Review by New York Times Review
MAMA'S LAST HUG: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, by Frans de Waal. (Norton, $27.95.) De Waal argues that we make a grave mistake when we pretend that only humans think, feel and know, and cites neurochemical studies to conclude that feelings like love, anger and joy are widespread throughout the animal kingdom. THE WHITE BOOK, by Han Kang. Translated by Deborah Smith. (Hogarth, $20.) In this latest novel from the author of "The Vegetarian," a Korean writer wanders the city of Warsaw, haunted by her family's losses - and by her country's inability to mourn its own. THE BORDER, by Don Winslow. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $28.99.) The final volume of Winslow's monumental trilogy about the Mexican drug cartels and the American dealers, fixers and addicts who keep the trade flourishing. Whether good, bad or altogether hopeless, his characters are full of life and hard to forget. THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, by Toni Morrison. (Knopf, $28.95.) Spanning four decades of Morrison's illustrious career, this collection includes a stirring eulogy to James Baldwin, a prayer for the victims of 9/11 and insights into "Beloved" and her other novels. DEATH IS HARD WORK, by Khaled Khalifa. Translated by Leri Price. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Khalifa's fifth novel about siblings reunited by their father's death during Syria's current war, wrestles with themes of societal demise and rejuvenation on a tableau every bit as haunted by violence as the swamps and redclay roads of Faulkner's South. SAY NOTHING: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Doubleday, $28.95.) Part history, part true crime, Keefe's book uses the abduction and murder of a Belfast mother to illuminate the bitter conflict known as the Troubles. THE HEAVENS, by Sandra Newman. (Grove, $26.) This novel, which explores notions of time travel, romance and mental stability, features a heroine who comes to believe she lives simultaneously in Elizabethan England and 21st-century New York, with events in one period affecting life in the other. EMPIRES OF THE WEAK: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order, by J. C. Sharman. (Princeton, $27.95.) Taking in 1,000 years of history, Sharman makes the provocative case that European supremacy is a mere blip in mankind's narrative, which is in fact dominated by Asia. ON THE COME UP, by Angie Thomas. (Balzer + Bray, $18.99; ages 12 and up.) Set in the same neighborhood as "The Hate U Give," Thomas's riveting follow-up introduces an aspiring rapper. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 9, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A more challenging scenario than the one facing siblings Bolbol, Fatima, and Hussein in this powerhouse novel would be hard to imagine. The siblings' father has died, and his final wish was to be buried in his ancestral village in Syria's Aleppo region. In a country engaged in active civil war, though, the two-hour drive from their home in Damascus could cost the siblings their lives. Refusing to look away from its characters' challenges, the novel is clear-eyed in its presentation of living in a war zone. Many bodies are uncollected on roadsides and eaten by dogs. Is it potentially worth the siblings' own lives to prevent this fate for their father? At checkpoints, guards demand to see papers for the corpse to some he is a traitor even while dead and threats of imprisonment, bombing, and torture are real. Each with singular histories and needs, the siblings are living out the most existential of questions: What actually matters in a dangerous world? Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Syrian author Khalifa (In Praise of Hatred, 2014) reaches readers with a style that is straightforward, true, and profound.--Emily Dziuban Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Khalifa's novel compellingly tackles the strain of responsibility felt by a man in war-torn Syria. After his father, Abdel Latif, dies in hospital, 40-something Bolbol gathers his estranged siblings Hussein and Fatima and, with the corpse in the back of Hussein's minibus, sets off from Damascus to honor Abdel's deathbed wish to be buried alongside his sister in the village of Anabiya. Though the distance is short, the quartet's quest is frequently interrupted by violence and corrupt military checkpoints, forcing the journey to stretch over days, during which time Abdel's body bloats beneath its burial shroud. Khalifa (No Knives in the Kitchens of This City) punctuates repetitious roadblocks with segues detailing the histories of all four characters. For example, after taking refuge at the home of a former girlfriend, Bolbol reminisces about his father's own pursuits of an old flame; and later, Hussein's teenage abandonment of his parents and siblings crops up while their adult counterparts contemplate the purpose of fulfilling Abdel's request. The narrative choice to summarize conversation indirectly, rather than placing the dialogue directly on the page, might distract some readers. Nonetheless, the novel is at times harrowing-the family flees wild dogs and faces masked guards-and serves as a reminder of the devastation of war and the power of integrity. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Abdel Latif makes his dying wish, to be buried in his home village, known to his son Bolbol. Bolbol enlists his older brother, Hussein, and sister, Fatima, to accompany him in transporting the body from Damascus to Anabiya, near Aleppo, where relatives will comply with Abdel Latif's last wish. It's normally a two-hour drive, but Aleppo and Damascus, and everywhere in between, are on opposite sides of a civil war. This surreal tale discloses the myriad tyrannies of war, loyalty, religion, duty, and bureaucracy. Can the family survive ten checkpoints, arrests, interrogations, and abuse? Can the corpse survive 48 hours on ice in a minivan? Nicely read by Neil Shah, who keeps Bolbol's narrative moving along. Descriptions of the physical and psychological absurdities of fear, stress, and decomposition are quite graphic and as often funny as they are disgusting. Verdict Powerful and poignant, this audiobook is very highly recommended for adult fiction collections. ["Flawlessly translated and exquisitely written, this novel from the winner of the -Naguib Mahfouz Prize is a genuine tour de force as well as a thoughtful and provocative examination of what it means to be alive": Xpress Reviews 4/19/19 starred review of the Farrar hc.]-Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Insistent, memorable portrait of the small indignities and large horrors of the civil war in Syria.A native of the Aleppo district, Khalifawell-known in the Arabic-reading world but new to most American readers and a winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literaturehere writes of a family both joined and torn apart by death. The paterfamilias knows that his passing is imminent: The first sentence reads, "Two hours before he died, Abdel Latif al-Salim looked his son Bolbol straight in the eye with as much of his remaining strength as he could muster to extract a solemn vow and repeated his request to be buried in the cemetery of Anabiya." In a time of peace, that wouldn't be hard, for Anabiya is a couple of hours away from Damascus, where the family is living. But this is a time of war, and now Bolbol must enlist the aid of his brother, Hussein, and sister, Fatima, to take their father's body across barriers and front lines. As they travel, memories and dialogue combine to begin to suggest how the siblings drifted apart and how Syria's dissolution took some of their dreams with them, some a little unseemly: Hussein, for instance, harbored hopes of becoming a crime lord instead of driving hookers around and running errands for a drug dealer as a toady on the lowest rung of the local mob. They learn about their father, too, as they travel across the ravaged landscape, and what they learn isn't the stuff of bonding: "all three siblings were like strangers to this corpse thatstill retained the advantage of being able to lie there without caring." Ah, but divisions and disappointments reign even in death, and at the close of the story, even Anabiya is short of room to welcome a native son into its earth, to say nothing of people to mark his passing.Suggestive at times of a modern Decameron and a skillfully constructed epic that packs a tremendous amount of hard-won knowledge into its pages. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
