israeli who calls himself Shakespeare – because he’s got a way with words – finds himself jolted on a sidewalk in Manhattan: Is that who I think it is, he wonders, or am I crazy?

Who he thinks it is, is one of the world’s premier terrorists. Someone who murdered his partner. Someone he blames for the fog of despair that’s overcome him. And most shockingly, someone Shakespeare’s mysterious associates in Tel Aviv tell him had been killed in the desert.

So is Shakespeare cracking up, or cracking the case of a lifetime?

In the hands of esteemed Israeli author Joshua Sobol, the wicked riddle becomes a masterful work that transcends genre: It’s a sumptuously written literary novel and a taut spy thriller. It’s a moving recollection of a purposeful youth and a graphic account of the hunt for terrorists. It’s the story of a mid-life crisis and the endless crisis of the Middle East. It’s a work of wild and whimsical word-play and fast-paced, deadly gun-play.

It is, in short, the English-language debut of a mesmerizing writer at the top of his form.

From American-Lebanese writer Alia Yunis comes The Night Counter:

After 85 long years, Fatimah Abdullah is dying, and she knows when her time will come. In fact, it should come just nine days from tonight, the 992nd nightly visit of Scheherazade, the beautiful and immortal storyteller from the epic The Arabian Nights.

Just as Scheherazade spun magical stories for 1,001 nights to save her own life, Fatima has spent each night telling Scheherazade her life stories, all the while knowing that on the 1,001st night, her storytelling will end forever. But between tonight and night 1,001, Fatima has a few loose ends to tie up. She must find a wife for her openly gay grandson, teach Arabic (and birth control) to her 17-year-old great-granddaughter, make amends with her estranged husband, and decide which of her troublesome children should inherit her family's home in Lebanon--a house she herself has not seen in nearly 70 years. All this while under the surveillance of two bumbling FBI agents eager to uncover Al Qaeda in Los Angeles.

But Fatima’s children are wrapped up in their own chaotic lives and disinterested in their mother or their inheritances. As Fatima weaves the stories of her husband, children, and grandchildren, we meet a visionless psychic, a conflicted U.S. soldier, a gynecologist who has a daughter with a love of shoplifting and a tendency to get unexpectedly pregnant, a Harvard-educated alcoholic cab driver edging towards his fifth marriage, a lovelorn matchmaker, and a Texas homecoming queen. Taken in parts, Fatima’s relations are capricious and steadfast, affectionate and smothering, connected yet terribly alone. Taken all together, they present a striking and surprising tapestry of modern Arab American life.

Shifting between the U.S. and Lebanon over the last hundred years, Alia Yunis crafts a bewitching novel imbued with great humanity, imagination, and a touch of magic realism. Be prepared to be utterly charmed.

From Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, there is There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales:

The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer

Vanishings and aparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.

Another Israeli author, Assaf Gavron has penned Almost Dead:

Politically incorrect, provocative, and steeped in wit and irony, a fast-paced tragicomedy about the perfectly ordinary madness in today's Middle East

A thirtysomething Tel Aviv businessman, Eitan "Croc" Einoch's life is turned upside down when he narrowly escapes a suicide bombing on the minibus he rides to work. When he lives through a second attack, and then a third, he becomes, reluctantly, a national media celebrity. Naturally, the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the attacks are less than happy. This embarrassing symbol of their failure—this "CrocAttack"—must be neutralized.

Meanwhile, Fahmi Sabih lies in a coma, quarrelling with his conscience. The young Palestinian suicide bomber has learned everything he knows about bombs, targets, and revenge from his brother. So why has Einoch survived? As Fahmi's story unfolds, it becomes clear that their paths are destined to cross again—for there is another bombing still to come—and then luck will change drastically for one or both of them. But who, if anyone, has right on his side?

From British author Matt Haig, there is The Radleys:

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.

One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.

The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain—and lose—when we deny our appetites.

Boy, I can't wait to go book-shopping next week.