Called "a perceptive and amusing social critic, with a wonderful eye for detail" by The Washington Post, Slavenka Drakulic-a native of Croatia-has emerged as one of the most popular and respected critics of Communism to come out of the former Eastern Bloc. In A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, she offers a eight-part exploration of Communism by way of an unusual cast of narrators, each from a different country, who reflect on the fall of Communism. Together they constitute an Orwellian send-up of absurdities during the final years of European Communism that showcase this author's tremendous talent.

    A Boston ornithologist speeds through the landscape in a four-by-four chasing Arctic Terns; a schoolboy is relocated to the northernmost town of Siglufjördur to compete in a chess tournament; and a husband packs his wife off to visit her aunt in Sweden. Despite the desolation of their surroundings, the characters encounter strange company: ghostly presences in the early hours, enviable neighbors, and fellow writers with remarkably similar ambitions. Plotting a constellation of singular, glittering images that are rendered nonetheless complete, this magnificent compilation intersects the paths of its characters, who are at once isolated in their individual pursuits and yet connected in the vast realm of dreams.

    But for some, there's a lot more at stake than a Hermes Birkin. Leila has been in search of a wealthy husband for over a decade. Nadia moves to Dubai to support her husband s career, only to have her sacrifices thrown in her face. Sugar escapes the UK in an attempt to escape her past. Lady Luxe, the rebellious Emirati heiress, scoffs at everything her culture holds sacred. Until the day her double life starts unravelling at the seams. Set against a backdrop of luxury hotels and manmade islands, Desperate in Dubai tells the tale of four desperate women as they struggle to find truth, love, and themselves.

    Suleri; of her tenacious grandmother Dadi and five siblings; and of her own passage to the West."Nine autobiographical tales that move easily back and forth among Pakistan, Britain, and the United States. . . . She forays lightly into Pakistani history, and deeply into the history of her family and friends. . . . The Suleri women at home in Pakistan make this book sing."—Daniel Wolfe, New York Times Book Review"A jewel of insight and beauty. . . . Suleri's voice has the same authority when she speaks about Pakistani politics as it does in her literary interludes."—Rone Tempest, Los Angeles Times Book Review"The author has a gift for rendering her family with a few, deft strokes, turning them out as whole and complete as eggs."—Anita Desai, Washington Post Book World"Meatless Days takes the reader through a Third World that will surprise and confound him even as it records the author's similar perplexities while coming to terms with the West. Those voyages Suleri narrates in great strings of words and images so rich that they left this reader . . . hungering for more."—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune"Dazzling. . . . Suleri is a postcolonial Proust to Rushdie's phantasmagorical Pynchon."—Henry Louise Gates, Jr., Voice Literary Supplement

    Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany’s mercurial mother flees in a fit of rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas’ house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation. Here is a spellbinding novel about a brother and sister who have lost their way; about how myths come to pass, history is written, and war stains us forever.

    Behind the hilarious antics is a commentary on the power of money and the evils of charlatanism.

    Josef meets his wife, Kveta, before the Second World War at a public lecture on Hittite culture. Kveta chooses to marry Josef over their mutual friend Hynek, but when her husband is later arrested and imprisoned for an unnamed crime, Kveta gives herself to Hynek in return for help and advice. The author explores the complexities of what is not spoken, what cannot be said, the repercussions of silence after an ordeal, the absurdity of forgotten pain, and what it is to be an outsider.   In Zmeškal’s tale, told not chronologically but rather as a mosaic of events, time progresses unevenly and unpredictably, as does one’s understanding. The saga belongs to a particular family, but it also exposes the larger, ongoing struggle of postcommunist Eastern Europe to come to terms with suffering when catharsis is denied. Reporting from a fresh, multicultural perspective, Zmeškal makes a welcome contribution to European literature in the twenty-first century.

    Ndalu is a normal twelve-year old boy in an extraordinary time and place. Like his friends, he enjoys laughing at his teachers, avoiding homework and telling tall tales. But Ndalu's teachers are Cuban, his homework assignments include writing essays on the role of the workers and peasants, and the tall tales he and his friends tell are about a criminal gang called Empty Crate which specializes in attacking schools. Ndalu is mystified by the family servant, Comrade Antonio, who thinks that Angola worked better when it was a colony of Portugal, and by his Aunt Dada, who lives in Portugal and doesn't know what a ration card is. In a charming voice that is completely original, Good Morning Comrades tells the story of a group of friends who create a perfect childhood in a revolutionary socialist country fighting a bitter war. But the world is changing around these children, and like all childhood's Ndalu's cannot last. An internationally acclaimed novel, already published in half a dozen countries, Good Morning Comrades is an unforgettable work of fiction by one of Africa's most exciting young writers.

    Having run away from home, he survives by selling peanuts and single cigarettes on the street. The proposal by the elderly Swiss woman named Anna is shocking and preposterous: go to the mountains with her, as a translator, so she can find her lost lover from decades ago and pray over the graves of their murdered children.Anna and Jallal's journey is wrought with danger and unspeakable tragedy. It was under similar circumstances that Anna first met the Arab Nasreddine. Ousted from the traveling circus where she performed as a trapeze artist, she had little choice but to accept Nasreddine's dangerous offer to live with him in a makeshift tent. But it was here, amid poverty, racism, and terrifyingly random violence, that they fell in love.A best seller in France, The Lovers of Algeria is an unflinchingly candid story about a country where terrorism and government corruption are commonplace. As Anna and Nasreddine, beaten by time and memory, circle each other in Algeria, Anouar Benmalek shows with heart-wrenching detail that love can endure even the most inhuman conditions.A Lannan Translation Series Selection

    (Daedalus and Icarus, as well as King Minos play a part in the story, too.) At the same time, the novel explores very modern predicaments of the idealist who unwittingly destroys his family. The mythical Greek intervention in Colchis is subtly told by Chiladze as an allegory of Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s subversion and conquest of Georgia.

    In an old ruined city, emptied of most of its inhabitants, Ustad Ramzi, a famous wrestler past his prime, and Gohar Jan, a well-known courtesan whose kotha once attracted the wealthy and the eminent, contemplate the former splendour of their lives and the ruthless currents of time and history that have swept them into oblivion.

    The Sand Child tells the story of a Moroccan father's effort to thwart the consequences of Islam's inheritance laws regarding female offspring. Already the father of seven daughters, Hajji Ahmed determines that his eighth child will be a male. Accordingly, the infant, a girl, is named Mohammed Ahmed and raised as a young man with all the privileges granted exclusively to men in traditional Arab-Islamic societies. As she matures, however, Ahmed's desire to have children marks the beginning of her sexual evolution, and as a woman named Zahra, Ahmed begins to explore her true sexual identity. Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun relates the extraordinary events of Ahmed's life through a professional storyteller and the listeners who have gathered in a Marrakesh market square in the 1950s to hear his tale. A poetic vision of power, colonialism, and gender in North Africa, The Sand Child has been justifiably celebrated around the world as a daring and significant work of international fiction.

    She's drawn up a shortlist: Reuben, the fail safe; a long-admired school friend; abd Frederick Adams, the 42-year-old, soon-to-be-pot-bellied father of her best friend. What she doesn't know is that her choice of suitor will have a drastic effect on the rest of her life. Three men. Three paths. One will send Ayodele to Europe, to university and to a very different life - but it will be a voyage strewn with heartache. Another will send her around the globe on an epic journey, transforming her beyond recognition but at the cost of an almost unbearable loss. And another will see her remain in Africa, a wife and mother caught in a polygamous marriage. Each will change her irrevocably - but which will she choose?

    They are bons vivants. They are three young Pakistani men in New York City at the turn of the millennium: AC, a gangsta-rap-spouting academic; Jimbo, a hulking Pushtun DJ from the streets of Jersey City; and Chuck, a wideeyed kid, fresh off the boat from the homeland, just trying to get by. Things start coming together for Chuck when he unexpectedly secures a Wall Street gig and begins rolling with socialites and scenesters flanked by his pals, who routinely bring down the house at hush-hush downtown haunts. In a city where origins matter less than the talent for self-invention, the three Metrostanis have the guts to claim the place as their own. But when they embark on a road trip to the hinterland weeks after 9/11 in search of the Shaman, a Gatsbyesque compatriot who seemingly disappears into thin air, things go horribly wrong. Suddenly, they find themselves in a changed, charged America.Rollicking, bittersweet, and sharply observed, Home Boy is at once an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, and a story of love and loss, as well as a unique meditation on Americana and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.

    Everyone in Cape Verde knows Señor da Silva. Successful entrepreneur, owner of the island's first automobile, a most serious, upright, and self-made businessman, Señor da Silva is the local success story. Born an orphan, he never married, he never splurged; one good suit was good enough for him; and he never wandered from the straight and narrow. Or so everyone thought. But when Señor da Silva's 387-page Last Will and Testament is read aloud; a marathon task on a hot afternoon which exhausts reader after reader; there's eye-opening news, and not just for the smug nephew so certain of inheriting all Señor da Silva's property. With his will, Señor da Silva leaves a memoir that is a touching web of elaborate self-deceptions. He desired so ardently to prosper, to be taken seriously, to join (perhaps, if they'll have him) the exclusive Grémio country club, and, most of all, to be a good man. And yet, shady deals, twists of fate, an illegitimate child: such is the lot of poor, self-critical Señor da Silva. A bit like Calvino's Mr. Palomar in his attention to protocol and in his terror of life's passions; a bit like Svevo's Zeno (a little pompous, a little old-fashioned, and often hapless), Señor da Silva moves along a deliciously blurry line between farce and tragedy: a self-important buffoon becomes a fully human, even tragic, figure in the arc of this hilarious and touching novel - translated into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and now, at last, English.