King of Kings

He was the scion of a dynasty that was reputed to descend from King Solomon, a pioneer of African unity and independence, a staunch confederate of the Allies in their fight against the fascist Axis powers and the messiah of the Jamaican Rastafarian movement. He was a reformer and an autocrat, whose rule was brought to a brutal and ignominious end when he was toppled and murdered by communist rebels. The impressive, dazzling and complex personality of Haile Selassie, King of Kings, is brilliantly conveyed in this biographical portrait by Asfa-Wossen Asserate, his great-nephew.

The author spent his childhood and youth in Ethiopia, though he never held political office in his native country, where his father was the last president of the Imperial Crown Council. The background of the author, who knew Haile Selassie in person, afforded him intimate insights into life at the imperial court and the increasingly controversial policies pursued by the emperor. Asserate’s own experiences, augmented by intensive research in both family and public archives, combine to produce a uniquely detailed portrayal of the last King of Kings, and the turbulent and tragic history of the country over which he reigned supreme for much of the 20th century.

“Haile Selassie is one of the most bizarre and misunderstood figures in 20th-century history, alternately worshipped and mocked, idolised and marginalised. This magnificent biography is diligently researched and fair-minded; he is at last accorded a proper dignity.” —Guardian

“This is a superb, magnificent and totally gripping biography.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore

(A special thank you to book club member, Eydis West for the suggestion.)

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Notes from the Hyena's Belly

Part autobiography and part social history, Notes from the Hyena's Belly offers an unforgettable portrait of Ethiopia, and of Africa, during the 1970s and '80s, an era of civil war, widespread famine, and mass execution. “We children lived like the donkey,” Mezlekia remembers, “careful not to wander off the beaten trail and end up in the hyena's belly.”

His memoir sheds light not only on the violence and disorder that beset his native country, but on the rich spiritual and cultural life of Ethiopia itself. Throughout, he portrays the careful divisions in dress, language, and culture between the Muslims and Christians of the Ethiopian landscape. Mezlekia also explores the struggle between western European interests and communist influences that caused the collapse of Ethiopia's social and political structure—and that forced him, at age 18, to join a guerrilla army.

Through droughts, floods, imprisonment, and killing sprees at the hands of military juntas, Mezlekia survived, eventually emigrating to Canada. In Notes from the Hyena's Belly he bears witness to a time and place that few Westerners have understood.

“Mezlekia has a born storyteller's knack for pacing, and in his musical voice he manages to convey the helter-skelter of his existence . . . A story of high drama told with aplomb.” —Kirkus Reviews

“By skillfully interweaving personal history, politics, and Amhara fables . . . [Mezlekia] has produced the most riveting book about Ethiopia since Kapuscinski's literary allegory The Emperor and the most distinguished African literary memoir since Soyinka's Ake appeared 20 years ago.” —The NY Times Book Review

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

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The Wife’s Tale

In this indelible memoir that recalls the life of her remarkable 95-year old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia—a nation that would undergo a tumultuous transformation from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy, over the course of a single century.

Born in 1916, Yetemegnu was married and had given birth before she turned 15. As the daughter of a socially prominent man, she offered her husband, a poor yet gifted student, the opportunity to become an important religious leader.

She would endure extraordinary trials: deaths of some of her children; her husband’s imprisonment; and her son’s detention. She witnessed the Fascist invasion and the resistance, suffered Allied bombardment and exile; lived through a bloody revolution and the nationalization of her land. She gained audiences with the Emperor to argue for justice for her husband, for revenge, and for her children’s security, and fought court battles to defend her assets against powerful men.

Told in Yetemegnu’s enthralling voice and filled with a vivid cast of characters—emperors and empresses, priests and archbishops, scholars and slaves, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents—The Wife’s Tale introduces a woman both imperious and vulnerable; a mother, widow, and businesswoman whose faith and numerous travails never quashed her love of laughter, mischief and dancing; a fighter whose life was shaped by contact with the volatile events that transformed her nation.

An intimate memoir that offers a panoramic view of Ethiopia’s recent history, The Wife’s Tale takes us deep into the landscape, rituals, social classes, and culture of this ancient, often mischaracterized, richly complex, and unforgettable land—and into the heart of one indomitable woman.

“An ambitious, elegantly descriptive… profoundly lyrical narrative…Edemariam’s book offers a glimpse into a singularly fascinating culture and history as it celebrates the courage, resilience, and grace of an extraordinary woman.” —Kirkus Reviews

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

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Future Home of the Living God

[As a holiday present to the club, we decided to read an indigenous author from the North America region as there has been a great deal of excitement re: these authors.]

After voting, the following novel was chosen, a book written by a member of the Turtle Mountain Band, a tribe of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa):

Louise Erdrich, the NY Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author paints a startling portrait

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself affecting every living creature on earth while woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. 32-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell her parents, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of informants and keep her baby safe.

Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

“Masterful…a breakout work of speculative fiction…enters the realm of The Handmaid’s Tale…A suspenseful, profoundly provoking novel of life’s vulnerability and insistence…with a bold theme, searing social critique, and high-adrenaline action.” —Booklist

“Smart and thrilling…Erdrich’s storytelling is seductive.” —Vanity Fair

(A special thank you to book club member, Julie Jacobs for the suggestion.)

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Funny Boy

Lambda Literary Award Winner

An evocative coming-of-age novel about growing up gay in Sri Lanka during the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict—one of the country’s most turbulent and deadly periods.

Arjie is “funny.”

The second son of a privileged family in Sri Lanka, he prefers staging make-believe wedding pageants with his female cousins to battling balls with the other boys. When his parents discover his innocent pastime, Arjie is forced to abandon his idyllic childhood games and adopt the rigid rules of an adult world. Bewildered by his incipient sexual awakening, mortified by the bloody Tamil-Sinhalese conflicts that threaten to tear apart his homeland, Arjie painfully grows toward manhood and an understanding of his own “different” identity.

Set in the mannered, lush world of upper middle class Tamils in Sri Lanka, this deeply moving novel, though not autobiographical, draws on Selvadurai’s experience of being gay in Sri Lanka and growing up during the escalating violence between the Buddhist Sinhala majority and Hindu Tamil minority in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Refreshing, raw, and poignant, Funny Boy is an exquisitely written, compassionate tale of a boy’s coming-of-age that quietly confounds expectations of love, family, and country as it delivers the powerful message of staying true to one’s self no matter the obstacles.

“Selvadurai writes as sensitively about the emotional intensity of adolescence as he does about the wonder of childhood.” —New York Times Book Review

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Ordeal

Sofie Lund’s grandfather died after a fall down his basement steps, the same basement that holds a locked safe bolted to the floor. She inherits the house, but wants nothing to do with his money believing the old man let her mother die in jail.

Line Wisting’s journalist instincts lead her into friendship with Sofie, and they are together when the safe is opened. What they discover unlocks another case and leads Line’s father, Chief Inspector Wisting, on a trial of murder to an ordeal that will eventually separate the innocent from the damned.

“Horst writes some of the best Scandinavian crime fiction available. His books are beautifully plotted and addictive, the characters superbly realized.” —Sigurdardottir

“The more widely I read within Nordic noir, the more I appreciate the attention to detail and realism Horst brings to his writing having served as a police officer himself. His main character is not the same old damaged detective; he’s a good, hardworking man who believes in justice…a character so refreshing to read.” —Crime by the Book

“A richly detailed narrative, morally complex characters, and a deeply contemplative, philosophical undertone make this a superior example of Scandinavian crime fiction.” —Publishers Weekly

Note: While this book is officially #5 in the series, it can be read as a standalone.

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

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Hunger

First published in 1890 in Norwegian and based on Hamsun's own experiences with poverty prior to his success as an author, Hunger tells the story of an unnamed vagrant who stumbles around the streets of Norway's capital city of Kristiania (now Oslo) looking for food. This starving young man attempts to create an outward illusion of sanity and rationality, but his inner mind is becoming increasingly disturbed and delusional. He is kind to others and generous with the little he has, but he also refuses to find work to help support himself and becomes sicker and sicker in both his mind and body as he starves. His deterioration, both mental and physical, is captured in stunning and shocking detail.

While the ending is one of hope and optimism, Hunger is a searing portrait of poverty and despair, as well as a biting social commentary on modern urban life and how desperate things can become for the poor in large cities. Nobel Prize winning Hamsun is at his best in this classic of modern literature.

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

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The Ice Palace

In rural Norway, one evening after school, 11-year-old Siss and Unn strike up a deep and unusual bond. When the next day Unn sets off into the wintry woods in search of a mysterious frozen waterfall, known locally as the “ice palace,” and does not return, a devastated Siss takes it upon herself to find her missing friend.

Siss's struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn's fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the Ice Palace are described in prose of a lyrical economy that ranks among the most memorable achievements of modern literature thanks in large part to Vesaas's unique command of a sparse, figurative and fragmentary style.

“Austere poetical clarity, stoical wisdom and a vivid response to nature.” —Times Literary Supplement

“Vesaas’s laconic sentences are as cold and simple as ice—and as fantastic.” — Daily Telegraph

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

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Naïve. Super

Funny and poignant—the number one Norwegian bestseller, translated into 19 languages

Troubled by an inability to find any meaning in his life, the 25-year-old narrator of this deceptively simple novel quits university and is living, jobless, in his brother’s house while the brother is away on business.

In a bid to discover what life is all about, he writes lists which become an endearing and thought-provoking quirk. He returns to childhood pleasures endlessly bouncing a ball against the wall and befriending a small boy who lives next door. Eventually, he’s persuaded to join his brother for a holiday where his plans for the future start to coalesce. There, it becomes apparent that the naivety of childhood is not an escape from the complexity of adulthood, but a compliment to it.

Naïve. Super is an utterly enchanting meditation on life’s experiences.

“Naïve. Super displays a canny lightness of touch and a great deal of charm. An effortlessly hip and savvy antidote to the rainy day blues.” —Sleazenation

“A book overflowing with creative talent on just about every page. Well calculated naivety.” —Dagbladet

(A special thank you to book club member, Sena Karataşlı for the suggestion.)

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The Dwarves

The bestselling series from Europe

For countless millennia, the dwarves of the Fifthling Kingdom have defended the stone gateway into Girdlegard. Many and varied foes have hurled themselves against the portal and died attempting to breach it. No man or beast has ever succeeded. Until now. . .

Abandoned as a child, Tungdil the blacksmith labors contentedly in the land of Ionandar, the only dwarf in a kingdom of men. Although he does not want for friends, Tungdil is very much aware that he is alone—indeed, he has not so much as set eyes on another dwarf. But all that is about to change.

Sent out into the world to deliver a message and reacquaint himself with his people, the young foundling finds himself thrust into a battle for which he has not been trained. Not only his own safety, but the life of every man, woman and child in Girdlegard depends upon his ability to embrace his heritage. Although he has many unanswered questions, Tungdil is certain of one thing—no matter where he was raised, he is a true dwarf.

And no one has ever questioned the courage of the dwarves.

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Death in the Andes

Written by the 2010 Nobel Prize winning author & “Peru's best novelist—one of the world's best.” —The New Yorker

In a remote Andean village, three men have disappeared. Peruvian Army corporal Lituma and his deputy Tomás have been dispatched to investigate, and to guard the town from the Shining Path guerrillas they assume are responsible. But the townspeople do not trust the officers, and they have their own ideas about what forces claimed the bodies of the missing men. To pass the time, and to cope with their homesickness, Tomás entertains Lituma nightly with the sensuous, surreal tale of his precarious love affair with a wayward prostitute. His stories are intermingled with the ongoing mystery of the missing men.

Death in the Andes is an atmospheric suspense story and a political allegory, a panoramic view of contemporary Peru from one of the world's great novelists.

“Remarkable . . . a fantastically picturesque landscape of Indians and llamas, snowy peaks, hunger, and violence.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Meticulously realistic descriptions of this high, unforgiving landscape and the haunted people who perch there . . . merge into a surreal portrait of a place both specific and universal.” —Time

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)

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Blood of the Dawn

Blood of the Dawn follows three women whose lives intertwine and are ripped apart during what's known as “the time of fear” in Peruvian history when the Shining Path militant insurgency was at its peak. The novel rewrites the conflict through the voice of women, activating memory through a mixture of politics, desire, and pain in lucid, brutal prose.

The stories of the three women converge at the end, in a series of horrifically violent passages—they're as different from one another as can be, but they end up sharing the same experience. It's as upsetting as you could possibly imagine.

“Blood of the Dawn is a short novel, and maybe that's why it's so effective. Salazar Jiménez and translator Elizabeth Bryer make every word count, and the result is a work of concentrated intensity with no room for the reader to escape the horrors that fill just about every page. It's a novel that never lets the reader blink, until the terrifying last words … The violence that permeated Peru in the 1980s and 1990s is unspeakable, which is exactly why it needs to be spoken. That's what Jiménez does in this beautiful, horrifying work of art.” —NPR

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

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The Blue Hour

Adrián Ormache, a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife and two daughters, leads a privileged and glamorous life in one of Lima’s wealthiest neighborhoods. But when his mother dies, he discovers a letter amongst her possessions making shocking claims about her now long-dead husband, Adrián’s father—a commander in the army during the Peruvian Civil War of the 1980s. As well as being linked to atrocities committed against the ‘Shining Path’ guerrillas, it appears that he also kidnapped and kept a local girl, whose family now seeks retribution.

Shocked out of his comfortable existence, Adrián becomes obsessed with finding the girl and sets out to face the harrowing realities of Peru’s recent past, and uncover the truth about his father.

“The strength of the plot pivots on the lovers’ ambiguous feelings for one another—the intensity of their mismatched love and hatred is perfectly drawn.” —Times Literary Supplement

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

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Sexographies

In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the city in the company of prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.

“The most striking quality of Sexographies is Wiener’s fearlessness―her ability to broach any topic without the slightest flinch, however unfamiliar or achingly personal…. her essays do not deal solely in sex, as the title of the collection may suggest, but in the exploration of identity and gender. How are we to make sense of our own bodies and the bodies of others? Why is it that we with the internet at our fingertips supposedly know more than ever, yet often experience less and are less open to the experiences of others? Wiener urges us to ask these questions in order to uncover the artificial boundaries that have confined us to our own experiences. Nothing is off limits to Gabriela Wiener and she spares her readers no detail of her adventures. The result is Sexographies―an addictive and darkly funny collection that surprises at every turn.” —The Arkansas International

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

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The Word of the Speechless

The Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro is one of the masters of the short story and a major contributor to the great flourishing of Latin American literature that followed the Second World War. In a letter to an editor, Ribeyro said about his stories, “in most of [them] those who are deprived of words in life find expression—the marginalized, the forgotten, those condemned to an existence without harmony and without voice. I have restored to them the breath they’ve been denied, and I’ve allowed them to modulate their own longings, outbursts, and distress.”

This is work of deep humanity, imbued with a disorienting lyricism that is Ribeyro’s alone. The Word of the Speechless, edited and translated by Katherine Silver, introduces readers to an indispensable and unforgettable voice of Latin American fiction.

“A magnificent storyteller, one of the best of Latin America and probably of the Spanish language, unjustly not recognized as such.” —Mario Vargas Llosa

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

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The Whale Rider

An international bestseller & winner of the New Zealand Booksellers' Choice Award written by a multiple-award winning Maori author

Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather's love and attention. But he is focused on his duties as chief of a Maori tribe in Whangara, on the East Coast of New Zealand—a tribe that claims descent from the legendary “whale rider.” In every generation since the whale rider, a male has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir—there's only Kahu. She should be the next in line for the title, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl.

Kahu will not be ignored. And in her struggle she has a unique ally: the whale rider himself, from whom she has inherited the ability to communicate with whales. Once that sacred gift is revealed, Kahu may be able to re-establish her people's ancestral connections, earn her great-grandfather's attention, and lead her tribe to a bold new future.

“A profoundly enchanting story that will hold [you] in its grip right up to its tender conclusion.” —Curled Up

(A special thank you to book club member, Suzanne Bradley for the suggestion.)

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Baby

Cynthia is 21, bored, and desperately waiting for something big to happen. Her striking fitness instructor, Anahera, is ready to throw in the towel on her job and marriage. Emptying Cynthia's father's bank account, they run away and buy “Baby,” an old boat docked in a beautiful bay, where Cynthia dreams they will live in a state of love. But when Gordon the German comes to live on board Baby, two’s company and three’s a crowd, especially when you’re a psychopath living on a tiny boat. Gordon soon becomes a rival for Anahera’s affections, and perhaps even worse than that, he dares to hold a mirror up to Cynthia and her narcissism.

“Cynthia, the simpering, scheming, covetous emotional sinkhole of Jochems’s debut novel, Baby, is alive and squirming; a memorable addition to the growing coteries of unapologetic antiheroines (dis)gracing the pages of contemporary fiction … There are echoes here of Megan Abbott, Emma Cline, Zoë Heller and Miranda July: writers drawn to the intricacies and ferocious possibilities of female friendship. There’s a dollop, too, of Tom Ripley and a dash of Lord of the Flies. What Jochems adds is a cloying grotesqueness. Baby is a novel of close-quarters living: of masticating mouths and human stink; of piss and vomit, sunburn and bruises, pimples and dandruff; of new fat expanding under the skin. A novel of bodies.” —The Guardian

“From page one, Baby is a dryly funny study of a young woman driven to shocking acts by what seems like boredom and lust alone, devoid of any semblance of a conscience … Come to Baby for a full-blown psychopath who makes you laugh out loud despite your horror.” —The Saturday Age

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

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Can You Tolerate This?

A dazzling—and already prizewinning—collection of essays on youth and aging, ambition and disappointment, Katherine Mansfield tourism and New Zealand punk rock, and the limitations of the body.

Youth and frailty, ambition and anxiety, the limitations of the body and the challenges of personal transformation: these are the undercurrents that animate acclaimed poet Ashleigh Young’s first collection of essays. In Can You Tolerate This?—the title comes from the question chiropractors ask to test a patient’s pain threshold—Young ushers us into her early years in the faraway yet familiar landscape of New Zealand: fantasizing about Paul McCartney, cheering on her older brother’s fledging music career, and yearning for a larger and more creative life. As Young’s perspective expands, a series of historical portraits—a boy who grew new bone wherever he was injured, an early French postman who built a stone fortress by hand, a generation of Japanese shut-ins—strike unexpected personal harmonies, as an unselfconscious childhood gives way to painful shyness in adolescence. As we watch Young fall in and out of love, undertake an intense yoga practice that masks an eating disorder, and gradually find herself through her writing, a highly particular psyche comes into view: curious, tender, and exacting in her observations of herself and the world around her.

Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.

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

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Died in the Wool

World War II continues to rage on, and Inspector Alleyn continues to act as the Special Branch’s eyes and ears in New Zealand (a country admittedly not often thought of as playing a central role in the war). While his primary brief is spy-catching, he is happy to lend a hand in matters of old-fashioned policing, and that’s exactly what the Flossie Rubrick case initially appears to be.

A highly opinionated and influential Member of Parliament, Ms. Rubrick was also the wife of a sheep farmer, and she was last seen heading off to one of his storage sheds. Three weeks later, she has turned up—very dead, and packed in a bale of her own wool. Had she made political enemies? Had a mysterious legacy prompted her death? Or—as Alleyn increasingly thinks likely—could the shadowy world of international espionage have intruded, improbably, on this sheep farm in the back of beyond? 

Fans of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, or Dorothy L. Sayers will adore Ngaio Marsh. These four authors together are in fact known as the “Queens of Crime” though many do not realize that Marsh is actually from New Zealand. While this is the 13th novel in the Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series, each novel stands alone & only a few of take place in New Zealand with the remainder taking place in the UK.

“In Marsh’s ironic and witty hands, the mystery novel can be civilized literature.” —The New York Times

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

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Trust No One

In this “outstanding psychological thriller” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by the Edgar-nominated author of Joe Victim, a famous crime writer struggles to differentiate between his own reality and the frightening plot lines he’s created for the page.

Jerry Grey is known to most of the world by his crime writing pseudonym, Henry Cutter—a name that has been keeping readers on the edge of their seats for more than a decade. Recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of forty-nine, Jerry’s crime writing days are coming to an end. His twelve books tell stories of brutal murders committed by bad men, of a world out of balance, of victims finding the darkest forms of justice. As his dementia begins to break down the wall between his life and the lives of the characters he has created, Jerry confesses his worst secret: The stories are real. He knows this because he committed the crimes. Those close to him, including the nurses at the care home where he now lives, insist that it is all in his head, that his memory is being toyed with and manipulated by his unfortunate disease. But if that were true, then why are so many bad things happening? Why are people dying?

Hailed by critics as a “masterful” (Publishers Weekly) writer who consistently offers “ferocious storytelling that makes you think and feel” (The Listener) and whose fiction evokes “Breaking Bad reworked by the Coen Brothers” (Kirkus Reviews), Paul Cleave takes us down a cleverly twisted path to determine the fine line between an author and his characters, between fact and fiction.

Note: This book is also great on audio though the narrator is English, not a Kiwi (aka a New Zealander).

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

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