Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

My Name Is Red (Vintage International)

by Orhan Pamuk, Erdag? M. Go?knar

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of... (more)

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World PovertyMuhammad Yunus

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

by Muhammad Yunus

In 1983, Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. Based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a few, Grameen Bank now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus's clients are women, and repayment rates are nearly 100... (more)

The Piano Teacher: A Novel

by Joachim Neugroschel, Elfriede Jelinek

The Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires. Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of... (more)

The Black Book (Vintage International)

by Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk

A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen Freely Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing... (more)

Song of Solomon

by Toni Morrison, Durthy Washington

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison... (more)

Herzog

by Saul Bellow

In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity of existence and longing for redemption. Introduction by Philip Roth

All the Names

by Jose Saramago

Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor José sets off to follow the... (more)

The Double Helix

A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

by James D. Watson, Gunther S. Stent

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a... (more)

Death With Interruptions

by Jose Saramago

On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently... (more)

Istanbul: Memories and the City (Vintage International)

Istanbul: Memories and the City (Vintage International)

by Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or h ü z ü n– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of... (more)

Unbowed

by Wangari Maathai

Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were... (more)

Seeing

by Jose Saramago

On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to come out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. What's going on? Should they reschedule the elections for another day? Around three o'clock, the rain finally stops. Promptly at four, voters rush to the polling stations, as if they had been ordered to appear. But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank.... (more)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world... (more)

Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Translated by Randolph Hogan. In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador , a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia... (more)

The Holographic Universe

by Michael Talbot

Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicists David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding of the brain --... (more)

Diary of a Bad Year

by J. M. Coetzee

A new work of fiction by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Disgrace In this brilliant new work of fiction, J. M. Coetzee once again breaks new literary ground with a book that is, in the words of its main character, “a response to the present in which I find myself.” Diary of a Bad Year takes on the world of politics—a new topic for Coetzee—and explores the role of the writer in our times with an... (more)

Lord of the Flies

by William Golding

14.5 Million copies sold to date The classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature-now available as a Premium Edition with a stunning new cover and re-set, easy-to-read text.

Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck

Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him. With illustrations from the movie starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

The Interrogation

by J. M. G. Le Clezio

From the original Atheneum edition jacket, 1964. "J.M.G. Le Clézio, revelation of the literary year" ran the headline of the Paris Express after last year's prizes had been awarded. The Goncourt jury was locked five to five until its president used his double vote to give the prize to the older candidate. Ten minutes later the Renaudot jury elected the candidate they thought they might lose to the other prize.... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: nobel prize winner

by Orhan Pamuk, Erdag? M. Go?knar

by Muhammad Yunus

by Joachim Neugroschel, Elfriede Jelinek

by Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk

by Toni Morrison, Durthy Washington

by Saul Bellow

by Jose Saramago

A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

by James D. Watson, Gunther S. Stent

by Jose Saramago

by Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk

by Wangari Maathai

by Jose Saramago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by Michael Talbot

by J. M. Coetzee

by William Golding

by John Steinbeck

by J. M. G. Le Clezio

by Wangari Maathai