epistolary

Dear Senthuran

Featured on the cover of Time Magazine as a 2021 next generation leader

In critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, native belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji (view on Amazon) reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal.

Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes their fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.

“A once-in-a-generation voice.” —Vulture

“One of our greatest living writers.” —Shondaland

“A thing of great beauty . . . Dear Senthuran is about powerful excellence, especially the excellence that appears in bodies that aren’t white and aren’t male. Emezi is changing the world and our reaction to this kind of power.” —The Paris Review

“An audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself.” —New York Times Book Review

“The brilliant Akwaeke Emezi candidly shares their reflections on gender, embodiment, queerness, creativity and relationships with the same fierce dedication and candor that defines their bestselling novels.” —Ms. Magazine

(A special thank you to book club member, Heather Purcell for the suggestion.)

Note: Great on audio—read by the author herself!

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Last Night I Dreamed of Peace

Rich in detail, this posthumously published diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Vietcong woman doctor gives us fresh insight into the lives of those fighting on the other side of the Vietnam War.

Saved from destruction by an American soldier and then published in Vietnam 35 years later, Trâm’s wartime diaries chronicle the last two years of her life as an idealistic young North Vietnamese battlefield surgeon. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a story of the struggle for one’s ideals amid the despair and grief of war, but most of all, it is a story of hope in the most dire circumstances.

”Urgent, simple prose that pierces the heart.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Remarkable. . . A gift from a heroine who was killed at 27, but whose voice has survived to remind us of the humanity and decency that endure amid—and despite—the horror and chaos of war.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Faithfully translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American journalist Pham, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is witness to the tragedy of war, a reminder made more pertinent every day. A book of hope to be read by all.” —The Bloombury Review

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

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Spud

“Spud is one of those books which could easily be dismissed as nothing more than an adolescent read at first glance, but once you pick it up, it's almost as if the pages turn themselves. All in all, a wonderful book.” —Metrobeat

Spud is a scholarship student at an elite boys' boarding school in South Africa writing down his disturbing yet often hilarious exploits in his diary. As the year begins, the president decriminalizes the African National Congress and releases Nelson Mandela from prison, but not even these massive cultural changes can get pre-pubescent boys to think about something other than girls or stop them from playing tricks on one another.

John “Spud” Milton takes his first hilarious steps toward manhood in this delicious, laugh-out-loud boarding school romp, full of midnight swims, raging hormones, and catastrophic holidays that will leave the entire family in hysterics and thirsty for more.

“Funny, fast-paced, and wonderfully observant...” —The Daily News

“Funniest book of the year.” —The Citizen

“Spud is South Africa's Catcher in the Rye.” —Alexander McCall Smith, author of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

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Confession of the Lioness

A finalist for the Man Booker International Prize & shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

“A dark, poetic mystery about the women of the remote village of Kulumani and the lionesses that hunt them.

Told through two haunting, interwoven diaries, Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness reveals the mysterious world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting the women who live there.

Mariamar, a woman whose sister was killed in a lioness attack, finds her life thrown into chaos when the outsider Archangel Bullseye, the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, arrives at the request of the village elders. Mariamar's father imprisons her in her home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel tracks the lionesses in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to them than meets the eye, he starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more dangerous, until it's no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their traditional culture, and the danger of their animal predators closing in, it becomes clear the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but spirits conjured by the women themselves.

Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women's oppression, Confession of the Lioness explores the confrontation between the modern world and ancient traditions to produce an atmospheric, gripping novel.”

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

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Woman of the Ashes

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize

Alternating between two voices in both an oral and letter format, this is the first in a trilogy about the last emperor of southern Mozambique

“Southern Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last of the leaders of the state of Gaza, the second-largest empire led by an African. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village.

Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a 15 year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. But when he develops romantic feelings for her, he fears that the attraction will compromise his mission. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese. But while one of her brothers fights for the Crown of Portugal, the other has chosen the African emperor. Standing astride two kingdoms, Imani is drawn to Germano, just as he is drawn to her. But she knows that in a country haunted by violence, the only way out for a woman is to go unnoticed, as if made of shadows or ashes. 

Alternating between the voices of Imani and Germano, Woman of the Ashes combines vivid folkloric prose, magical realism, and extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century.”

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

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1000 Lashes

“I spent three years writing these articles for you. I am in prison. I was tortured. My wife and our three children had to flee our country. My family and I endured all these harsh struggles simply because I spoke my mind. We went through those hardships for the sake of every letter written in this book.”

Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger, shared his thoughts on politics, religion, and liberalism online. He was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, ten years in prison, and a fine of 1 million Saudi Riyal, over a quarter of a million U.S. dollars. This politically topical polemic gathers together Badawi’s pivotal texts.

He expresses his opinions on life in an autocratic-Islamic state under the Sharia and his perception of freedom of expression, human and civil rights, tolerance and the necessary separation of state and religion.

“This slim, but fascinating and informative volume clearly brings home the consequences of our benign neglect of the Saudi totalitarian situation.” —Library Journal

“Raif Badawi's is an important voice for all of us to hear, mild, nuanced, but clear. His examination of his culture is perceptive and rigorous. Of course he must be saved from the dreadful sentence against him and the appalling conditions of his imprisonment. But he must also be read, so that we understand the struggle within Islam between suffocating orthodoxy and free expression, and make sure we find ourselves on the right side of that struggle.” —Salman Rushdie

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Girls of Riyadh

"Framed as a series of e-mails sent to the subscribers of an Internet group, the story follows an unnamed narrator who recounts the misadventures of her best friends—all fashionable, educated, wealthy 20-somethings looking for true love. Their world is dominated by prayer, family loyalty and physical modesty, but the voracious consumption of luxury goods and yearnings for female empowerment are also part of the package. 

When Rajaa Alsanea boldly chose to open up the hidden world of Saudi women—their private lives and their conflicts with the traditions of their culture—she caused a sensation across the Arab world. Now in English, Alsanea’s tale of the personal struggles of four young upper-class women offers Westerners an unprecedented glimpse into a society often veiled from view. Living in restrictive Riyadh but traveling all over the globe, these modern Saudi women literally and figuratively shed traditional garb as they search for love, fulfillment, and their place somewhere in between Western society and their Islamic home."

(A special thank you to book club member, Aisha Esbhani for the suggestion.)

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The Blood of Angels

"Another haunting novel of eco-speculation from Johanna Sinisalo, the award-winning author of Troll and a powerhouse of the Finnish science fiction and fantasy scene.

It is claimed Albert Einstein said that if bees disappear from the earth, mankind has four years left. When bee-vanishings of unprecedented scale hit the United States, Orvo, a Finnish beekeeper, knows all too well where it will lead. And when he sees the queen dead in his hives one day, it's clear the epidemic has spread to Europe, and the world is coming to an end. Orvo's special knowledge of bees just may enable him to glimpse a solution to catastrophe: he takes a desperate step onto a path where only he and the bees know the way but it propels him into conflict with his estranged, but much-loved son, a committed animal activist. A magical plunge into the myth of death and immortality, this is a tale of human blindness in the face of devastation—and the inevitable."

(A special thank you to book club member, Caity Greig for the suggestion.)

And don’t forget to check out our post on 10 Easy Ways You Can Help Save the Bees!

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