Ronald Vlek Libros

In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation that turned into a permanent stay. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child.

No Country for Old Men is a compelling, harrowing, disturbing, sad, endlessly surprising and resonant novel' Robert Edric, Spectator

De Amerikaanse Betty trouwt met de Iraanse Moody. Zij hebben een gelukkig huwelijk, vooral na de geboorte van hun dochtertje Mahtob. Maar tijdens een vakantiebezoek aan haar schoonfamilie in Teheran, verandert Betty's leven plotseling in een ware nachtmerrie. Eindelijk terug in Amerika moet Betty een nieuw bestaan opbouwen. Ze leeft voortdurend in angst dat Moody zijn dreigementen om haar te vermoorden en Mahtob te ontvoeren zal uitvoeren. Dat Betty's verhaal niet uniek was bleek uit de talloze reacties op haar eerste boek van wanhopige ouders die haar ervaringen deelden. In Uit liefde voor mijn kind laat ze ook hen aan het woord. Hun verhalen, vol wanhoop, machteloosheid en woede, zijn stuk voor stuk hartverscheurend.

In this compelling narrative, a writer embarks on a quest to uncover the truth behind his family's tragic past during World War II, blending memoir, reportage, mystery, and scholarly investigation. The journey begins with the haunting memory of six relatives who vanished during the Holocaust, a topic that captivated him since childhood. Years later, the discovery of desperate letters from 1939 written by his grandfather prompts him to seek out the remaining witnesses to his family's fate. This search spans a dozen countries across four continents, revealing the painful discrepancies between lived histories and the stories we tell. Ultimately, it leads him back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's saga began, where answers to a long-standing mystery await. By weaving together past and present, childhood memories of a lost generation of immigrant Jews, and reflections on biblical texts and Jewish history, the narrative transforms a personal family story into a profound meditation on memory and the passage of time. Deeply personal and suspenseful, this literary work illuminates what is lost and found in our attempts to grasp the past. The author’s exploration is described as a powerful and moving investigation, reminiscent of Proust and Sebald, and is praised for its human depth, where every witness has a face and a story.

Overgave is een verbijsterende roman over hoe levens door liefde en oorlog onherstelbaar veranderen. Het verhaal voert ons snel heen en weer in de tijd, van Korea naar New Jersey, naar Mantsjoerije en Italië. June Han is nog maar een jong meisje als de oorlog in Korea haar tot wees maakt; Hector Brennan is een jonge Amerikaanse soldaat die de kleingeestige drama’s van zijn stadje is ontvlucht om zijn land te dienen. Als de oorlog is afgelopen komen hun levens samen in een Koreaans weeshuis waar ze beiden naar de gunsten van Sylvie Tanner dingen, de mooie maar ernstig getraumatiseerde domineesvrouw, wier onvatbare liefde alles op losse schroeven zet. Pas dertig jaar later worden June en Hector aan de andere kant van de wereld tot elkaar veroordeeld en moeten ze de mysterieuze geheimen van hun verleden, de schokkende daden van liefde en geweld die hen verbinden, onder ogen zien. Overgave is schitterend, bloedstollend en onvergetelijk: een diepzinnige bespiegeling over het wezen van heldenmoed en opoffering, de kracht van de liefde, en de mogelijkheden tot genade en verlossing.

An elegant, epic debut novel that follows one young woman's search for a lost figure from her childhood, a journey that takes her from Southern India to Kashmir and to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.

A brilliant short novel from a writer at the very height of his powers.

1936: Shostakovich, sólo treinta, teme por su sustento y su vida. Stalin, hasta entonces una figura distante, ha tomado un interés repentino en su trabajo y ha denunciado su última ópera. Ahora, seguro de que será exiliado a Siberia (o, más probablemente, muerto a tiros en el lugar), reflexiona sobre su situación, su historia personal, sus padres, varias mujeres y esposas, sus hijos todos los que están en el equilibrio de su destino. Y aunque un golpe de suerte le impide convertirse en otra víctima del Gran Terror, durante los años venideros se mantendrá bajo el pulgar del despotismo: hecho para representar los valores soviéticos en una conferencia cultural en la ciudad de Nueva York, forzado a unirse El Partido, y obligado, constantemente, a pesar apaciguando a aquellos en el poder contra la integridad de su música. Barnes nos guía elegantemente a través de la trayectoria de la carrera de Shostakovich, al mismo tiempo que ilumina la tumultuosa evolución de la Unión Soviética. El resultado es a la vez un impresionante retrato de un hombre implacablemente fascinante y una brillante meditación sobre el significado del arte y su lugar en la sociedad "- Proporcionado por el editor

Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's 1980 punk rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces her to a world of sophistication, and to his spiritual quest for the beauty that shines through everyday experience. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County Coroner asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams fade to black. 'What happens to a dream when the dreamer is gone?' Josie finds herself drawn into a twisted relationship with Michael's pianist mother, Meredith, that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need. Passionate, wounded, fiercely alive, Josie Tyrell walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover what is left of the brilliant vision of the future she and Michael once nurtured together. With the luxurious prose and fever pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a spellbinding new novel about love and betrayal.

In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts. Paul Auster recalls his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, now reflecting on his inner development and experiences with the outer world, alongside revealing letters to his first wife, Lydia Davis. This impressionistic portrait of a writer coming of age captures Auster's journey from a baby's-eye view of the moon to his childhood admiration for movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, the composition of his first poem at nine, and his growing awareness of American injustices. It charts his moral, political, and intellectual evolution as he navigates the post-war fifties and the turbulent sixties. Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and sensations of his early life, filled with moving images and his love for cartoons and films. The book culminates uniquely, breaking from prose into pure imagery, with the final section recapitulating the earlier parts through an album of pictures. This four-part work not only tells the story of Auster's times but also of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, addressing the challenge of autobiography in an unprecedented manner.

?Preferira̕s amar ms̀ y sufrir ms̀ o amar menos y sufrir menos? Creo que, en definitiva, esa es la n︢ica cuestin̤, reflexiona al inicio de la novela su protagonista. En la dčada de los sesenta, cuando tena̕ diecinueve aǫs y regres ̤de la universidad para pasar el verano en casa de sus padres, Paul se apunt ̤a un club de tenis en el que conoci ̤a Susan Macleod, de cuarenta y ocho aǫs, casada no muy felizmente y con dos hijas ya mayores.