Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Will Self's Umbrella, alternating between a British mental institution in 1971 and Edwardian London, about a feminist who contracted encephalitis lethargica, (hat-tip Oliver Sack's Awakenings), is a challenging, stream-of-conscious modernist novel.
Tenth of December by George Saunders 272 pages; Random House Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | iBookstore | IndieBound Acclaimed fiction writer George Saunders has long been drawn to the farcical elements of contemporary life, playing for laughs. Tenth of December, his first story collection in more than six years, showcases his singular voice, a spirited Americanese that owes as much to marketing as to Melville, yet taps a deeper anguish.
In A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, Dina Nayeri writes of a young girl in 1980s Iran, separated from her twin sister, who contends with life by imagining a sweeter fate in America for her sister.
