Vilnius Poker


Book Description

four different perspectives, and it captures the surreal horror of life under the Soviet yoke." --Book Jacket.




Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius


Book Description

Although set inside the corruption and cynicism of Lithuania's post-Soviet space, this novel is horrifyingly prescient of today's politics. A former child prodigy and government puppet master, transformed into a modern-day Sun-Tzu, retreats to an underground compound to wage war on the cockles of the earth.




The Changeling


Book Description

Oe introduces Kogito Choko, a writer in his early sixties, as he rekindles a childhood friendship with his estranged brother-in-law, the renowned filmmaker Goro Hanawa. Goro sends Kogito a trunk of tapes he has recorded of reflections about their friendship, but as Kogito is listening one night, he hears something odd. "I'm going to head over to the Other Side now," Goro says, and then Kogito hears a loud thud. After a moment of silence, Goro's voice continues: "But don't worry, I'm not going to stop communicating with you." Moments later, Kogito's wife rushes in; Goro has jumped to his death. With that, Kogito begins a far-ranging search to understand what drove his brother-in-law to suicide. His quest takes him from the forests of southern Japan to the washed-out streets of Berlin, where Kogito confronts the ghosts from his own past and that of his lifelong, but departed, friend.




Old School


Book Description

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself. The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.




13 Things That Don't Make Sense


Book Description

Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Even today there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the sixteenth century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don't Make Sense Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow's breakthroughs. Is ninety six percent of the universe missing? If no study has ever been able to definitively show that the placebo effect works, why has it become a pillar of medical science? Was the 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Spanning fields from chemistry to cosmology, psychology to physics, Michael Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement and controversy of the scientific unknown.




Whitehorn's Windmill


Book Description

Because of his political views, Kazys Boruta spent years in prison both before and after WWII. In the last phase of his life in Soviet Lithuania, he earned a living by translations published under a pseudonym. Most of Whitehorn’s Windmill (Baltaragio malūnas) was written in 1942, during the German occupation. Bearing a lyrical style that gives full rein to the oral folktale tradition Lithuania is famous for, the novel is by turns romantic, farcical, fantastic, and tragic. The sense of spirituality that permeates the work reflects Lithuania’s pagan roots that were overlaid with an occasionally over-zealous Catholicism not so very long ago. The story is about Whitehorn the miller’s efforts to find a match for his beautiful daughter, Jurga, against various calamities with and among suitors, neighbors, priests and other inhabitants of the village, and ultimately against the devil’s spell. The interesting plot made the novel popular as juvenile literature, too.




In the American Grain


Book Description




Atomizer


Book Description

In Atomizer, Elizabeth A. I. Powell examines pressing questions of today, from equality and political unrest to the diminishing of democratic ideals, asking if it is even appropriate to write about love in a time seemingly hurtling toward authoritarianism. With honesty and humor, her poems explore fragrance and perfumery as a means of biological and religious seduction. Evoking Whitman’s sentiment that we are all made of the same atoms, Atomizer looks toward an underestimated sense—scent—as a way to decipher the liminal spaces around us. Molecules of perfume create an invisible reality where narratives can unfold and interact, pathways through which Powell addresses issues of materialism, body image, and the physical and psychological contours of emotional relationships. A work of fearless social satire and humorous yet painful truth, Atomizer offers a cultural, political, and sociological account of love in the present moment.




TULA


Book Description

A unique story of love set in the Uzupis district of Vilnius, this book is a modern-day classic of Lithuanian fiction.




Zubaida's Window


Book Description

Noted Iraqi journalist's fictional narrative of an Iraqi exile watching her country destroyed on television.