Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

A NY Times Editors Choice Selection

A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of misogyny.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,” she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning” birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, this book sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance.

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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The Plotters

Named a Best Thriller of the Year by:
The Washington Post
The Telegraph

A fantastical crime novel set in an alternate Seoul where assassination guilds compete for market dominance.

Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind—a plotter—working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city’s most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want?

Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer in the crime headquarters “The Library,” Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women—a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian—Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot.

Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Damascus Nights

“In the classical Arab tradition of tale-telling, here is a magical book that celebrates the power of storytelling, delightfully transformed for modern sensibilities by an award-winning author.

The time is present-day Damascus, and Salim the coachman, the city's most famous storyteller, is mysteriously struck dumb. To break the spell, seven friends gather for seven nights to present Salim with seven wondrous ‘gifts’—seven stories of their own design.

Upon this enchanting frame of tales told in the fragrant Arabian night, the words of the past grow fainter, as ancient customs are yielding to modern turmoil. While the hairdresser, the teacher, the wife of the locksmith sip their tea and pass the water pipe, they swap stories about the magical and the mundane: about djinnis and princesses, about contemporary politics and the difficulties of bargaining in a New York department store. And as one tale leads to another... and another... all of Damascus appears before your eyes, along with a vision of storytelling-and talk-as the essence of friendship, of community, of life.

A sly and graceful work, a delight to readers young and old, Damascus Nights is ‘a highly atmospheric, pungent narrative’ (Publishers Weekly) while also being ‘enlightening, endearing, witty, and wise’ (Library Journal).”

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Impossible Revolution

Bloomberg's Best Books of 2017

“Yassin al-Haj Saleh is widely regarded as Syria’s foremost thinker and the intellectual authority of the Syrian uprising. Born in Raqqa, he spent sixteen years as a political prisoner in Syria (1980–1996) and has been living in exile in Turkey since 2013.

This first book in English by Saleh describes with precision and fervor the events that led to the Syrian uprising of 2011―the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war and the ‘three monsters’ Saleh sees ‘treading on Syria’s corpse:’ the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and the West. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assad’s army is now battling against religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory, democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is beset on all sides.

Saleh offers incisive critiques of the impact of the revolution and war on Syrian governance, identity, and society to produce a powerful and compelling response to the traumas that define the contemporary Syrian experience. All those concerned with the conflict should take note.”

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My Country

“Kassem Eid survived arrest in al-Assad's regime, a chemical weapons attack that shocked the world, and the siege of a city where he fought with the Syrian rebel army. This is his story—a unique and powerfully moving testimony for our times, with a foreword by Janine di Giovanni.

On August 21, 2013, Kassem Eid nearly died in a sarin gas attack in the town of Moadamiya. At least 1,500 people were killed. Later that day, he was hit by a mortar while helping the Free Syrian Army fight government forces. He survived that, too. But his entire world-friends, neighbors, family, everything he knew-had been devastated beyond repair.

Eid recalls moving to Moadamiya in 1989, at the age of three. The streets where he and his eleven siblings played were fragrant with jasmine. But he soon realized that he was treated differently at school because of his parent's Palestinian immigrant origins, and their resistance to the brutal regime. When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, hopes that he would ease the state's severity were swiftly crushed.

The unprecedented scope of this brave, deeply felt memoir makes it unique in the body of literature to emerge from the Syrian civil war. Eid illuminates the realities of growing up in a corrupt dictatorship; the strictures of living under siege; the impact of unspeakable violence; and how, at extraordinary personal risk, he drew worldwide attention to the assault on cities across Syria. This is a searing account of oppression, war, grit, and escape, and a heartbreaking love letter to a world lost forever.”

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No Knives in the Kitchens of This City

Critcally acclaimed and winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

“In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one Syrian family descends into tragedy and ruin.

Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime.

Set between the 1960s and 2000s, No Knives in the Kitchens of this City unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society.”

“Khaled Khalifa writes about his native city with sensuality and an almost feral intensity. No Knives in the Kitchens of This City offers a glimpse into how terrified and empty of hope the people of a city must be to rise up in revolt. The future offers them nothing. It is a castle of closed doors…the sights, smells and horror of living in Aleppo come pounding to life in this book. The place, to me, is no longer an abstraction, and Mr. Khalifa clearly fears for its fate throughout.” - The NY Times

“Intricately plotted, chronologically complicated and a pleasure to read. The writing is superb—a dense, luxurious realism pricked with surprising metaphors. It is lyrical, sensuous and so semantically rich that at times it resembles a prose poem…A sad but beautiful book, providing important human context to the escalating Syrian tragedy.” -- The Guardian

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Black Run

“Already an international hit, a sly, sizzling mystery—the first in a sensational crime series—set in the Italian Alps, reminiscent of the works of Andrea Camilleri, D. A. Mishani, Donna Leon, and Henning Mankell.

Getting into serious trouble with the wrong people, deputy prefect of police Rocco Schiavone is exiled to Aosta, a small, touristy alpine town far from his beloved Rome. The sophisticated and crotchety Roman despises mountains, snow, and the provincial locals as much as he disdains his superiors and their petty rules. But he loves solving crimes.

When a mangled body has been discovered on a ski run above Champoluc, Rocco immediately faces his first challenge—identifying the victim, a complex procedure complicated by his ignorance of the customs, dialect, and history of his new home. Proud and undaunted, Rocco makes his way among the ski runs, mountain huts, and aerial tramways, meeting ski instructors, Alpine guides, the hardworking, enigmatic folk of Aosta, and a few beautiful locals eager to give him a warm welcome.

It won't be easy, this mountain life, especially with a corpse or two in the mix. But then there's nothing that makes Rocco feel more at home than an investigation.

An insightful observer of human nature, Antonio Manzini writes with sly humor and a dash of irony, and introduces an irresistible hero—a fascinating blend of swagger, machismo, and vulnerability—in a colorful and atmospheric crime mystery series that is European crime fiction at its best.”

“Forget Montalbano. Commisario Rocco Schivone is grievous, coarse, violent … Wonderful, heartbreaking.” — L'Uomo Vogue

“Surly, moody, individualistic, unconventional, corrupt, abusive, with a dark past, Rocco Schiavone seems to come from the dark metropolis of a novel by James Ellroy.”—L'Indice

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Night Watch

“Night Watch is an epic of extraordinary power.” —Quentin Tarantino

“Brace yourself for [an adult version of] Harry Potter in Gorky Park. . . . The novel contains some captivating scenes and all kinds of marvelous, inventive detail.” —The Washington Post Book World

“An international bestseller [as] potent as a shot of vodka. . . . [A] compelling urban fantasy.” —Publishers Weekly

They are the ‘Others,’ an ancient race of supernatural beings—magicians, shape-shifters, vampires, and healers—who live among us. Human born, they must choose a side to swear allegiance to—the Dark or the Light—when they come of age.

For a millennium, these opponents have coexisted in an uneasy peace, enforced by defenders like the Night Watch, forces of the Light who guard against the Dark. But prophecy decrees that one supreme ‘Other’ will arise to spark a cataclysmic war.

Anton Gorodetsky, an untested mid-level Light magician with the Night Watch, discovers a cursed young woman—an Other of tremendous potential unallied with either side—who can shift the balance of power. With the battle lines between Light and Dark drawn, the magician must move carefully, for one wrong step could mean the beginning of annihilation.

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Phaedra

“Wake the living Galleons at your peril…

The Elder Race once ruled the entire Alastor cluster. Fierce predators, they tore suns from the sky, leaving the worlds of their enemies to freeze in the dark. Now only the Galleons are left: living ships that sail the world river which girds Phaedra: Alastor 824.

After the death of his father, Gunnar arrives on that ancient world, trying to find a new home. Having two girlfriends sounds like a good start, but Lavoine is the deeply tricky daughter of the last Voodoo queen, and Semele a fierce huntress who has sworn never to kiss a boy until she Walks with the Galleons. And now Lavoine is trying to wake up the Galleons and bring back the Elders.

On the Paladins of Vance label, Spatterlight publishes original works by authors who have given their own imagination free rein in the many wonderful worlds of the Grandmaster of fantasy & sci-fi, Jack Vance. Tais Teng is a Dutch fantasy and science fiction writer, illustrator, and sculptor who has won the Paul Harland Award—the Dutch Hugo Award—four times.”

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In Lucia's Eyes

“Japin has done his historical homework . . . A mesmerizing look into a Europe of long ago.” - Condé Nast Traveler

“Enthralling…packed with the color of 18th-century life . A complex examination of thwarted love…a marvelous reversal of hunter and prey, with a soupcon of Dangerous Liaisons. What makes In Lucia’s Eyes so fascinating is its melding of disparate veins: It’s a painful story that arrives at profound insights about the nature of love, but it’s spiked with bodice-ripper suspense and humor; it’s an intensely private testimony of one woman’s peculiar survival, but it’s laced with a fascinating survey of 18th-century intellectual history. Brace yourself with all the skepticism you want, you’ll still be seduced.” - Washington Post Book World

“Lucia works as a servant girl in Italy and is engaged to be married. But after the pox disfigures her face, she flees in shame without telling her lover.

Years later, as a renowned Amsterdam courtesan who never goes out without her veil, Lucia is at the theater when she recognizes her long-lost fiancé, Giacomo Casanova; and she cannot resist the opportunity to encounter him again.

Based on a woman who appeared briefly in Casanova’s legendary diaries, Lucia emerges as a brilliant woman who becomes every bit his match. In Lucia’s Eyes is an elegant and moving story of love denied and transformed.”

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HEX

“This is totally, brilliantly original.” -Stephen King

“Hidden tensions and human weakness trigger a witch-hunt that boils over into persecution, scapegoating, and a shocking denouement. A powerfully spooky piece of writing.” - Financial Times

“A great read for fans of The Blair Witch Project or The Crucible. “ ―Booklist

“[O]ne of the most original, clever, and terrifying books to be published in the 21st century”. - NY Journal of Books

“A Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.”

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Murder in Amsterdam

“Fascinating . . . Characteristically vivid and astute.” - The NY Review of Books

”A work of philosophical and narrative tension, strikingly sharp and brooding, frank and openly curious.” - San Francisco Chronicle

”Shrewd, subtly argued.” - The NY Times Book Review

“Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a crime novel and the analytical brilliance for which Buruma is renowned. On a cold November day in Amsterdam in 2004, the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by an Islamic extremist for making a movie that ‘insulted the prophet Mohammed.’ The murder sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native land to investigate the event and its larger meaning as part of the great dilemma of our time.”

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Amsterdam Stories

“No book published in the last 10 years has had a bigger impact on me, one of those books that speaks directly to your gut, a revelation. … [T]here’s something unclassifiable about the way Nescio goes about his stories, as if every sentence is a surprise even to the writer. At the same time, there’s nobody less pretentious and more down-to-earth.”- LitHub’s “26 Books from the Last Decade that More People Should Read”

“His utter simplicity goes hand-in-hand with a great command of humour, irony, matter-of-factness, understatement and sentiment (never sentimentality or self-pity) all of which miraculously balance each other out. ... Nescio is essentially a lyricist, a poet writing in prose.” ­- Dutch Foundation for Literature

“No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands.

Who was Nescio? Nescio—Latin for ‘I don’t know’—was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, the highly successful director of the Holland–Bombay Trading Company and a father of four—someone who knew more than enough about respectable maturity. Only in his spare time and under the cover of a pseudonym, as if commemorating a lost self, did he let himself go, producing over the course of his lifetime a handful of utterly original stories that contain some of the most luminous pages in modern literature.”

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Amsterdam

“A strong sense of irony and a lively prose style make Amsterdam one of the most unusual and engaging 'city books' I have read this year.” - Sunday Times

“Mak's brief is . . . to bring Amsterdam into the modern age. This he does with wit and style. But his real achievement . . . is to make accessible unfussily—and unsentimentally—one of Europe's most astonishing urban success stories.” - Financial Times

“A magnet for trade and travelers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank.

In this fascinating examination of the city's soul, part history, part travel guide, Geert Mak imaginatively recreates the lives of the early Amsterdammers, and traces Amsterdam's progress from waterlogged settlement to a major financial centre and thriving modern metropolis.”

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A Winter’s Promise

Dubbed the “Harry Potter of France”

A National Indie Bestseller

“Dabos’s darkly enchanting debut, a French bestseller, employs vibrant characters, inventive worldbuilding, and a sophisticated plot that will dazzle readers.” - Publishers Weekly 

Lose yourself in the fantastic world of the arks and in the company of unforgettable characters in this French runaway hit.

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. An unforgettable heroine in a rich and bountiful universe filled with intrigue and suspense, Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

Adult readers who gravitated toward the intricate world-building of Harry Potter or reveled in the dark trickeries of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass will find themselves ensnared by the enchantments of A Winter's Promise.

2018 Amazon Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book

One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best YA Books of 2018

Publishers Weekly's Best YA Book of the Year

Longlisted for Irish prize Great Reads Award

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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The End of Eddy

An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy.

“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—”girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.

Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.

“Haunting . . . devastating.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Èdouard Louis speaks of violence, both social and familiar, with tremendous force and feeling. Revelatory, queerly tough, as intellectual as it is impolite, The End of Eddy is a book to shake you up.” —Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

(Previous group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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The Ethics of Ambiguity

“From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom.

In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of ‘ways of being’ (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. 

The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.”

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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The Lost Domain (aka The Lost Estate & Le Grand Meaulnes)

“The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life, and that of his new friend François Seurel. It is Seurel who recalls the impact of le grand Meaulnes, disruptive and charismatic, on his schoolmates, and the encounter that is to haunt them both.

Lost, and alone, Meaulnes stumbles upon an isolated house, mysterious revels, and a beautiful girl. When he returns to Seurel, it is with the fixed determination to find the house again, and the girl with whom he has fallen in love. But the dreamlike days in the lost domain are evanescent, and Meaulnes is torn between his love and competing claims of loyalty and friendship.

Alain-Fournier's lyrical novel captures the painful transition from adolescence to adulthood without sentimentality, and with heart-wrenching yearning. Romantic and fantastical, it is the story's ultimate truthfulness about human experience that has captivated readers for a hundred years. In her introduction to this centenary edition, Hermione Lee considers the qualities that have established its reputation.”

(A special thank you to book club member, Leslie Tchaikovsky for the group read suggestion.)

Note: This translation by Frank Davison is the one we recommend. Also, please be aware that the paperback version is available via a separate Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3bfngDs.

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Planet of the Apes

“If you've seen the cheesy Planet of the Apes movies, you may be shocked to learn the first movie was adapted from an intelligent, ironic, & literate novel. You'll be less surprised when you learn the original novel Planet of the Apes was written by Pierre Boulle, author of The Bridge over the River Kwai.

Boulle called on his own experiences as a prisoner of war in South-east Asia during the Second World War, using the relationship between man and apes as a metaphor for the treatment handed out to prisoners by brutish Japanese guards. The subtext is strongly anti-slavery, anti-racist and anti-war.” - Observer

“In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems.

They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world, humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In a novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.”

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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The President's Hat

“An enchanting, irresistible story which flows quickly and effortlessly from one vivid character to the next, capturing their essence in a minimum of words and with a vitality that never ceases to surprise and delight.” - Lancashire Evening Post

“A charming fable about the power of a hat that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through French life during the Mitterrand years. Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand's black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments' soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It's a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow … different.”

(A special thank you to book club member, Christine Jensen for the group read suggestion.)

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