x dismiss this message
Did you know you can edit this page?
-
Sign Into Shelfari
-
Choose something to edit
-
Save your contributions
see page history
Description edit
A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
Young former Melbourne corporate lawyer turns hundreds of other young, former Melbourne corporate lawyers green with envy by publishing a phenomenally successful collection of nuanced and beautiful short stories.
Quotes edit
-
“Other friends were more forthright: “I’m sick of ethnic lit,” one said. “It’s full of descriptions of exotic food.” Or: “You can’t tell if the language is spare because the author intended it that way, or because he didn’t have the vocab.”I was told about a friend of a friend, a Harvard graduate from Washington, D.C., who had posed in traditional Nigerian garb for his book-jacket photo. I pictured myself standing in a rice paddy, wearing a straw conical hat. Then I pictured my father in the same field, wearing his threadbare fatigues, young and hard-eyed.“It’s a license to bore,” my friend said. We were drunk and walking our bikes because both of us, separately, had punctured our tires on the way to the party.“The characters are always flat, generic. As long as a Chinese writer writes about Chinese people, or a Peruvian writer about Peruvians, or a Russian writer about Russians …” he said, as though reciting children’s doggerel, then stopped, losing his train of thought.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
-
The thing is not to write what no one else could have written, but to write what only you could have written.
Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers -
“Faulkner, you know,” my friend said over the squeals, “he said we should write about the old verities. Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”
Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers -
In the slow float of light I looked away, down at the river. On the brink of freezing, it gleamed in large, bulging blisters. The water, where it still moved, was black and braided. And it occurred to me then how it took hours, sometimes days, for the surface of a river to freeze over—to hold in its skin the perfect and crystalline world—and how that world could be shattered by a small stone dropped like a single syllable.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
Contents Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice Cartagena
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
HERE IS WHAT I BELIEVE: We forgive any sacrifice by our parents, so long as it is not made in our name. To my father there was no other name—only mine, and he had named me after the homeland he had given up. His sacrifice was complete and compelled him to everything that happened. To all that, I was inadequate.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
We were locked in all the intricate ways of guilt. It took all the time we had to realize that everything we faced, we faced for the other as well.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
He would read it, with his book-learned English, and he would recognize himself in a new way. He would recognize me. He would see how powerful was his experience, how valuable his suffering—how I had made it speak for more than itself. He would be pleased with me.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
If I had known then what I knew later, I wouldn’t have said the things I did. I wouldn’t have told him he didn’t understand—for clearly, he did. I wouldn’t have told him that what he had done was unforgivable. That I wished he had never come, or that he was no father to me. But I hadn’t known, and, as I waited, feeling the wind change, all I saw was a man coming toward me in a ridiculously oversized jacket, rubbing his black-sooted hands, stepping through the smoke with its flecks and flame-tinged eddies, who had destroyed himself, yet again, in my name.
Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers -
He had been buried alive in the warm, wet clinch of his family, crushed by their lives. I wanted to know how he climbed out of that pit. I wanted to know how there could ever be any correspondence between us. I wanted to know all this but an internal momentum moved me, further and further from him as time went on.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers -
“A day lived, a sea of knowledge earned.” He had a habit of speaking in Vietnamese proverbs. I had long since learned to ignore it.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
My father arrived on a rainy morning.
Table of Contents edit
Short Stories:
1. Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice
2. Cartagena
3. Meeting Elise
4. Halflead Bay
5. Hiroshima
6. Tehran Calling
7. The Boat
Acknowledgments
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Country: US
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 9780307268082
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Country: US
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 9780307268082
Page Count: 272
Awards edit
- Dylan Thomas Prize (2008)
- Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2009)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 823.92
Popular Tags
See all 50 tags
We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.
