Jean-Pierre Carasso Libros

Life of Pi meets Aesop's Fables - a modern-day fable for adults

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

The runaway of the title story is a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband. In “Passion,” a country girl emerging into the larger world via a job in a resort hotel discovers in a single moment of stunning insight the limits and lies of that mysterious emotion. Three stories are about a woman named Juliet–in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls’ school into a wild and irresistible love match; in the second she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose life and marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her child, caught, she mistakenly thinks, in the grip of a religious cult, vanishes into an unexplained and profound silence. In the final story, “Powers,” a young woman with the ability to read the future sets off a chain of events that involves her husband-to-be and a friend in a lifelong pursuit of what such a gift really means, and who really has it. Throughout this compelling collection, Alice Munro’s understanding of the people about whom she writes makes them as vivid as our own neighbors. Here are the infinite betrayals and surprises of love–between men and women, between friends, between parents and children–that are the stuff of all our lives. It is Alice Munro’s special gift to make these stories as vivid and real as our own.

Dans un camp de concentration, Rosa cache Magda, son bébé, dans les plis d'un châle. Mais une jeune fille de quatorze ans, rongée par le froid, s'empare du châle qui dissimule l'enfant. Alors survient l'innommable: un nazi découvre le bébé et le jette contre les barbelés électrifiés du camp. Trente ans plus tard, on retrouve Rosa à Miami. Sa fureur et sa mémoire sont intactes. Jusqu'au jour où un paquet arrive par la poste. C'est le châle. La sobriété de ce récit et son souffle font du souvenir de Rosa un hymne à l'amour au cœur de l'enfer. Le châle, qui a gardé " le goût d'amande et de cannelle de la salive de Magda ", est un rempart contre l'oubli, un appel adressé à chacun de nous pour que demeurent vivantes nos mémoires.

Ancient Evenings, a dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel, recreates the long-lost civilisation of Ancient Egypt. Mailer breathes life into the figures of that era; the eighteenth dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. His hero, three times reincarnated during the novel, moves in the bright sunlight of white temples, in the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile and in the terrifying clash of battle. An outstanding work of creative imagination, Ancient Evenings displays Mailer's obsession with magic, violence and eroticism and lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned. [Taken from Amazon.com]