Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

One of "The 10 Best Books of 2007"-- The New York Times Book Review Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas' first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator's thirty-fifth birthday,... (more)

Atomised

by Frank Wynne, Michel Houellebecq

Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. Michel is a molecular biologist, a thinker and idealist, a man with no erotic life to speak of and little in the way of human society. Bruno, by contrast, is a libertine, though more in theory than in practice, his endless lust is all too rarely reciprocated. Both are symptomatic members of our atomised society, where religion has given way to... (more)

Remembering Babylon: A Novel (Vintage International)

Remembering Babylon: A Novel (Vintage International)

by David Malouf

In the mid-1840s, a 13-year-old British cabin boy is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later, he moves back into the world of Europeans. "Wonderfully wise and moving . . . a dazzling fable of human hope and imperfection."--The New York Times.

The Known World

by Edward P. Jones

One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual... (more)

This Blinding Absence of Light

by Tahar Ben Jelloun

An immediate and critically acclaimed bestseller in France, This Blinding Absence of Light is the latest work by internationally renowned author Tahar Ben Jelloun, the first North African winner of the Prix Goncourt and winner of the Prix Mahgreb. Crafting real life events into narrative fiction, Ben Jelloun reveals the horrific story of the desert concentration camps in which King Hassan II of Morocco held his... (more)

Ingenious Pain (Harvest Book)

by Andrew Miller

A chronicle of life of an eighteenth-century man born without the ability to feel pain, this amazing book Â“offers a panoply of literary pleasuresÂ” (Washington Post Book World). Winner of BritainÂ’s James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1999 IMPAC Award. Â“Astoundingly goodÂ” (New York Times Book Review).

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW A TIME MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside... (more)

The Land of Green Plums

by Herta Muller

Like the narrator of her novel The Land of Green Plums, Herta Muller grew up a German minority in Ceausescu's Romania, which she eventually left to settle in Germany. Her own experience lends credibility to the voice of her young narrator, who inhabits a deprived police state in which minorities such as the ethnic Germans suffer persecution beyond the quotidian oppressions of Ceausescu's regime. The title refers... (more)

A Heart So White

by Javier Marias

Juan knows little about his widowed father Ranz, a man with a troubled past. He does know, however, that before marrying Juan's mother, Ranz was married to her elder sister, who had committed suicide. The unspoken dialogue between father and son soon becomes a spelling out of the horrifying truth once Juan marries Luisa, who turns discreet confessor to the burdened old man. What gradually emerges into the cold... (more)

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Man Gone Down: A Novel

by Michael Thomas