The Plague

Written by a French-Algerian philosopher whose “insistence on placing individual moral responsibility at the heart of all public choices cuts sharply across the comfortable habits of our own age” - NY Review of Books

“The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain.

Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.

A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague is a classic of twentieth-century literature.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Fever

“From the international bestseller: an Afrikaner boy and his father navigate post-Apocalyptic South Africa—’reminiscent of The Stand and The Passage’ - Stephen King

"Nico Storm and his father, Willem, drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in the world, as far as they know, to have survived a devastating virus that has swept over the planet. In this new reality, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father’s protector, even though he is still only a boy.
 
Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is a wise and compassionate man with a vision for a new community that survivors will rebuild from the ruins. And so Amanzi is founded, drawing Storm’s ‘homeless and tempest-tost’—starting with Melinda Swanevelder, whom they rescue from brutal thugs; Hennie Fly, with his vital Cessna plane; Beryl Fortuin and her ragtag group of orphans; and Domingo, the man with the tattooed hand. Then Sofia Bergman arrives, the most beautiful girl Nico has ever seen, who changes everything.
 
As the community grows, so do the challenges they face—not just from the attacks of biker brigands, but also from within. Looking back later in life, Nico recounts the traumatic events that led to the greatest rupture of all—the murder of the person he loves most.”
 
“Compelling, action-packed and fraught with emotion . . . bears favourable comparison with landmarks of the genre such as Stephen King’s The Stand and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Simply stunning.” - John Coates, Express (UK)
 
“Great stuff.” - Stephen King

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Red Dust

“Honest, raw, insightful. . . . The Chinese equivalent of On the Road.” - Time

“[Ma’s] powers of description make every page buzz with life. . . . Someone who could rank among the great travel writers.” –The NY Times Book Review

“A tour de force, a powerfully picaresque cross between the sort of travel book any Western author would give his eye-teeth to write, and a disturbing confession.” - The Independent

“Ma captures the feel of wandering off China’s beaten track, which is to say most of the country, far from the tour buses and souvenir stands.” –Los Angeles Times

In 1983, at the age of thirty, dissident artist Ma Jian finds himself divorced by his wife, separated from his daughter, betrayed by his girlfriend, facing arrest for ‘Spiritual Pollution,’ and severely disillusioned with the confines of life in Beijing. So with little more than a change of clothes and two bars of soap, Ma takes off to immerse himself in the remotest parts of China.

His journey would last three years and take him through smog-choked cities and mountain villages, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquility.

Remarkably written and subtly moving, the result is an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both insider and outsider in his own country could have written.”

(A special thank you to book club member, Judy Tanguay for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Red Sorghum

“Mo Yan . . . brilliantly and fondly re-creates life with visceral writing that reeks of gunpowder, blood, and death.” - The NY Times Book Review

“Yan tempers his brutal tale with a powerfully evocative lyricism . . . A powerful new voice on the brutal unrest of rural China.” - Kirkus Reviews

“The acclaimed novel of love and resistance during late 1930s China by Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.

A legend in China, where it won major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new—and unforgettable.”

(A special thank you to book club members, Carol Weldon & Sena Karataşlı for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Three Kingdoms

“This exciting new translation with footnotes is more readable than past versions and will appeal to modern readers.

The Three Kingdoms is an epic Chinese novel written over six centuries ago. It recounts in vivid historical detail the turbulent years at the close of the Han Dynasty when China broke into three competing kingdoms and over half the population were either killed or driven from their homes. Part myth, part fact, readers will experience the loyalty and treachery, the brotherhood and rivalry of China's legendary heroes and villains during the most tumultuous period in Chinese history.

Considered the greatest work in classic Chinese literature, The Three Kingdoms is read by millions throughout Asia today. Seen not just as a great work of art, many Chinese view it as a guide to success in life and business as well as a work that offers great moral clarity—while many foreigners read it to gain insights into Chinese society and culture. From the saga of The Three Kingdoms, readers will learn how great warriors motivate their troops and enhance their influence while disguising their weaknesses and turning the strengths of others against them.

This first volume in a trilogy introduces Liu Bei and his sworn brothers-in-arms Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, whose allegiance is sorely tested in a society that is in flux where each group is fighting for its survival against the other.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

“From the acclaimed author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: here is Yu Hua’s unflinching portrait of life under Chairman Mao.

A cart-pusher in a silk mill, Xu Sanguan augments his meager salary with regular visits to the local blood chief. His visits become lethally frequent as he struggles to provide for his wife and three sons at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Shattered to discover that his favorite son was actually born of a liaison between his wife and a neighbor, he suffers his greatest indignity, while his wife is publicly scorned as a prostitute. Although the poverty and betrayals of Mao’s regime have drained him, Xu Sanguan ultimately finds strength in the blood ties of his family.

With rare emotional intensity, grippingly raw descriptions of place and time, and clear-eyed compassion, Yu Hua gives us a stunning tapestry of human life in the grave particulars of one man’s days.”

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Mao

“A triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research.” - The Sunday Times

“The detail and documentation are awesome. The story told, mesmerising in its horror, is the most powerful, compelling, and revealing political biography of modern times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will.” - Daily Mail

“The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before—and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned, and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule—in peacetime.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Death of a Red Heroine

“Xiaolong knows that words can save your soul and in his pungent, poignant mystery, he proves it on every page.” - Chicago Tribune

“A marvelously assured debut . . . Engrossing, immensely readable.” - The Wall Street Journal

“Qiu Xiaolong's award-winning debut introduces Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police.

A young ‘national model worker,’ renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Wild Swans

“The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Red Azalea

“The book sings. It is a small masterpiece. . . [No one] has written more honestly and poignantly than Min about the desert of solitude and human alienation at the center of the Chinese Communist revolution.” —Vogue

”Gripping. . . .reads like raw testimony. . .epic drama, and. . .poetic incantation. . . . It was passion and despair that made [Min] fearless; it was fearlessness that made her a writer.” —The NY Times

“A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, this is Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China. As a child, Min was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. This national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose which Newsweek calls “as delicate and evocative as a traditional Chinese brush painting.”

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Girl Who Played Go

“Breathtaking. . . . While exploring epic themes like the loss of innocence and the meaning of honor, it lingers on the tiny, exquisite details of life.” - Vogue

“Dreamy . . . powerful. . . . This unlikely love story . . . is beautiful, shocking, and sad.” - Entertainment Weekly

“As the Japanese military invades 1930s Manchuria, a young girl approaches her own sexual coming of age. Drawn into a complex triangle with two boys, she distracts herself from the onslaught of adulthood by playing the game of go with strangers in a public square—and yet the force of desire, like the occupation, proves inevitable.

Unbeknownst to the girl who plays go, her most worthy and frequent opponent is a Japanese soldier in disguise. Captivated by her beauty as much as by her bold, unpredictable approach to the strategy game, the soldier finds his loyalties challenged. Is there room on the path to war for that most revolutionary of acts: falling in love?”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Water Margin

“Based upon the historical bandit Song Jiang and his companions, this Chinese equivalent of the English classic Robin Hood and His Merry Men is an epic tale of rebellion against tyranny and has been thrilling and inspiring readers for hundreds of years.

First translated into English by Pearl S. Buck in 1933 as All Men Are Brothers, the original edition of the J.H. Jackson translation appeared under the title The Water Margin in 1937. In this updated edition, Edwin Lowe addresses many of the shortcomings found in the original J.H. Jackson translation, and replaces the original grit and flavor of Shuihui Zhuan found in Chinese versions, including the sexual seduction, explicit descriptions of brutality and barbarity, and the profane voices of the thieving, scheming, drinking, fighting, pimping lower classes of Song Dynasty China. Similarly, the Chinese deities, Bodhisattvas, gods and demons have reclaimed their true names, as has the lecherous, over-sexed and ill-fated Ximen Qing. All of which was sanitized out when first published in 1937.

While Chinese in origin, the themes of The Water Margin are universal enough that it has served as a source of inspiration for numerous movies, television shows and video games up to the present day.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Map

“Both plain-spoken and luminous…Szymborska’s skepticism, her merry, mischievous irreverence and her thirst for the surprise of fresh perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical certainties. Hers is the best of the Western mind—free, restless, questioning.” - NY Times Book Review

One of Europe’s greatest recent poets is also its wisest, wittiest, and most accessible. Nobel Prize–winner Wislawa Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humor. Her elegant, precise poems pose questions we never thought to ask. “If you want the world in a nutshell,” a Polish critic remarks, “try Szymborska.” But the world held in these lapidary poems is larger than the one we thought we knew.

Carefully edited by her longtime, award-winning translator, Clare Cavanagh, the poems in Map trace Szymborska’s work until her death. Of the approximately 250 poems included, nearly 40 are newly translated; 13 represent the entirety of the poet’s last collection never before published in English.

“Nobel laureate Szymborska’s gorgeous posthumous collection interweaves insights into the suffering experienced during WWII and the Cold War brutalities of Stalin with catchy, realistic, colloquial musings. Her poems are revelatory yet rooted in the everyday. She writes about living with horrors, and about ordinary lives: people in love, at work, enjoying a meal. This is a brilliant and important collection.” - Booklist

"Szymborska has her impressive poetic repertoire on full display in this volume [which] reveals her development over seven decades, including a gradual departure from end rhyme and the sharpening of her wit. As multitudinous as Whitman, she conveyed deep feeling through vivid, surreal imagery and is able to revive clichéd language by reconnecting it in startling ways. Odes, critiques, and persona poems are just a few of the forms her writing took. Yet, despite their diversity, the constants of her poems were nuance and observational humor. Also apparent is Szymborska’s rare ability to present an epiphany in a single line.” - Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

There are a vast number of Chinese cookbooks out there, but none that surpass this authentic book written by an author from China known to many as the “Chinese godmother” of cookery.

This new masterwork of Chinese cuisine showcases acclaimed chef Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's decades of culinary virtuosity. A series of lessons build skill, knowledge, and confidence as Lo guides the home cook step by step through the techniques, ingredients, and equipment that define Chinese cuisine.

With more than 100 classic recipes and technique illustrations throughout, Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking makes the glories of this ancient cuisine utterly accessible. Stunning color photography reveals the treasures of old and new China, from the zigzagging alleys of historical Guangzhou to the bustle of city centers and faraway Chinatowns, as well as wonderful ingredients and gorgeous finished dishes. Step-by-step brush drawings illustrate Chinese cooking techniques. This lavish volume takes its place as the Chinese cookbook of choice in the cook's library.

“The only thing better than having Eileen Lo cook for you is having her teach you how. She takes you on an incredible journey…carefully explaining the steps of every important Chinese cooking technique, while also communicating a profound respect for flavors. She is the Chinese godmother every chef wishes he had.” - Daniel Boulud, world-renowned chef

Note: Some Amazon reviews note that there are issues with the ebook version of this cookbook. These have all been corrected.

View on Amazon

Outsider in Amsterdam

“What makes this series so engaging is that the policemen are as quirky and complicated as the criminals.” - The Washington Post

“A superb storyteller.” - Chicago Tribune

”A superlative mystery writer.” - Time

”On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, a man is found hanging from the ceiling beam of his bedroom, upstairs from the new religious society he founded: a group that calls itself ‘Hindist’ and supposedly mixes elements of various Eastern traditions. Detective-Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to investigate what looks like a simple suicide, but they are immediately suspicious of the circumstances.

This now-classic novel introduces Janwillem van de Wetering’s lovable Amsterdam cop duo of portly, wise Gripstra and handsome, contemplative de Gier. With its unvarnished depiction of the legacy of Dutch colonialism and the darker facets of Amsterdam’s free drug culture, this excellent procedural asks the question of whether a murder may ever be justly committed.”

”[Van de Wetering] is doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.”  - John Leonard

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Amsterdam Noir

“Every book in the Noir series serves as an introduction to a place. Besides the crime, the series and its editors have made it a point to address things like economic infrastructure, gentrification, and racial politics...Amsterdam Noir toes that line beautifully, touching on subjects like the impact of tourism, migration, and discrimination of Moroccans. In their introduction, editors Appel and Pachter say they want readers to know that bad things happen in Amsterdam, that the city 'also has its dark side, its shadowy corners.' However, what they ended up with is an anthology about a place where bad things happen not because of the psychogeography of the population, not because of corruption, gang violence, drug problems, or poverty, but because of human emotions—lunacy and jealousy. You could see that as a failure, but maybe it's not. Maybe the crime-free streets of Amsterdam are precisely what they wanted to show. Or maybe, like with most arthouse horror films, the point is that the monsters are not tied to the streets; they are always inside us.” - NPR

“Amsterdam has the amenities and, to a certain extent, the feel of a major world city, but one of its most attractive features is its relatively small size. It's easy to navigate on feet, by bike, and via its excellent public transportation network, especially with the semicircular perimeter of its famous Grachtengordel, or ring of concentric canals.

Like any other metropolis, though, Amsterdam also has its dark side, its shadowy corners—in other words, there is also an Amsterdam noir. No matter how beautiful, vital, and cheery a city might be, pure human emotions such as greed, jealousy, and the thirst for revenge will rear their ugly heads...with all their negative consequences. Amsterdam is a multidimensional city, populated by a wide assortment of social groups, and not all of those groups agree on what constitutes normal social values and mores. This results in a lively mix...and, as you will see, in problems.”

“An appealing compendium, with welcome doses of local color and atmosphere.”
- New York Journal of Books

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Assault

“A beautiful and powerful work [that] takes its place among the finest European fiction of our time.” - Elizabeth Hardwick

“It is the winter of 1945, the last dark days of World War II in occupied Holland. A Nazi collaborator, infamous for his cruelty, is assassinated as he rides home on his bicycle. The Germans retaliate by burning down the home of an innocent family; only twelve-year-old Anton survives.

Based on actual events, The Assault traces the complex repercussions of this horrific incident on Anton's life. Determined to forget, he opts for a carefully normal existence: a prudent marriage, a successful career, and colorless passivity. But the past keeps breaking through, in relentless memories and in chance encounters with others who were involved in the assassination and its aftermath, until Anton finally learns what really happened that night in 1945—and why.”

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Dinner

“The darkly suspenseful tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives—all over the course of one meal.
 
It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
 
Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act—an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Sleepless Night

“Compact, haunting, and lovely ... it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted ... In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex ... the book is a treatise on one individual's womanhood.” - Kirkus Reviews

“The charm of Margriet de Moor's book is due to a combination of sensuality and reflection, as well as a musical language of great beauty that explores the meanderings of the human soul with rare clarity." - Le Figaro

“A woman gets up in the middle of a wintry night and starts baking a cake while her lover sleeps upstairs. When it’s time for her to take the cake out of the oven, we have read a story of romance and death.

The narrator of this novel was widowed years ago and is trying to find new passion. But the memory of her deceased husband and a shameful incident still holds her in its grasp. Why did he do it?

Margriet de Moor, the grande dame of Dutch literature, tells a gripping love story about endings and demise, rage and jealousy, knowledge and ambiguity—and the possibility of new beginnings.”

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Twin

“When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'.

After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?

The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.

Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.”

“Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.“ - Tim Parks

“Sombre, yet uplifiting…a novel of magnificent artistry that seems like simplicity…a tale of suppressed sexual orientation, but so delicately done.” - Michiel Heyns

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

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)