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SIX BOOKS OF THE YEAR FOR 2014
Huffington Post
Dec 24 2014
by Christopher Atamian, Writer, director, producer and translator
2014, not a bad year for books, all told. Below you will find
a completely arbitrary list of some of 2014's most Interesting,
controversial books and a few that I simply found fascinating -- as
well as a preview of two gifted new novelists. They make the perfect
gift-at Christmas or any time of the year!
Non-Fiction
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt
Taibbi (Spiegel and Grau)
A must-read, Taibbi's latest journalistic grenade throw is a perfect
complement to Thomas Picketty's 2013 blockbuster Capital in the 21st
Century. In this stirring, fast paced book, Taibbi describes black
men incarcerated for "obstructing pedestrian traffic" in an age where
crime in America has dropped while our prison population -- mostly made
up of minority men and woman -- has doubled. Prosecutors who believe
their clients are guilty before they even listen to what they have to
say and the poor jailed for minor and sometimes imaginary offensives,
while white collar criminals in our top financial institutions and
corporations are routinely exonerated: the examples narrated here by
Taibbi are so outrageous as to be barely believable.
The wealth gap in America described by Picketty also has its twin
in the justice gap so throroughly illustrated in this book. Taibbi
belongs to the best investigative reporters in recent history --
sadly what he uncovers here is a rather poor reflection on a society
which has criminalized poverty and institutionalized racism.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit
(Random House)
A fast-paced, wonderfully-written book about the founding of Israel
up until contemporary days by one of that country's so-called New
Historians. Shavit, whose British grandfather was one of the Jewish
state's founding fathers, comes as close as anyone has of late to
presenting 20th century Israeli history in an objective manner,
one sensitive to both the parallel if often competing Jewish and
Palestinian narratives. Through it all, he remains in awe in the
achievements of this small country on the Mediterrannean, which
represented a breathtaking rebirth for a people who took their fates
into their own hands and built a modern, prosperous state.
Fiction
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
We waited something like a decade for the author of A Secret
History and The Little Friend to dazzle us again and Francine Prose
nonwithstanding, Tartt has delivered with her Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel. She is now a more mature novelist who nevertheless retains
her flair for the sometimes dark and hidden sides of her characters
and society, a Southern Gothic brought to the Northern climes, if
you will. This massive, sometimes rambling nearly 600-page novel
could easily have been cut -- the entire middle section which takes
palce in Las Vegas seems dubious to me -- but one remains interested
in its main character's fate throughout -- a young latter-day Oliver
Twist who loses his mother at the novel's onset in a terrible museum
explosion. His relationship with a old furniture retorator who takes
him in and his dealings with a dangerous international art mafia
make this part Catcher in the Rye, part suspense thriller difficult
to put down. Technically a 2013 novel, it is worth picking up again.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khapour (Blomsbury)
Khakpour's riveting second novel combines Iranian mythology with
recent American history into an utterly original and enjoyable read.
This 9-11 novel details the life of a latter-day birdman born in Iran
and repatriated to the neurotic jungle-like streets of New York City.
Khakpour based her novel on The Book of Zal from the Persian epic
The Shahnahmeh. It's a fun novel as well, and one which should have
garnered more attention. And as Khakpour points out in a recent
interview, itmay also be one of the few novels in recent times -- or
ever -- to recount detailed episodes of entomophagy (you look it up!)-
Two Debuts Novels by Young Female Novelists
Orhan's Inheritance, Algonquin Books by Aline Ohanesian
Ohanesian's book is an enjoyable and slightly different take on the
legacy of the Armenian Genocide. 2015 marks the 100th commemoration
of this tragic event which claimed the lives of 3 million Christians
living in the Ottoman Empire. As a plethora of documentaries, articles
and other media begin to stream through on this topic, readers may
want to pick up Ohanessian's tale of a young Istanbullu who returns
to his native Anatolia to find out that the past is not quite what
he thought it was -- and that even the house that he grew up in may
in fact belong to former occupants of a different race and religion
long gone. Orhan's Inheritance will be released to coincide with
April 24th remembrances around the world -- the day when Armenian
intellectuals and businessmen were rounded up in Istanbul and sent
to concentration camps where they were summarily executed. (Advance
copies are currently available for review.)
This book should be combined with a re-reading of Franz Werfel's 1933
classic The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which recounts the Masada-like
defense by a group of Hatay province Armenian civilians who flee to a
mountain and hold off the Turkish army for forty days and forty nights.
Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko (New Vessel Press, translated
from the German by Arabella Spencer)
Ukrianian-born Gaponenko's ably translated tale of an aging
ornithologist who returns to a Viennese hotel that he frequented as a
child with his classical music-loving aunts is one of the strangest
debuts that I have read in a long time, which is what makes it so
interesting. It's a wondrous tale about the passing of generations and
worlds; the taking stock of one's life, as well as a parable of sorts
for a society set on its head last century, one where everything --
birds, scientists and maybe the human race itself may be on a fast
track to extinction. Gaponenko's prose is clever yet fluid and
uncomplicated, laced with subtle and not-so-subtle irony and humor.
Who is Martha, you ask? I won't reveal that here, but Gaponenko
implies that she may well be each one of us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/six-books-of-the-year-for_b_6368852.html
Huffington Post
Dec 24 2014
by Christopher Atamian, Writer, director, producer and translator
2014, not a bad year for books, all told. Below you will find
a completely arbitrary list of some of 2014's most Interesting,
controversial books and a few that I simply found fascinating -- as
well as a preview of two gifted new novelists. They make the perfect
gift-at Christmas or any time of the year!
Non-Fiction
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt
Taibbi (Spiegel and Grau)
A must-read, Taibbi's latest journalistic grenade throw is a perfect
complement to Thomas Picketty's 2013 blockbuster Capital in the 21st
Century. In this stirring, fast paced book, Taibbi describes black
men incarcerated for "obstructing pedestrian traffic" in an age where
crime in America has dropped while our prison population -- mostly made
up of minority men and woman -- has doubled. Prosecutors who believe
their clients are guilty before they even listen to what they have to
say and the poor jailed for minor and sometimes imaginary offensives,
while white collar criminals in our top financial institutions and
corporations are routinely exonerated: the examples narrated here by
Taibbi are so outrageous as to be barely believable.
The wealth gap in America described by Picketty also has its twin
in the justice gap so throroughly illustrated in this book. Taibbi
belongs to the best investigative reporters in recent history --
sadly what he uncovers here is a rather poor reflection on a society
which has criminalized poverty and institutionalized racism.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit
(Random House)
A fast-paced, wonderfully-written book about the founding of Israel
up until contemporary days by one of that country's so-called New
Historians. Shavit, whose British grandfather was one of the Jewish
state's founding fathers, comes as close as anyone has of late to
presenting 20th century Israeli history in an objective manner,
one sensitive to both the parallel if often competing Jewish and
Palestinian narratives. Through it all, he remains in awe in the
achievements of this small country on the Mediterrannean, which
represented a breathtaking rebirth for a people who took their fates
into their own hands and built a modern, prosperous state.
Fiction
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
We waited something like a decade for the author of A Secret
History and The Little Friend to dazzle us again and Francine Prose
nonwithstanding, Tartt has delivered with her Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel. She is now a more mature novelist who nevertheless retains
her flair for the sometimes dark and hidden sides of her characters
and society, a Southern Gothic brought to the Northern climes, if
you will. This massive, sometimes rambling nearly 600-page novel
could easily have been cut -- the entire middle section which takes
palce in Las Vegas seems dubious to me -- but one remains interested
in its main character's fate throughout -- a young latter-day Oliver
Twist who loses his mother at the novel's onset in a terrible museum
explosion. His relationship with a old furniture retorator who takes
him in and his dealings with a dangerous international art mafia
make this part Catcher in the Rye, part suspense thriller difficult
to put down. Technically a 2013 novel, it is worth picking up again.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khapour (Blomsbury)
Khakpour's riveting second novel combines Iranian mythology with
recent American history into an utterly original and enjoyable read.
This 9-11 novel details the life of a latter-day birdman born in Iran
and repatriated to the neurotic jungle-like streets of New York City.
Khakpour based her novel on The Book of Zal from the Persian epic
The Shahnahmeh. It's a fun novel as well, and one which should have
garnered more attention. And as Khakpour points out in a recent
interview, itmay also be one of the few novels in recent times -- or
ever -- to recount detailed episodes of entomophagy (you look it up!)-
Two Debuts Novels by Young Female Novelists
Orhan's Inheritance, Algonquin Books by Aline Ohanesian
Ohanesian's book is an enjoyable and slightly different take on the
legacy of the Armenian Genocide. 2015 marks the 100th commemoration
of this tragic event which claimed the lives of 3 million Christians
living in the Ottoman Empire. As a plethora of documentaries, articles
and other media begin to stream through on this topic, readers may
want to pick up Ohanessian's tale of a young Istanbullu who returns
to his native Anatolia to find out that the past is not quite what
he thought it was -- and that even the house that he grew up in may
in fact belong to former occupants of a different race and religion
long gone. Orhan's Inheritance will be released to coincide with
April 24th remembrances around the world -- the day when Armenian
intellectuals and businessmen were rounded up in Istanbul and sent
to concentration camps where they were summarily executed. (Advance
copies are currently available for review.)
This book should be combined with a re-reading of Franz Werfel's 1933
classic The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which recounts the Masada-like
defense by a group of Hatay province Armenian civilians who flee to a
mountain and hold off the Turkish army for forty days and forty nights.
Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko (New Vessel Press, translated
from the German by Arabella Spencer)
Ukrianian-born Gaponenko's ably translated tale of an aging
ornithologist who returns to a Viennese hotel that he frequented as a
child with his classical music-loving aunts is one of the strangest
debuts that I have read in a long time, which is what makes it so
interesting. It's a wondrous tale about the passing of generations and
worlds; the taking stock of one's life, as well as a parable of sorts
for a society set on its head last century, one where everything --
birds, scientists and maybe the human race itself may be on a fast
track to extinction. Gaponenko's prose is clever yet fluid and
uncomplicated, laced with subtle and not-so-subtle irony and humor.
Who is Martha, you ask? I won't reveal that here, but Gaponenko
implies that she may well be each one of us.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/six-books-of-the-year-for_b_6368852.html