The Chibineko Kitchen (Meals to Remember at the Chibineko Kitchen, #1)

Yuta Takahashi

Follow the bank of the Koitogawa river until you reach the beach. From there a path of white seashells will lead you to the Chibineko Kitchen. Step inside, they'll be expecting you. These are the directions Kotoko has been given. She arrives at the tiny restaurant, perched right by the water, early in the morning. Still reeling from the sudden death of her brother, she's been promised that the food served there will bring him back to her, for one last time. Taking a seat in the small, wood-panelled room, she waits as Kai, the restaurant's young chef, brings out steaming bowls of simmered fish, rice and miso soup. Though she hadn't ordered anything, Kai had somehow known the exact dish her brother always used to cook for her. And as she takes her first delicious bite, the gulls outside fall silent and the air grows hazy . . . Soul-nourishing and comforting, The Chibineko Kitchen will help you remember what matters most in life.

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Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)

Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

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Um Defeito de Cor

Ana Maria Gonçalves

Fascinante história de uma africana idosa, cega e à beira da morte, que viaja da África para o Brasil em busca do filho perdido há décadas. Ao longo da travessia, ela vai contando sua vida, marcada por mortes, estupros, violência e escravidão. Inserido em um contexto histórico importante na formação do povo brasileiro e narrado de uma maneira original e pungente, na qual os fatos históricos estão imersos no cotidiano e na vida dos personagens, UM DEFEITO DE COR, de Ana Maria Gonçalves, é um belo romance histórico, de leitura voraz, que prende a atenção do leitor da primeira à última página. Uma saga brasileira que poderia ser comparada ao clássico norte-americano sobre a escravidão, Raízes.

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Flights

Olga Tokarczuk

From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer. Here I am -- World in your head -- Your head in the world -- Syndrome -- Cabinet of curiosities -- Seeing is knowing -- Seven years of trips -- Guidance from Cioran -- Kunicki: water (I) -- Benedictus, quivenit

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Flights

Olga Tokarczuk

From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer. Here I am -- World in your head -- Your head in the world -- Syndrome -- Cabinet of curiosities -- Seeing is knowing -- Seven years of trips -- Guidance from Cioran -- Kunicki: water (I) -- Benedictus, quivenit

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Dom Casmurro

Machado de Assis

Dom Casmurro é a alcunha de Bento Santiago, que, velho e só, desvela as suas memórias. Uma promessa da mãe, traça-lhe o destino como padre, mas Bento Santiago apaixonado, abandona o seminário. Estuda Direito e casa-se com o seu grande amor, mas o ciúme e a desconfiança adensam-se. Suspeita que não é o pai biológico do filho do casal, Ezequiel, mas sim o seu grande amigo Escobar.

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Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

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Las niñas del naranjel

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Abordaje lírico e irreverente del personaje histórico de la Monja Alférez, que nació en España como niña en 1592 y se sumó travestida como varón a la Conquista de América. </i< Para cumplirle a su Virgen del naranjel ―lo ha salvado de la horca― Antonio huye con dos niñas famélicas. En la selva, tan viva como un animal hecho de muchos, comienza una carta a su tía, priora del convento del que escapó siendo novicia. Arriero, tendero, soldado, grumete y paje, ha empuñado la espada y hundido la daga. Ahora debe cuidar de una manada y de Michi y Mitãkuña, que lo interrumpen una y otra vez con sus preguntas difíciles. La autora encuentra en Catalina de Erauso, la legendaria Monja Alférez, quien narre la cruel destrucción de América y le permita avanzar contra los géneros. Donde la avaricia colonial destruye, esta novela monumental funda una nueva gramática amorosa en la que el cine de Miyazaki, los rezos en latín, las canciones en vasco y las palabras del guaraní rompen la métrica del Siglo de Oro.

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The Storyteller

Mario Vargas Llosa

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

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The Storyteller

Mario Vargas Llosa

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

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Las niñas del naranjel

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Abordaje lírico e irreverente del personaje histórico de la Monja Alférez, que nació en España como niña en 1592 y se sumó travestida como varón a la Conquista de América. </i< Para cumplirle a su Virgen del naranjel ―lo ha salvado de la horca― Antonio huye con dos niñas famélicas. En la selva, tan viva como un animal hecho de muchos, comienza una carta a su tía, priora del convento del que escapó siendo novicia. Arriero, tendero, soldado, grumete y paje, ha empuñado la espada y hundido la daga. Ahora debe cuidar de una manada y de Michi y Mitãkuña, que lo interrumpen una y otra vez con sus preguntas difíciles. La autora encuentra en Catalina de Erauso, la legendaria Monja Alférez, quien narre la cruel destrucción de América y le permita avanzar contra los géneros. Donde la avaricia colonial destruye, esta novela monumental funda una nueva gramática amorosa en la que el cine de Miyazaki, los rezos en latín, las canciones en vasco y las palabras del guaraní rompen la métrica del Siglo de Oro.

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I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’ Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.

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The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Olga Tokarczuk

The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas. In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in  what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior? Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone--or something--seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target. A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.

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Assim na terra como embaixo da terra

Ana Paula Maia

Uma colônia penal isolada – um terreno com um histórico tenebroso de assassinato e tortura de escravos –, construída para ser um modelo de detenção do qual preso nenhum fugiria, torna-se campo de extermínio. Espécie de capitão do mato/carcereiro, Melquíades é o algoz dos presos, caçando e matando-os como animais, apenas por satisfação pessoal. Os presos, cada qual com sua história, estão sempre planejando a própria fuga, sem saber se vão acabar mortos pelos guardas ou pelo que os espera do lado de fora da Colônia.

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Assim na terra como embaixo da terra

Ana Paula Maia

Uma colônia penal isolada – um terreno com um histórico tenebroso de assassinato e tortura de escravos –, construída para ser um modelo de detenção do qual preso nenhum fugiria, torna-se campo de extermínio. Espécie de capitão do mato/carcereiro, Melquíades é o algoz dos presos, caçando e matando-os como animais, apenas por satisfação pessoal. Os presos, cada qual com sua história, estão sempre planejando a própria fuga, sem saber se vão acabar mortos pelos guardas ou pelo que os espera do lado de fora da Colônia.

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O amor e sua fome

Lorena Portela

"Em qualquer cidadezinha, enterro é evento pra ir todo mundo, cachorro, pessoas e também crianças, sem distinção nenhuma, conhecidos ou não." Nessa cidadezinha em particular, o morto é seu Jeremias, e as crianças são Dora e Esmê, duas primas inseparáveis, cuja alegria não é abalada nem pelo defunto ali diante delas. Pelo contrário, as duas se ocupam de um santinho pendendo do bolso de Jeremias, num jogo de cumplicidade e graça. O pequeno episódio, que de alguma forma irá marcar a vida de ambas, é um retrato bem-acabado dessa relação incomum. Dora foi criada sem a mãe, e por um pai entregue à solidão e à apatia, um ente silencioso que vive na penumbra. Desse lar fantasmagórico, Dora salta todos os dias para a vida ao lado de Esmê, sua abertura para o mundo lá fora, acompanhada também pelos vizinhos e por Joana, a amiga-desatino. O mundo lá fora é Rio do Miradouro, uma cidade no interior do Ceará, daquelas em que todos sabem da vida de todos e onde cada um tem uma opinião sobre como o outro deve viver. Quando a infância vai se afastando no retrovisor, a adolescência traz consigo Jaime e as primeiras descobertas. Dora e Esmê dividem tudo e a cumplicidade de ambas, antes infantil, ganha novos contornos: a dupla vira um trio e a vida adulta chega, enfim, com suas belezas e ausências. Neste romance forte, Lorena Portela captura, na passagem do tempo, os movimentos íntimos do amor e do amadurecimento, assim como os efeitos da solidão e do desamparo.

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Women Without Men

Shahrnush Parsipur

"Using the techniques of both the fabulist and the polemicist, Parsipur continues her protest against traditional Persian gender relations in this charming, powerful novella." —Publishers Weekly This modern literary masterpiece follows the interwoven destinies of five women—including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a prostitute, and a schoolteacher—as they arrive by different paths to live together in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. Drawing on elements of Islamic mysticism and recent Iranian history, this unforgettable novel depicts women escaping the narrow confines of family and society, and imagines their future living in a world without men.

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La Sorcière

Marie NDiaye

Lucie n'est pas une sorcière talentueuse. Ses deux filles, elles, se révèlent extrêmement douées, au-delà des prétentions et des espoirs de Lucie qui n'aspirait qu'à en faire des sorcières efficaces. Quant à la mère de Lucie, son génie est absolu. Mais qui sont les corneilles ? Est-on plus libre, de prendre la place des oiseaux, leur forme et leur aspect, et d'imiter leur cri ?

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