Category: book reviews

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Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood (Tokio Blues)

Norwegian Wood (or Tokio Blues, in Spanish) tells the non-chronological story of Watanabe Toru, who remembers Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend in high school, who ended up killing himself. It deals with the aftermath of the suicide and their lives pre- and post-suicide.

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Haruki Murakami – After Dark

In After Dark, Murakami masterfully concocts a tale of everyday minutiae with a healthy splash of fantastical suspense, topped off with a twist of hard-boiled crime, and garnished with some supernatural angst – shaken, not stirred.

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Gene Gant – The Thunder in his Head

For Kyle, life is a series of misunderstandings and hard fought conclusions. Gant’s debut effort is definitely a bold step in the genre and is, in fact, an accurate portrayal of the erratic nature of a teenager growing into his own skin.

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Fantômas

Who — or what — is Fantômas? The master criminal held France in fear in popular pulp novels of the 1910s.

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Esi Edugyan – Half-Blood Blues

Jazz musicians of mixed nationalities and ethnicities struggle to survive Nazi Berlin and occupied Paris. Decades later, the survivors still face the consequences of their choices.

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Enki Bilal – The Nikopol Trilogy

Set in 2023, this trilogy follows the return of Nikopol, who after spending 30 years orbiting the earth finds France under fascist rule after two nuclear wars. The result? It’s a cold, scary world out there with aliens, deformed human beings, and total chaos.

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Elizabeth Hand – Wylding Hall

Windhollow Faire, an acid-folk group recovering from the suicide of their lead singer, spends the summer of 1972 at an old English estate called Wylding Hall. Their stay will produce both a timeless album and an eerie, enduring mystery.