Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307371654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307371654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307371654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims. In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress.
The Confabulist
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101631430
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
From the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, an exciting new novel that uses the life and sudden death of Harry Houdini to weave a tale of magic, intrigue, and illusion. What is real and what is an illusion? Can you trust your memory to provide an accurate record of what has happened in your life? The Confabulist is a clever , entertaining, and suspenseful narrative that weaves together the rise and fall of world-famous Harry Houdini with the surprising story of Martin Strauss, an unknown man whose fate seems forever tied to the magician’s in a way that will ultimately startle and amaze. It is at once a vivid portrait of an alluring, late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century world; a front-row seat to a world-class magic show; and an unexpected love story. In the end, the book is a kind of magic trick in itself: there is much more to Martin than meets the eye. Historically rich and ingeniously told, this is a novel about magic and memory, truth and illusion, and the ways that love, hope, grief, and imagination can—for better or for worse—alter what we perceive and believe.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101631430
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
From the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, an exciting new novel that uses the life and sudden death of Harry Houdini to weave a tale of magic, intrigue, and illusion. What is real and what is an illusion? Can you trust your memory to provide an accurate record of what has happened in your life? The Confabulist is a clever , entertaining, and suspenseful narrative that weaves together the rise and fall of world-famous Harry Houdini with the surprising story of Martin Strauss, an unknown man whose fate seems forever tied to the magician’s in a way that will ultimately startle and amaze. It is at once a vivid portrait of an alluring, late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century world; a front-row seat to a world-class magic show; and an unexpected love story. In the end, the book is a kind of magic trick in itself: there is much more to Martin than meets the eye. Historically rich and ingeniously told, this is a novel about magic and memory, truth and illusion, and the ways that love, hope, grief, and imagination can—for better or for worse—alter what we perceive and believe.
Goodbye Sarajevo
Author: Atka Reid
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408827751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A moving and compelling true story about two sisters fighting for survival in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408827751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
A moving and compelling true story about two sisters fighting for survival in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war
Flowers for Sarajevo
Author: John McCutcheon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909991774
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909991774
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown
Author: Paula Danziger
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101660600
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112
Book Description
It's finally summer and Amber Brown is going to London to visit her aunt Pam and then to Paris to visit with her father. She is one excited kid before she goes. And one itchy kid when she arrives. Mosquito bites, she thinks. Chicken pox, she finds out. Is her vacation completely ruined? And now that she can't go to Paris, how will she be able to convince her dad to move back home?
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101660600
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112
Book Description
It's finally summer and Amber Brown is going to London to visit her aunt Pam and then to Paris to visit with her father. She is one excited kid before she goes. And one itchy kid when she arrives. Mosquito bites, she thinks. Chicken pox, she finds out. Is her vacation completely ruined? And now that she can't go to Paris, how will she be able to convince her dad to move back home?
Ascension
Author: Steven Galloway
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307375404
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The acclaimed author of Finnie Walsh turns from small-town hockey to the extraordinary intrigues of circus life during the heyday of the Big Top through the story of Salvo Ursari, undisputed master of the high wire. As the novel opens, it is the summer of 1976. Salvo is 66 years old and has decided he can never retire. Already famous thanks to his days in an American circus, he has made a living in recent times performing solo walks of extraordinary difficulty. And so he finds himself attempting to accomplish the most difficult feat of his career: to walk a wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1350 feet from the ground. Transylvania in 1919 is a place of poverty and persecution for the Rom people. Salvo follows his father to a village church, where the senior Ursari -- the only man who volunteers for the task -- is to climb the steeple to replace a large iron crucifix that had been removed for safe-keeping during the war. He restores the cross, but it is not properly attached and as they are leaving, it falls, killing a priest. When the villagers exact their revenge, Salvo’s parents are killed and he is separated from his brother and sister. Thus begins nearly a lifetime of being forced to flee from suspicion and misfortune that takes the reader from Europe to the US to British Columbia’s Fraser Valley and back to Manhattan. Ascension combines powerful storytelling -- including stories of the Romany people, poverty-stricken but resourceful, and rich in legend -- with great surprise and originality; Steven Galloway makes it clear why he is one of the hottest young writers in Canada today. Excerpt from Ascension “Once a newspaper man had asked him what it felt like to walk high above the crowd, with death looming beneath you and success a long way off on the other platform. Salvo had told the man that it was like being a bird, an eagle, but he knew that wasn’t true at all. He was a man, nothing more. Still, he was a man who dared do things other men watched and admired and were jealous of. He walked for these people as much as for anyone. But today he was walking only for himself. That was the difference with these solo walks. When he was among them, he was one of them, but here he is timeless, one man on a wire far above it all, in a separate place. He was not free, but he was as free as he would ever be.”
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307375404
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
The acclaimed author of Finnie Walsh turns from small-town hockey to the extraordinary intrigues of circus life during the heyday of the Big Top through the story of Salvo Ursari, undisputed master of the high wire. As the novel opens, it is the summer of 1976. Salvo is 66 years old and has decided he can never retire. Already famous thanks to his days in an American circus, he has made a living in recent times performing solo walks of extraordinary difficulty. And so he finds himself attempting to accomplish the most difficult feat of his career: to walk a wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1350 feet from the ground. Transylvania in 1919 is a place of poverty and persecution for the Rom people. Salvo follows his father to a village church, where the senior Ursari -- the only man who volunteers for the task -- is to climb the steeple to replace a large iron crucifix that had been removed for safe-keeping during the war. He restores the cross, but it is not properly attached and as they are leaving, it falls, killing a priest. When the villagers exact their revenge, Salvo’s parents are killed and he is separated from his brother and sister. Thus begins nearly a lifetime of being forced to flee from suspicion and misfortune that takes the reader from Europe to the US to British Columbia’s Fraser Valley and back to Manhattan. Ascension combines powerful storytelling -- including stories of the Romany people, poverty-stricken but resourceful, and rich in legend -- with great surprise and originality; Steven Galloway makes it clear why he is one of the hottest young writers in Canada today. Excerpt from Ascension “Once a newspaper man had asked him what it felt like to walk high above the crowd, with death looming beneath you and success a long way off on the other platform. Salvo had told the man that it was like being a bird, an eagle, but he knew that wasn’t true at all. He was a man, nothing more. Still, he was a man who dared do things other men watched and admired and were jealous of. He walked for these people as much as for anyone. But today he was walking only for himself. That was the difference with these solo walks. When he was among them, he was one of them, but here he is timeless, one man on a wire far above it all, in a separate place. He was not free, but he was as free as he would ever be.”
The Big Crowd
Author: Kevin Baker
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0544105915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
Two Irish brothers journey from New York’s East River to its halls of power in this “masterwork of historical fiction” by the author of Dreamland (Parade). Inspired by one of the great, unsolved murders in mob history, this novel tells the sweeping story of Charlie O’Kane, a poor Irish immigrant who works his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York at the city’s postwar zenith. Famous, powerful, and married to a fashion model, millions of local citizens look up to him, including his younger brother, Tom—until he is accused of abetting a shocking crime. The charges stem from his days as a crusading Brooklyn DA, when he sent the notorious killers of Murder, Inc., to the chair—only to let a vital witness fall to his death while under police guard. Now out of office, Charlie is hiding from the authorities in a Mexico City hotel. To uncover what really happened, Tom must confront stunning truths about his brother, himself, and the secret workings of the great city he loves. From the Brooklyn waterfront to City Hall, the battlefields of World War II to the glamorous nightclubs of 1940s Manhattan, The Big Crowd is filled with powerbrokers and gangsters, celebrities and socialites, scheming cardinals and battling dockside priests. But ultimately it is an American story of the bonds and betrayals of brotherhood—from “the lit world’s sharpest chronicler of New York’s past” (Rolling Stone).
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0544105915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
Two Irish brothers journey from New York’s East River to its halls of power in this “masterwork of historical fiction” by the author of Dreamland (Parade). Inspired by one of the great, unsolved murders in mob history, this novel tells the sweeping story of Charlie O’Kane, a poor Irish immigrant who works his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York at the city’s postwar zenith. Famous, powerful, and married to a fashion model, millions of local citizens look up to him, including his younger brother, Tom—until he is accused of abetting a shocking crime. The charges stem from his days as a crusading Brooklyn DA, when he sent the notorious killers of Murder, Inc., to the chair—only to let a vital witness fall to his death while under police guard. Now out of office, Charlie is hiding from the authorities in a Mexico City hotel. To uncover what really happened, Tom must confront stunning truths about his brother, himself, and the secret workings of the great city he loves. From the Brooklyn waterfront to City Hall, the battlefields of World War II to the glamorous nightclubs of 1940s Manhattan, The Big Crowd is filled with powerbrokers and gangsters, celebrities and socialites, scheming cardinals and battling dockside priests. But ultimately it is an American story of the bonds and betrayals of brotherhood—from “the lit world’s sharpest chronicler of New York’s past” (Rolling Stone).
The Orphans of Normandy
Author: Nancy Amis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689841434
Category : Children's art
Languages : en
Pages : 56
Book Description
A document of extraordinary beauty, this moving journal is the true story of World War II told through drawings by children from a French orphanage. Full color.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689841434
Category : Children's art
Languages : en
Pages : 56
Book Description
A document of extraordinary beauty, this moving journal is the true story of World War II told through drawings by children from a French orphanage. Full color.
Seven Terrors
Author: Selvedin Avdić
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781908236098
Category : Bosnia and Herzegovina
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
After nine months of self-imposed isolation following his wife's departure, the hero of 'Seven Terrors' decides to face his loneliness and rejoin the world. However when he discovers his father is missing, he realises his life is about to change as he starts the search.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781908236098
Category : Bosnia and Herzegovina
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
After nine months of self-imposed isolation following his wife's departure, the hero of 'Seven Terrors' decides to face his loneliness and rejoin the world. However when he discovers his father is missing, he realises his life is about to change as he starts the search.
Echoes from the Square
Author: Elizabeth Wellburn
Publisher: Oakville, Ont. : Rubicon Pub.
ISBN: 9780921156994
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Book Description
Story of how a young boy learns to cope in the aftermath of war
Publisher: Oakville, Ont. : Rubicon Pub.
ISBN: 9780921156994
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Book Description
Story of how a young boy learns to cope in the aftermath of war