Staff Picks
The 2024 International Booker Prize Longlist
- Adele C.
- Thursday, May 23
Collection
Discover a world of literary excellence with these books from the 2024 International Booker Prize longlist. These remarkable works, celebrated for their outstanding storytelling and diverse perspectives, offer you the chance to delve into some of the finest contemporary literature from around the globe. Each book on the list has been recognized for its unique voice and powerful narrative, promising an unforgettable reading experience.
![Not a River](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9781644452851/MC.jpg&oclc=&upc=&client=richlandlib)
![Simpatía](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9781644213650/MC.jpg&oclc=1401622718&upc=&client=richlandlib)
Simpatía
A Novel
Published in 2024
"Simpatía is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina's departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Martín Ayala. Thanks to Ayala's will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission - to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina. This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simón Bolívar to Hugo Chávez. The untranslatable title, Simpatía, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era"-- Provided by publisher.
![The Silver Bone](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9780063352285/MC.jpg&oclc=1422577173&upc=&client=richlandlib)
The Silver Bone
A Novel
Published in 2024
A perplexing mystery introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he is tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early 20th century.
![Mater 2-10](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9781957363318/MC.jpg&oclc=&upc=&client=richlandlib)
![Crooked Plow](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9781839766404/MC.jpg&oclc=1338132696&upc=&client=richlandlib)
Crooked Plow
Published in 2023
"Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a masterpiece, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, and political struggle"-- Provided by publisher.
![Undiscovered](https://www.syndetics.com/index.php?isbn=9780063256682/MC.jpg&oclc=1390918249&upc=&client=richlandlib)
Undiscovered
Published in 2023
"An award-winning Peruvian journalist and writer delivers her stunning English breakthrough in an autobiographical novel that explores colonialism through one woman's family ties to both the colonized and colonizer. Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener confronts her complicated family heritage. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, spoils of European colonialism, many stolen from her homeland of Peru. As she peers at countless sculptures of Indigenous faces, each resembling her own, she sees herself in them - but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. In the wake of her father's death, Gabriela returns to Peru. In alternating strands, she begins to probe her father's infidelity, her own polyamorous relationship, and the history of her colonial ancestor, unpacking the legacy that is her birthright. From the eye-patched persona her father adopted to carry out his double life to the brutal racism she encounters in her ancestor Charles's book, she traces a cycle of abandonment, jealousy, and fraud, in turn reframing her own personal struggles with desire, love, and race. Probing wounds both personal and historical, Wiener's provocative novel embarks the reader on a quest to pick up the pieces of something shattered long ago in the hope of making it whole once again."-- Provided by publisher.