[issybird]

Let's select the book we'll read and discuss in January 2019!

We love new participants. We're happy for you to vote, but we'd like to request that you not vote unless you plan to join the discussion whatever the selection, in the interest of a vibrant conversation. So if you haven't posted in a book club thread yet, do please say a quick hello here or in the Welcome thread.

This is a poll. Vote for as many books as you'd like. Questions? FAQs | Guidelines Or just ask!

Choices:

Embassytown by China Miéville
Amazon US $7.99

Spoiler:

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

345 pp.

Every Man Dies Alone (alternate title: Alone in Berlin) by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann
Amazon U.S., $12.99 | Amazon CA $9.88 | Amazon UK £4.99 | Amazon AU $14.99 | Kobo U.S., $12.99 | Kobo CA $13.59 | Kobo UK £4.99 | Kobo AU $14.99

Spoiler:

Based on a true story, this never-before-translated masterpiece was overlooked for years after its author—a bestselling writer before World War II who found himself in a Nazi insane asylum at war’s end—died just before it was published.

In a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis, it tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Third Reich, Otto and Anna Quangel launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in.

In the end, Every Man Dies Alone is more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order—it’s a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right, and for each other.

This edition includes an afterword detailing the gripping history of the book and its author, including excerpts from the Gestapo file on the real-life couple that inspired it.

546 pp.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Kobo prices: $US9.99, $C13.99, $A14,99, $NZ20.34, £3.99.

Spoiler:

In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.

This is a book translated from Italian into English, but of course it is also about the loss of a way of life and coming to terms with change.

327 pp.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Amazon US $9.99 | Amazon UK £5.99 | Amazon CA $10.99 | Amazon AU $11.99 | Kobo US $9.99 | Kobo UK £5.99 | Kobo CA $10.99 | Kobo AU $11.99

Spoiler:

Goodreads:

A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose -and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

304 pp.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Amazon US $12.86

Spoiler:

In Kitchen, a young Japanese woman named Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother. She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends, Yuichi, from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transgender mother, Eriko.

The book works as translation on two levels - the language, and the misunderstood Erika who was struggling with being transgender in 1980s Japan.

152 pp.

The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By by Georges Simenon, (Siân Reynolds, tr.)
Kobo UK £2.99 | Kobo AU $10.99 | Kobo CA $11.99 | Kobo US $9.99 | Audible US

Spoiler:

A brilliant new translation of one of Simenon's best loved masterpieces.

'A certain furtive, almost shameful emotion ... disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers'

Kees Popinga is a respectable Dutch citizen and family man. Then he discovers that his boss has bankrupted the shipping firm he works for - and something snaps. Kees used to watch the trains go by to exciting destinations. Now, on some dark impulse, he boards one at random, and begins a new life of recklessness and violence. This chilling portrayal of a man who breaks from society and goes on the run asks who we are, and what we are capable of.

'Classic Simenon ... extraordinary in its evocative power' Independent

251 pp.