Imaginative and intelligent, Alberta is a misfit trapped in a stiflingly provincial town in the far north of Norway whose only affinity is for her extrovert brother Jacob.

    Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh‘s political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother‘s appalling self–sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity –– and a future.

    When his grandfather dies, Aleks channels his storytelling talent to help with his grief.It is a gift he calls on again when the shadow of war spreads to Višegrad, and the world as he knows it stops. Though Aleks and his family flee to Germany, he is haunted by his past - and by Asija, the mysterious girl he tried to save. Desperate to learn of her fate, Aleks returns to his hometown on the anniversary of his grandfather's death to discover what became of her and the life he left behind.Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

    The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: "One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years…" Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

    There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. First published in Holland in 1955, Maria Dermoût's novel was immediately recognized as a magical work, like nothing else Dutch—or European—literature had seen before. The Ten Thousand Things is an entranced vision of a far-off place that is as convincingly real and intimate as it is exotic, a book that is at once a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life.

    We all have a tree inside us. Finding it is just a matter of time. Neda is born in Evin Prison, where her mother is allowed to nurse her for a few months before the arms of a guard appear at the cell door one day and, simply, take her away. Omid, at age three, witnesses the arrests of his political activist parents from his perch at their kitchen table, yogurt dripping from his fingertips. More than twenty years after the violent, bloody purge that took place inside Tehran's prisons, Sheida learns that her father was one of those executed, that the silent void firmly planted between her and her mother all these years was not just the sad loss that comes with death, but the anguish and the horror of murder. Neda, Omid, and Sheida are just three of the many unforgettable characters in Sahar Delijani's startling debut novel, Children of the Jacaranda Tree. Set in post-revolutionary Iran, from 1983 to 2011, it follows a group of mothers, fathers, children, and lovers, some connected by family, others brought together by the tide of history that forces its way into their lives. Finally, years later, it is the next generation that is left with the burden of the past and their country's tenuous future as a new wave of protest and political strife begins. Based on the harrowing experiences of Delijani, her family, and friends, Children of the Jacaranda Tree is a moving, timely drama about three generations of men and women moved by love, inspired by poetry, and motivated by dreams of justice and freedom. For fans of The Kite Runner and In the Shadow of the Banyan, it is a stunningly evocative look at the intimate side of revolution and a brilliant tribute to anyone who has answered the call of history.

    A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Andric's stunning novel. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, the bridge stands witness to the countless lives played out upon it: Radisav, the workman, who tries to hinder its construction and is impaled on its highest point; to the lovely Fata, who throws herself from its parapet to escape a loveless marriage; to Milan, the gambler, who risks everything in one last game on the bridge with the devil his opponent; to Fedun, the young soldier, who pays for a moment of spring forgetfulness with his life. War finally destroys the span, and with it the last descendant of that family to which the Grand Vezir confided the care of his pious bequest - the bridge.

    Mia is “lucky”―she is spoiled by her mother and, as she explains, her two fathers. She gloats over her exotic imported color pencils and won’t be denied a coveted sweater. Then there is the Child who, by contrast, is neither lucky nor unlucky. She makes so little impression that she seems not even to merit a name.At school, their fellow students, whether lucky or luckless or unlucky, seem consumed by an almost murderous rage. Adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty and soul-crushing hierarchies. Then, one day, the Child sneaks into the classroom after hours and adds ominous sentences to her classmates’ notebooks. This sinister but initially inconsequential act unlocks a series of events that end in horrible violence.But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel. A teacher, who is also this book’s author, wakes from an intense dream. When she arrives at her next class, she recognizes a student: the Child, who knows about the events of the novel’s first half, which took place years earlier. Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of art making and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

    Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the wife of his childhood friend and rival, Ozi—the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player even as corruption drains its political will.Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a contemporary Pakistan as far more vivid and disturbing than the exoticized images of South Asia familiar to most of the West. This debut novel establishes Mohsin Hamid as a writer of substance and imagination.

    Her name is Amineh.It Shows that Amineh palys the main roll in the all history of Iran...

    Its twelve, stand-alone fragments follow the first year of her separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and earth-shaking explosions. The seemingly artless prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and images remain seared into your retina for a long time afterwards.

    Extinction, his last novel, takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau. The intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family, Murau lives in self-exile in Rome. Obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, he resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. But when news comes of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate.Written in Bernhard's seamless style, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.

    In a brilliant translation by Margaret Sayers Peyden, this remarkable new look at the Book of Genesis will appeal to readers of the novels of Isabel Allende, Anne Rice’s Jesus Chronicles, and to all lovers of great imaginative literature.

    Despite war, repression and censorship, a renaissance has taken place in Iran over the last 25 years - a renaissance hidden from Westerners since the Iranian revolution of 1979. "Strange Times, My Dear" brings the first ever translated selection of work from three generations worth of the best in Iranian writing - featuring short stories, novel extracts and poems from over 40 contributors - to the English speaking world. For thousands of years, multiple ethnicities, languages and religions have co-existed in Iran - and continue to do so despite traumatic events and the oppression of recent decades. Their literature has flourished in adversity, producing works of diverse beauty and incalculable importance. "Strange Times, My Dear" reveals a major and largely undiscovered branch of world literature for the first time.

    A national best-seller in both hardcover and paperback, it introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.