Staff Picks
Nobel Laureates in Literature, 2009-2019
- Bland L.
- Thursday, October 10, 2019
Collection
Prolific Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in literature. Check out his novels The Afternoon of a Writer and The Moravian Night from our collection. You may also be interested in works by other recent recipients of the prize, a sampling of which are listed below.
Last Witnesses
An Oral History of the Children of World War II
Published in 2019
"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. These men and women were both witnesses and sometimes soldiers as well, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded in them--a trauma that would forever change the course of the Russian nation. This is a new version of the war we're so familiar with. Alexievich gives voice to those whose stories are lost in the official narratives, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Collectively, these voices provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human consequences of the war"-- Provided by publisher.
Secondhand Time
The Last of the Soviets
Published in 2016
"From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals"-- Provided by publisher.
The Unwomanly Face of War
An Oral History of Women in World War II
Published in 2017
"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, War's Unwomanly Face is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of stories of women's experiences in World War II, both on the front lines, on the home front, and in occupied territories. This is a new, distinct version of the war we're so familiar with. Alexievich gives voice to women whose stories are lost in the official narratives, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals. Collectively, these women's voices provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of the war. When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize in Literature, they praised her "polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time," and cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre." Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, added that her work comprises "a history of emotions -- a history of the soul."--Provided by publisher.
The Lyrics
1961-2012
Published in 2016
This collection contains Bob Dylan's lyrics, from his first album, Bob Dylan, to 2012's Tempest.
100 Songs
Published in 2017
A new collection of Bob Dylan's most essential lyrics - one hundred songs that represent the Nobel Laureate's incredible musical range through the entirety of his career so far. Bob Dylan is one of the most important songwriters of our time and the first musician in history to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 100 Songs, Dylan delivers an intimate and carefully curated collection of his most important lyrics that spans from the beginning of his career through the present day. Perfect for students and younger readers as well as long-time fans, this portable, abridged volume of Dylan's lyrics shines a light on the songs that mean the most from a music and cultural legend.
The Moravian Night
A Story
Published in 2016
"An odyssey through the mind and memory of a washed-up writer from one of Europe's most provocative novelists"-- Provided by publisher.
The Buried Giant
Published in 2015
"The Romans have long since departed, and the Britian is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time, finally, for them set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember"--Dust jacket.
Frog
Published in 2015
"The author of Red Sorghum and China's most revered and controversial novelist returns with his first major publication since winning the Nobel Prize. In 2012, the Nobel committee confirmed Mo Yan's position as one of the greatest and most important writers of our time. In his much-anticipated new novel, Mo Yan chronicles the sweeping history of modern China through the lens of the nation's controversial one- child policy. Frog opens with a playwright nicknamed Tadpole who plans to write about his aunt. In her youth, Gugu-the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist-is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu's own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant. In sharply personal prose, Mo Yan depicts a world of desperate families, illegal surrogates, forced abortions, and the guilt of those who must enforce the policy. At once illuminating and devastating, it shines a light into the heart of communist China. "-- Provided by publisher.
In the Café of Lost Youth
Published in 2016
"Who was Louki? Did anyone really know? She made her mark on all of us in different ways. We all remember her, some of us more than others, but did any of us truly know her? Can anyone honestly say they know another person? In the Cafe of Lost Youth is vintage Patrick Modiano, an absorbing evocation of a particular Paris of the 1950s, shadowy and shady, a secret world of writers, criminals, drinkers, and drifters. The novel, which includes vignettes of a number of historical figures and is inspired in part by the circle (depicted in the photographs of Ed van der Elsken) of the notorious and charismatic Guy Debord, centers on the enigmatic, waiflike figure of Louki, who catches everyone's attention even as she eludes possession or comprehension. Through the eyes of four very different narrators, we contemplate Louki's character and her fate, while Modiano explores the themes of identity, memory, time, and forgetting that are at the heart of his hypnotic and deeply moving art"-- Provided by publisher.
Pedigree
A Memoir
Published in 2015
"In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years--shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his "finest books" by the Guardian, Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by."--Jacket flap.
Young Once
Published in 2016
"Odile and Louis are leading a happy, bucolic life with their two children in the French countryside near the Swiss mountains. It is Odile's thirty-fifth birthday, and Louis's thirty-fifth birthday is a few weeks away. Then the story shifts back to their early years: Louis, just freed from his military service and at loose ends, taken up by a shady character who brings him to Paris to do some work for a friend who manages a garage; Odile, an aspiring singer, at the mercy of the kindness and unkindness of strangers. They move through a Paris saturated with the crimes and secrets of the past but breathing hopes for the future; they find each other and struggle together to create what, looking back, will have been their youth"-- Provided by publisher.
The Hunger Angel
A Novel
Published in 2012
Traces the experiences of Leo Auberg, who, after five torturous years in a post-war Soviet Union labor camp, succumbs to a hallucinatory existence where hunger and everyday objects take on anthropomorphic qualities.
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter
A Novel
Published in 2016
"An early masterpiece from the winner of the Nobel Prize hailed as the laureate of life under totalitarianism. Romania--the last months of the Ceausescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a musician. Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara's lover. But one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on all of the group.One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it's the hindleg. Then a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police--the fox was ever the hunter.Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it's hard to tell victim from perpetrator.In The Fox Was Always a Hunter, Herta Müller once again uses language that displays the "concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose"--as the Swedish Academy noted upon awarding her the Nobel Prize--to create a hauntingly cinematic portrayal of the corruption of the soul under totalitarianism"-- Provided by publisher.
Dear Life
Stories
Published in 2012
A collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate, and is set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron.
Flights
Published in 2018
A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Published in 2007
Mario falls in love with and and embarks on a secret love affair with his recently divorced Aunt Julia, scandalizing the town of Lima, Peru, while Mario's friend Pedro Camacho becomes more and more obsessed with the soap operas he writes.
The Neighborhood
A Novel
Published in 2018
One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique's wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique's lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru's unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet.