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Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon

ISBN 0312282990 (0-312-28299-0)
Softcover, St Martins Pr

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Book summary:
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.
But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.
More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park [via]
More editions of Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay:
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: ISBN 0679450041 (0-679-45004-1)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: ISBN 0312282990 (0-312-28299-0)
  Softcover, St Martins Pr
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

ISBN 1400032717 (1-4000-3271-7)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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Mark Haddon's bitterly funny first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Christopher John Francis Boone is a 15-year-old boy, mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behaviour of his elders and peers.
Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbour's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbours--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

ISBN 1400079179 (1-4000-7917-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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With The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown masterfully concocts an intelligent and lucid thriller that marries the gusto of an international murder mystery with a collection of fascinating esoteria culled from 2,000 years of Western history.
A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient society who, in the moments before his death, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his daughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle. The duo become both suspects and detectives searching for not only Neveu's father's murderer but also the stunning secret of the ages he was charged to protect. Mere steps ahead of the authorities and the deadly competition, the mystery leads Neveu and Langdon on a breathless flight through France, England, and history itself.
Brown (Angels and Demons) has created a page-turning thriller that also provides an amazing interpretation of Western history. Brown's hero and heroine embark on a lofty and intriguing exploration of some of Western culture's greatest mysteries--from the nature of the Mona Lisa's smile to the secret of the Holy Grail. Though some will quibble with the veracity of Brown's conjectures, therein lies the fun. The Da Vinci Code is an enthralling read that provides rich food for thought. --Jeremy Pugh [via]
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Golden/Geisha

ISBN 2253117951 (2-253-11795-1)
Hardcover, Librairie Generale Francaise, LGF

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Book summary:
604pages. poche. broché. [via]
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- Golden/Geisha: ISBN 2253117951 (2-253-11795-1)
  Hardcover, Librairie Generale Francaise, LGF
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The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

ISBN 0770428207 (0-7704-2820-7)
Softcover, Bantam Books of Canada Ltd

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Throughout her career, Margaret Atwood has played with different literary genres in her novels--historical fiction (Alias Grace), pulp fiction (The Blind Assassin), the comedy of manners (The Robber Bride)--but no foray into genre fiction has been as successful as her turn to speculative fiction in The Handmaid's Tale. Published in 1985, it echoes Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, but a vibrant feminism drives Atwood's portrait of a futuristic dystopia. In the Republic of Gilead, we see a world devastated by toxic chemicals and nuclear fallout and dominated by a repressive Christian fundamentalism. The birthrate has plunged, and most women can no longer bear children. Offred is one of Gilead's Handmaids, who as official breeders are among the chosen few who can still become pregnant.
The Handmaid's Tale is an imaginatively audacious novel that is at once a page-turning psychological thriller, a moving love story, and a chilling warning about what might be waiting for us around the corner. What ultimately makes it stand out is Atwood's ability to balance a passionate political statement with finely wrought literary fiction. The Handmaid's Tale is a remarkable work by one of Canada's most inventive writers. --Jeffrey Canton [via]
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini

ISBN 1594480001 (1-59448-000-1)
Softcover, Riverhead Books

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The New York Times bestseller and international classic loved by millions of readers. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, their lies. A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic. [via]
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The Kite Runner: Bookclub-in-a-box Presents the Discussion Companion for Khaled Hosseini's Novel
by Khaled Hosseini

ISBN 1417640391 (1-4176-4039-1)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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The "kite runner" of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.
Narrated by Amir as a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.
The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park. --Lisa Alward [via]
More editions of The Kite Runner: Bookclub-in-a-box Presents the Discussion Companion for Khaled Hosseini's Novel:
- The Kite Runner: Bookclub-in-a-box Presents the Discussion Companion for Khaled Hosseini's Novel: ISBN 0606308857 (0-606-30885-7)
  Hardcover, Demco Media
- The Kite Runner: Bookclub-in-a-box Presents the Discussion Companion for Khaled Hosseini's Novel: ISBN 1417640391 (1-4176-4039-1)
  Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Life of Pi
by Yann Martel

ISBN 0156027321 (0-15-602732-1)
Softcover, Harcourt

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Book summary:
Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."
An award winner in Canada (and winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize), Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book. --Brad Thomas Parsons [via]
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The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold

ISBN 159413023X (1-59413-023-X)
Softcover, Thorndike Press

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Book summary:
On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.
As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where "there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue".
The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow".
Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons, Amazon.com [via]
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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791075699 (0-7910-7569-9)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Bloom's Guides collection, presents concise critical excerpts from The Handmaid's Tale to provide a scholarly overview of the work. This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story," which details the conditions under which The Handmaid's Tale was written. This title also includes a short biography on Margaret Atwood and a descriptive list of characters. [via]
More editions of Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale:
- Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale: ISBN 0791075699 (0-7910-7569-9)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Eleanor Atwood

ISBN 079105926X (0-7910-5926-X)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
Atwood's best-known novel depicts one woman's struggle to survive in a futuristic society in which women have become property.
The title, Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Margaret Atwood, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]
More editions of Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale:
- Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale: ISBN 079105926X (0-7910-5926-X)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden

ISBN 1400096898 (1-4000-9689-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
The first thing you notice about the audio version of Memoirs of a Geisha is that Arthur Golden's 428-page novel has been reduced to a scant two cassettes. But dismay quickly gives way to mounting pleasure as Elaina Erika Davis (Contact, As the World Turns) begins her delicate rendering of geisha culture in the years before World War II. Davis reads the abbreviated story of Sayuri with an authentic-sounding Japanese accent--one mixed with a magical combination of Asian reserve and theatrical energy. As Sayuri ages from a 9-year-old peasant girl to a popular geisha in her late 20s, Davis directs her voice gently away from curious youth to a tone that reflects Sayuri's uphill life.
From start to finish, the listener is absorbed in the elegant spirit of Davis's performance, eager to hear the next chapter of Sayuri's transformation into one of the most famous geishas of the century. How unfortunate, then, to learn that book readers not only get the basic story, but a fascinating look at the intricate rules and rituals of geisha culture. Here, for example, is one of the many revelations omitted from the cassette: "Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs.... In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial.... When a man sits beside her, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath."
We're also denied several subplots--the aborted friendship between Sayuri and a geisha named Pumpkin, for example, or much of the story involving the man Sayuri is secretly in love with. But what remains is as precious as a traditional Japanese kimono--at once artistic, suggestive, and moving. --Ann Senechal [via]
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Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Solo
by John Williams

ISBN 1423412206 (1-4234-1220-6)
Softcover, Hal Leonard Corp

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(Piano Solo Songbook). Six instrumental themes by John Williams from this Oscar-winning film, arranged for piano solo. Includes: As the Water * Becoming a Geisha * The Chairman's Waltz * Going to School * Sayuri's Theme * Sayuri's Theme and End Credits. [via]
More editions of Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Solo:
- Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Solo: ISBN 1423412206 (1-4234-1220-6)
  Softcover, Hal Leonard Corp
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Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden, Pilar Vazquez

ISBN 0307275302 (0-307-27530-2)
Softcover, Random House Espanol

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En Memorias de una geisha, Arthur Golden abre una ventana al misterioso mundo del erotismo en Japón y describe con fidelidad la delicada fortaleza de la cultura de las geishas de Kioto a lo largo del siglo. [via]
More editions of Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha:
- Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 9681905849 (968-19-0584-9)
  Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
- Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0307275302 (0-307-27530-2)
  Softcover, Random House Espanol
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Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides

ISBN 0312422156 (0-312-42215-6)
Softcover, Picador USA

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Book summary:
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." & I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons [via]
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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith

ISBN 1594200637 (1-59420-063-7)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and from the celebrated author of White Teeth comes another bestselling masterwork Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle , this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent. Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Time , and Publishers Weekly A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Denver Post , and Publishers Weekly bestseller A Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Christian Science Monitor , and Minneapolis Star Tribune Best Book of the Year Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize BACKCOVER: Praise for On Beauty : "A thoroughly original tale . . . wonderfully engaging, wonderfully observed . . . That rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A thing of beauty. Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty ." - Los Angeles Times "Smith's specialty is her ability to render the new world, in its vibrant multiculturalism, with a kind of dancing, daring joy. . . . Her plots and people sing with life. . . . One of the best of the year, a splendid treat. [via]
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Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd

ISBN 0142001740 (0-14-200174-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler [via]
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

ISBN 1417642149 (1-4176-4214-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel. [via]
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White Teeth: Reader's Companion
by Zadie Smith

ISBN 1568959508 (1-56895-950-8)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Book summary:
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range, guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again.
Still, the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks."
Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided, and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's... parts." And the men, of course, have their own involvement in bodily functions:
The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man.
Not all of White Teeth is so amusingly carnal. The mixed blessings of assimilation, for example, are an ongoing torture for Samad as he watches his sons grow up. "They have both lost their way," he grumbles. "Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave." These classic immigrant fears--of dilution and disappearance--are no laughing matter. But in the end, they're exactly what gives White Teeth its lasting power and undeniable bite. --Eithne Farry [via]
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Las asombrosas aventuras de Kavalier Y Clay/ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon

ISBN 8497932951 (84-9793-295-1)
Softcover, Debolsillo

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- Las asombrosas aventuras de Kavalier Y Clay/ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: ISBN 8497932951 (84-9793-295-1)
  Softcover, Debolsillo
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El Codigo Da Vinci / The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown, Juanjo Estrella

ISBN 8495618605 (84-95618-60-5)
Softcover, Ediciones Urano

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Book summary:
Nº 1 en USA

¿ Qué misterio se oculta tras la sonrisa de Mona Lisa? Durante siglos, la Iglesia ha conseguido mantener oculta la verdad& hasta ahora.

Antes de morir asesinado, Jacques Saunière, el último Gran Maestre de una sociedad secreta que se remonta a la fundación de los Templarios, transmite a su nieta Sofía una misteriosa clave. Saunière y sus predecesores, entre los que se encontraban hombres como Isaac Newton o Leonardo Da Vinci, han conservado durante siglos un conocimiento que puede cambiar completamente la historia de la humanidad. Ahora Sofía, con la ayuda del experto en simbología Robert Langdon, comienza la búsqueda de ese secreto, en una trepidante carrera que les lleva de una clave a otra, descifrando mensajes ocultos en los más famosos cuadros del genial pintor y en las paredes de antiguas catedrales. Un rompecabezas que deberán resolver pronto, ya que no están solos en el juego: una poderosa e influyente organización católica está dispuesta a emplear todos los medios para evitar que el secreto salga a la luz.

Un apasionante juego de claves escondidas, sorprendentes revelaciones, acertijos ingeniosos, verdades, mentiras, realidades históricas, mitos, símbolos, ritos, misterios y suposiciones en una trama llena de giros inesperados narrada con un ritmo imparable que conduce al lector hasta el secreto más celosamente guardado del inicio de nuestra era.

" Intriga y amenaza se mezclan en una de las mejores novelas de suspense que he leído jamás. Un sorprendente relato donde los enigmas se suceden a los secretos y éstos a las adivinanzas."

Clive Cussler.

" Un inteligente thriller lleno de enigmas y códigos que, sin duda, puede recomendarse con rotundo entusiasmo."

The New York Times
[via]
More editions of El Codigo Da Vinci / The Da Vinci Code:
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  Softcover, Ediciones Urano
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El Codigo Da Vinci / The Da Vinci Code: El Illustrado / Illustraded
by Dan Brown, Juanjo Estrella

ISBN 8495618818 (84-95618-81-8)
Hardcover, Ediciones Urano

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Book summary:
¿Qué misterio se oculta tras la sonrisa de la celebre Mona Lisa? Durante siglos, la Iglesia ha conseguido mantener oculta la verdad& hasta ahora.
Uno de los libros con mas tiempo en el tope de la lista de los Best Sellers del New York Times!.... El Código Da Vinci, ahora en un audiolibro narrado en español del bestseller internacional de Dan Brown, producido exclusivamente por FONOLIBRO, el cual no podrá dejar de escuchar hasta que llegue al inesperado final.
Mientras se encontraba en un viaje de negocios en Paris, Robert Langdon, experto en simbologia de la universidad de Harvard, recibe una llamada urgente a media noche. Jacques Saunière, el último Gran Maestre de una sociedad secreta que se remonta a la fundación de los Templarios, ha sido asesinado en el museo del Louvre. Saunière antes de morir transmite a su nieta Sofía una misteriosa clave. Saunière y sus predecesores, entre los que se encontraban hombres como Isaac Newton o Leonardo Da Vinci, han conservado durante siglos un conocimiento que puede cambiar completamente la historia de la humanidad. Ahora Sofía, con la ayuda Robert Langdon, comienza la búsqueda de ese secreto, en una trepidante carrera que les lleva de una clave a otra, descifrando mensajes ocultos en los más famosos cuadros del genial pintor y en las paredes de antiguas catedrales. Un rompecabezas que deberán resolver pronto, ya que no están solos en el juego: una poderosa e influyente organización católica está dispuesta a emplear todos los medios para evitar que el secreto salga a la luz.
FonoLibro, lider en audiolibros en espanol, les trae una afamada historia sobre un apasionante juego de claves escondidas, sorprendentes revelaciones, acertijos ingeniosos, verdades, mentiras, realidades históricas, mitos, símbolos, ritos, misterios y suposiciones en una trama llena de giros inesperados narrada con un ritmo imparable que conduce al oyente hasta el secreto más celosamente guardado del inicio de nuestra era.
VERSION RESUMIDA: 7 CDs (APROX 8 HRS) [via]
More editions of El Codigo Da Vinci / The Da Vinci Code: El Illustrado / Illustraded:
- El Codigo Da Vinci / The Da Vinci Code: El Illustrado / Illustraded: ISBN 8495618818 (84-95618-81-8)
  Hardcover, Ediciones Urano
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Cometas En El Cielo / The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini

ISBN 8478888470 (84-7888-847-0)
Hardcover, Oceano De Mexico

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  Hardcover, Oceano De Mexico
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El Curioso Incidente Del Perro A Medianoche
by Mark Haddon

ISBN 8478889108 (84-7888-910-8)
Softcover, Salamandra Publicacions Y Edicions

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Book summary:
2005 SALAMANDRA Spanish Edition SOFTCOVER [via]
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  Softcover, Salamandra Publicacions Y Edicions
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Desde Mi Cielo
by Alise Ceboll

ISBN 1400059453 (1-4000-5945-3)
Softcover, Random House Mondadori

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Book summary:
From her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by a murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously,we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished. Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive and then some.
But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. [via]
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  Softcover, Random House Mondadori
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Desde Mi Cielo / The Lovely Bones
by Aurora Echevarria, Alice Sebold

ISBN 0307209431 (0-307-20943-1)
Softcover, Random House Espanol

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Book summary:
From her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by a murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously,we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished. Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive and then some.
But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. [via]
More editions of Desde Mi Cielo / The Lovely Bones:
- Desde Mi Cielo / The Lovely Bones: ISBN 0307209431 (0-307-20943-1)
  Softcover, Random House Espanol
Desde Mi Cielo/from My Sky
by Alice Sebold

ISBN 9685960356 (968-5960-35-6)
Softcover, Random House Mondadori

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  Softcover, Random House Mondadori
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Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden, Pilar Vazquez

ISBN 0307275310 (0-307-27531-0)
Softcover, Random House Espanol

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Book summary:
Poco antes de su muerte, Sayuri, una anciana japonesa afincada en Nueva York, cuenta la historia de su vida a un joven amigo americano. El poder de seducción de la voz narrativa de esta geisha legendaria transporta al lector a un Japón de entre guerras, lleno todavía de ecos feudales, y a una de las tradiciones japonesas que más curiosidad inspiran en el mundo occidental: la de la geisha, una peculiar práctica cultural a la que están ligadas artes tales como la seducción, la danza, la pintura o la clásica ceremonia del té. [via]
More editions of Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha:
- Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 8495501198 (84-95501-19-8)
  Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
- Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0307275310 (0-307-27531-0)
  Softcover, Random House Espanol
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Mujer Del Viajero en el Tiempo
by Audrey Niffenegger

ISBN 0307344835 (0-307-34483-5)
Softcover, Random House Mondadori

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Book summary:
Clare y Henry son en apariencia una pareja normal que lleva una vida corriente en Chicago. Él es bibliotecario y ella artista, pero la terrible verdad es que Henry sufre una extraña enfermedad que lo hace viajar en el tiempo, al pasado o al futuro sin previo aviso, normalmente fruto de una situación de estrés previa. Lo transporta desnudo, con desagradables malestares y vulnerable.
Cuando Henry tiene 31 años y Clare 23 se encuentran por primera vez. Y allí nace en tiempo presente su historia de amor, su vida en común de la que ocasionalmente Henry se ausenta propulsado a otras épocas de su vida y revisitando otros momentos felices o tristes, a veces encontrándose a sí mismo cuando era niño, con el temor de Clare de que no regrese de uno de esos viajes.
La historia se va desplegando contada a dos voces, bajo los puntos de vista de Clare y Henry, y enfoca las consecuencias de esta particularidad en su matrimonio y el amor apasionado que se tienen. Clare y Henry intentar llevar vidas normales, buscar una cura médica para la disfunción de Henry, ponerse objetivos a futuro, disfrutar de sus amigos y familia; aunque a veces se presenta la tentación de utilizar su capacidad de conocer el futuro para manejar el presente o evitar algún peligro... Pero todo ello está amenazado por algo que no pueden controlar ni prevenir: Henry puede viajar un día al futuro y descubrir que él ya no forma parte de ese tiempo, descubrir su propia muerte o la de sus seres queridos, ver a una Clare sola y envejecida, conocer a una hija que todavía no ha tenido y que heredará su extraña disfunción. [via]
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- Mujer Del Viajero en el Tiempo: ISBN 0307344835 (0-307-34483-5)
  Softcover, Random House Mondadori
Vida De Pi / Life of Pi
by Yann Martel, Bianca Southwood

ISBN 8423335127 (84-233-3512-7)
Hardcover, Destino

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  Hardcover, Destino
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La Vida Secreta De Las Abejas / the Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd, LAURA PAREDES

ISBN 0143035797 (0-14-303579-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Ambientada en Carolina del Sur en 1964, La vida secreta de las abejas es la historia de Lily Owens, cuya vida ha sido formada alrededor del recuerdo confuso de la tarde en que su madre fue asesinada. Cuando Rosaleen, la bravía madre postiza negra de Lily, insulta a tres de las personas más racistas del pueblo, Lily decide que ambas deben ser libres. Ellas escapan a Tiburón, Carolina del Sur, un pueblo que guarda el secreto del pasado de su madre. Alojadas por un excéntrico trío de hermanas negras apicultoras, Lily es introducida al fascinante mundo de las abejas y la miel, y a la Virgen Negra. Esta es una novela notable sobre el poder divino femenino, una historia que las mujeres compartirán y pasarán a sus hijas por generaciones.
[via]
More editions of La Vida Secreta De Las Abejas / the Secret Life of Bees:
- La Vida Secreta De Las Abejas / the Secret Life of Bees: ISBN 846661110X (84-666-1110-X)
  Softcover, Ediciones Urano
- La Vida Secreta De Las Abejas / The Secret Life of Bees: ISBN 0143035797 (0-14-303579-7)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA

French

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Geisha
by Arthur Golden

ISBN 225314794X (2-253-14794-X)
Softcover, Le Livre de poche

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Book summary:
574pages. poche. broché. A neuf ans, dans le Japon d'avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Sayuri est vendue par son père, un modeste pêcheur, à une maison de plaisir de Kyoto. Dotée d'extraordinaires yeux bleus, la petite fille comprend vite qu'il faut mettre à profit la chance qui est la sienne. Elle se plie avec docilité à l'initiation difficile qui en fera une vraie geisha. Art de la toilette et de la coiffure, rituel du thé, science du chant, de la danse et de l'amour: Sayuri va peu à peu se hisser au rang des geishas les plus convoitées de la ville. Les riches, les puissants se disputeront ses faveurs. Elle triomphera des pièges que lui tend la haine d'une rivale. Elle rencontrera finalement l'amour. Ecrit sous la forme de mémoires, ce récit a la véracité d'un exceptionnel document et le souffle d'un grand roman. Il nous entraîne au coeur d'un univers exotique où se mêlent érotisme et perversité, cruauté et raffinement, séduction et mystère. [via]
More editions of Geisha:
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  Softcover, Le Livre de poche
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

ISBN 2266144340 (2-266-14434-0)
Softcover, Presses Pocket

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Book summary:
POCKET Thriller (P) n° 12265 (2005) - Dan BROWN Da Vinci Code [via]
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German

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Die Geisha
by Arthur Golden

ISBN 3442726328 (3-442-72632-8)
Softcover

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Book summary:
Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter wird Chiyo in ein Geisha-Haus verkauft. Nachleidvollen Lehrjahren wird sie die begehrteste und mächtigste von allenGeishas. Doch ihr Traum vom privaten Glück erfüllt sich erst nach dem Untergangder alten Geisha-Kultur. [via]
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Zähne zeigen
by Zadie Smith

ISBN 342662141X (3-426-62141-X)
Softcover

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Zähne zeigen, monumental im Ausmaß und intim im Ansatz, ist ein ehrgeiziger Roman. Seine Themen drehen sich um Herkunft, Religion, Geschlechterbeziehungen, Hautfarbe, gesellschaftliche Stellung und Geschichte, aber Zadie Smith ist mit einem Witz und einem Einfallsreichtum gesegnet, die diese gewichtigen Ideen mühelos leicht erscheinen lassen.
Die Handlung führt uns nach Jamaika, die Türkei, Bangladesch und Indien und bringt uns schließlich in einen schäbigen Vorort von North London, in dem die zwei merkwürdigen Helden dieses Buches zu Hause sind: Archie Jones, der es mit der Wahrheit nicht so genau nimmt, und Samad Iqbal, der im hohen Maße dem Alkohol zuspricht. Sie begegneten sich erstmals im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Mitglieder eines vom Pech verfolgten Bataillons und sind seitdem unzertrennlich. Archie heiratet die schöne Clara mit den vorstehenden Zähnen, die sich auf der Flucht vor ihrer Mutter befindet, einer Zeugin Jehovas, und mit der er eine Tochter hat, Irie. Samad heiratet die pampige Alsana, die ihm zwei stramme Jungs schenkt -- Zwillinge: "Kinder mit Vor- und Zunamen, die sich auf direktem Kollisionskurs befinden; Namen, hinter denen sich Massenexodus, überfüllte Boote und Flugzeuge, unfreundliche Ankünfte und ärztliche Untersuchungen verbergen."
Große Fragen verlangen nach kühn gezeichneten Charakteren. Zadie Smiths Helden sind nicht heroisch; sie sind einfach echt: warmherzig, komisch, fehlgeleitet und absolut vertraut. Wenn man ihre Unterhaltungen liest, kommt man sich vor, als würde man sie heimlich belauschen. In einer ganz einfachen Szene unterhalten sich Alsana und Clara im Park über ihre Schwangerschaften: "Eine Frau muss ihre privaten Dinge haben -- ein Ehemann sollte sich nicht in die körperlichen Angelegenheiten einmischen, in den Intimbereich einer Frau."
Samad ist verärgert über seine Söhne: "Sie sind beide vom Weg abgekommen; so weit weg von dem, was ich für sie geplant hatte. Es gibt wohl keinen Zweifel, dass sie beide irgendwann weiße Frauen heiraten werden, die Sheila heißen, und mich früh unter die Erde bringen." Hier spiegeln sich "die Ängste des Einwanderers -- Identitätsverlust, Auflösung" -- deutlich wider, die Samad mehr als alles andere geprägt haben.
Die Lektüre von Zähne zeigen ist eine wahre Freude. In diesem Buch wimmelt es vor Leben und Überschwänglichkeit, und doch besitzt es genug Schläue und despektierliche Seriosität, um ihm eine gewisse Bissigkeit zu geben. --Eithne Farry [via]
More editions of Zähne zeigen:
- Zähne zeigen: ISBN 342662141X (3-426-62141-X)
  Softcover

Italian

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Denti Bianchi / White Teeth
by Zadie Smith

ISBN 8804498749 (88-04-49874-9)
Softcover, Mondadori

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  Softcover, Mondadori

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