Writers’ Center by José Eduardo Agualusa ; translated by Daniel Hahn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015. Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters. In recent years, authority has been seen as an enemy of freedom, autonomy, and development. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Her brooding presence is inescapable, though she’s not the linchpin Agualusa evidently intended; there are many other characters whose stories crisscross as war and politics shape their lives.
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Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. On either side of the Atlantic, the tale is often one of racism, degradation, and loss: a slave on an Alabama plantation is whipped “until the blood on the ground is high enough to bathe a baby”; a freedman in Baltimore fears being sent back South with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act; a Ghanan woman is driven mad from the abuse of a missionary and her husband’s injury in a tribal war; a woman in Harlem is increasingly distanced from (and then humiliated by) her husband, who passes as white. He’s an altruistic political activist and an ex-con. A General Theory Of Oblivion perhaps won't win the duo another prize – The Book of Chameleons was fresher, the translation more polished – but as a … Discover Books A Note from the Editor: Books You’ll Be Hearing About This Month It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds! The Ultimate Guide to Adult Coloring BooksWe are experiencing technical difficulties.
It reads well with its short, well-crafted (and often eventful) chapters, too -- but it doesn't quite add up. - M.A.Orthofer, 28 April 2016 A whole village disappears (witchcraft at work? LITERARY FICTION Ebook As the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers. Daniel Hahn A General Theory of Oblivion, his latest book to appear in English, is translated from the Portuguese with skill and flair by Daniel Hahn, who also …
A General Theory of Oblivion is a fine work, and insightful about what has happened in Angola over the past thirty-some years. Down on his luck, he shoots a pigeon, the same pigeon that had earlier swallowed some diamonds on Ludo’s terrace.
The daughter of one tribal leader marries a British man for financial expediency, then learns that the “castle” he governs is a holding dungeon for slaves. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated.
News & Features A novel of sharply drawn character studies immersed in more than 250 hard, transformative years in the African-American diaspora. HISTORICAL FICTION Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. Ludo will live alone for 30-plus years, finally accepting Angola as her home and not the land of black savages she had long thought.