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Dorothea Dieckmann, Tim Mohr
A novel set against Guantanamo that calmly depicts the uncertainty and violence imposed on people whose names have been stripped away. It gradually reveals the pressure of political reality through a restrained style.
Douglas R. Hofstadter
What do we mean when we say "I"? Can thought arise out of matter? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop"--a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols." The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I." The "I" is the nexus in our brain where the levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. For each human being, this "I" seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop , Douglas R. Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Godel, Escher, Bach . Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter's many readers have long been waiting for.
Stephanie Hemphill
The life of poet Sylvia Plath is traced through a sequence of poems that render creativity, marriage, and emotional instability in layered form. Part biography and part verse performance, the book draws force from language itself.
Francis Ponge
A signature poetry collection by Francis Ponge that re-sees ordinary objects through precise language.
Judith Clarke
Lily senses that something will go wrong at her grandfather’s eightieth birthday gathering and tries to steer the day toward something manageable. Quiet humor and warmth spread through a family full of eccentric adults and younger voices.
Brian Selznick
A large-scale story in which orphan Hugo, who tends the clocks, is drawn toward film history through repairs and secret discoveries. The page design itself moves like cinema, blending mystery with the appeal of machinery.
Toby Olson, Robert Coover
Toby Olson's Seaview is a novel that crosses a devastated America while tracing relations shaped by rage, love, and survival.
Maia Wojciechowska
In a small Spanish town, Manolo grows up under the shadow of his late father, a celebrated bullfighter, while struggling between the expectations around him and his own fear. Through that conflict, the novel asks what courage means and what it takes to choose a life of one’s own instead of living out someone else’s wishes.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
An autobiographical nonfiction work about religious background, leaving faith, oppression as a woman, and the costs of exile.
Daljit Nagra
A debut collection that portrays immigrant communities in Britain with both humor and urgency, turning a hybrid English into the book’s own driving force.
John Boyne
A fable-like novel for younger readers set against the Second World War. Through the eyes of an innocent boy, it powerfully conveys the cruelty of war and the divisions between people.
Andre Aciman
A novel that follows a boy's and young man's love story unfolding during an Italian summer. Desire and hesitation intensify within a brief span and become enduring memory.