Dave Eggers, Zeitoun (Vintage Canada, 2010)
I was first introduced to Eggers through his zany family memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, one of the funniest books I have read. Zeitoun is the history of another family, tested beyond all reason by circumstance and bad public policy. The title character is a Syrian-American, married to a “white” Muslim convert. Together […]
Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December (Penguin Books, 1982)
Born in Lachine, Quebec, Bellow became the great chronicler of mid-twentieth century American (especially Chicago) life. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, his later writing becomes elegiac, and strongly focused on intimations of mortality. The Dean’s December, published in 1982, tells the story of a dyspeptic but relatively happily married dean of […]
Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam (Penguin Books, 2006)
One of the most difficult and troubling books I have ever read. Buruma grew up in Holland, but is half-British and has spent much of his recent years in the USA. He returns to Holland in 2004 to investigate the reasons that may have prompted the murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh. Van […]
Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander (Harper Collins, 2002)
O’Brian is often described as the greatest of historical novelists, mostly because of his superb research and encyclopedic knowledge of the Royal Navy of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although he can sometimes descend into excruciating detail (especially about the sails on a square-rigged ship!), what marks O’Brian’s greatness is his gift for rich […]
Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness (Harcourt Inc., 2005)
A powerful and lyrical memoir by one of Israel and the world’s great novelists. Probably best known for My Michael and Black Box, Oz tells a story of growing up in the 1940s and 50s in Jerusalem. One experiences a sense of both claustrophobic rigidity and utter liberation. His silent father was also a great […]