Жанр: Фантастика
Он – человек, странствующий по странному миру... или мирам? Он – чужой в чужой стране... ада и существует ли она, эта страна, где вещи – не то, чем кажутся? Есть ли она вообще, эта изменчивая реальность, в которой невозможно отличить кошмар от яви, галлюцинацию от бытия, людей – от монстров? И есть ли разница между монстрами и теми, кто с ними сражается? Говорят – сон разума рождает чудовищ. Но как же тогда разуму пробудиться?
Жанр: Проза
A dead man is brought back to life so he can support his family in "The Happy Man"; occasionally he slips into a zombielike state while his soul is tortured in Hell. In "Vanilla Dunk," future basketball players are given the skills of old-time stars like Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. And in "Forever, Said the Duck," stored computer personalities scheme to break free of their owners.In these and other stories in this striking collection, Jonathan Lethem, author of and , draws the reader ever more deeply into his strange, unforgettable world — a trip from which there may be no easy return.
Жанр: Проза
A boozy ex-military captain trapped in a mysterious vessel searches for his runaway son, an aging superhero settles into academia, and a professional "dystopianist" receives a visit from a suicidal sheep. contains eleven fantastical, amusing, and moving stories written in a dizzying array of styles that shows the remarkable range and power of Lethem's vision. Sometimes firmly grounded in reality, and other times spinning off into utterly original imaginary worlds, this book brings together marvelous characters with incisive social commentary and thought provoking allegories.
A visionary and creative collection that only Jonathan Lethem could have produced, the Vintage edition features two stories not published in the hardcover edition, "The Shape We're In" and "Interview with the Crab.
Жанр: Проза
Jonathan Lethem stretches new literary muscles in this scintillating new collection of stories. Some of these tales — such as "Pending Vegan," which wonderfully captures a parental ache and anguish during a family visit to an aquatic theme park — are, in Lethem's words, "obedient (at least outwardly) to realism." Others, like "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear,", which deftly and hilariously captures the solipsism of blog culture, feature "the uncanny and surreal elements that still sometimes erupt in my short stories."
The tension between these two approaches, and the way they inform each other, increase the reader's surprise and delight as one realizes how cleverly Lethem is playing with form. Devoted fans of Lethem will recognize familiar themes and tropes — the anxiety of influence pushed to reduction ad absurdum in "The King of Sentences"; a hapless outsider trying to summon up bravado in "The Porn Critic;" characters from the comics stranded on a desert island; the necessity and the impossibility of action against authority in "Procedure in Plain Air."
As always, Lethem's work, humor, and poignancy work in harmony; people strive desperately for connection through words and often misdirect deeds; and the sentences are glorious.
Жанр: Проза
Джонатан Литэм – американский писатель, автор девяти романов, коротких рассказов и эссе, которые публиковались в журналах и других; лауреат стипендии фонда Макартуров (MacArthur Fellowship, 2005), которую называют “наградой для гениев”; финалист конкурса National Book critics Circle Award – Всемирная премия фэнтези (World Fantasy Award, 1996). Книги Литэма переведены более чем на тридцать языков. “Сады диссидентов”, последняя из его книг, – монументальная семейная сага. История трех поколений “антиамериканских американцев” Ангруш – Циммер – Гоган собирается, как мозаика, из отрывочных воспоминаний множества персонажей – среди них и американские коммунисты 1930–1950-х, и хиппи 60–70-х, и активисты “Оккупай” 2010-х. В этом романе, где эпизоды старательно перемешаны и перепутаны местами, читателю предлагается самостоятельно восстанавливать хронологию и логическую взаимосвязь событий.
Жанр: Проза
«McSweeney’s» — ежеквартальный американский литературный альманах, основанный в 1998 г. для публикации альтернативной малой прозы. Поначалу в «McSweeney’s» выходили неформатные рассказы, отвергнутые другими изданиями со слишком хорошим вкусом. Однако вскоре из маргинального и малотиражного альманах превратился в престижный и модный, а рассказы, публиковавшиеся в нём, завоевали не одну премию в области литературы. И теперь ведущие писатели США соревнуются друг с другом за честь увидеть свои произведения под его обложкой.
В итоговом сборнике «Лучшее от McSweeney's» вы найдете самые яркие, вычурные и удивительные новеллы из первых десяти выпусков альманаха. В книгу вошло 27 рассказов, которые сочинили 27 писателей и перевели 9 переводчиков. Нам и самим любопытно посмотреть, что у них получилось.
Жанр: Фантастика
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there’s a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.
Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he’s falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor’s Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
Жанр: Проза
Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem delivers a hilarious novel about love, art, and what it’s like to be young in Los Angeles. Lucinda Hoekke’s daytime gig as a telephone operator at the Complaint Line—an art gallery’s high-minded installation piece—is about as exciting as listening to dead air. Her real passion is playing bass in her forever struggling, forever unnamed band. But recently a frequent caller, the Complainer, as Lucinda dubs him, has captivated her with his philosophical musings. When Lucinda’s band begins to incorporate the Complainer’s catchy, existential phrases into their song lyrics, they are suddenly on the cusp of their big break. There is only one problem: the Complainer wants in.
Жанр: Фантастика
Anna Karenina left her husband for a dashing officer. Lady Chatterley left hers for the gamekeeper. Now Alice Coombs has her boyfriend for nothing… nothing at all. Just how that should have come to pass and what Philip Engstrand, Alice’s spurned boyfriend, can do about it is the premise for this vertiginous speculative romance by the acclaimed author of .
Alice Coombs is a particle physicist, and she and her colleagues have created a void, a hole in the universe, that they have taken to calling Lack. But Lack is a nullity with taste—tastes; it absorbs a pomegranate, light bulbs, an argyle sock; it disdains a bow tie, an ice ax, and a scrambled duck egg. To Alice, this selectivity translates as an irresistible personality. To Philip, it makes Lack an unbeatable rival, for how can he win Alice back from something that has no flaws—because it has no qualities? Ingenious, hilarious, and genuinely mind-expanding, is the best boy-meets-girl-meets-void story ever written.
Жанр: Проза
«La fortaleza de la soledad ejemplifica, sin necesidad de grandes aspavientos vanguardistas, nuestro paradójico signo de los tiempos», Qué Leer
Esta es la historia de un chico negro y uno blanco: Dylan Ebdus y Mingus Rude, vecinos que comparten sus días y defienden su amistad a capa y espada desde un rincón de Nueva York. Esta es la historia de su infancia en Brooklyn, un barrio habitado mayoritariamente por negros y en el que comienza a emerger una nueva clase blanca. Esta es la historia de la América de los años setenta, cuando las decisiones más intrascendentes -qué música escuchar, qué zona ocupar en el autobús escolar, en qué bar desayunar- desataban conflictos raciales y políticos. Esta es la historia de lo que habría pasado si dos adolescentes obsesionados con superhéroes de cómic hubieran desarrollado poderes similares a los de los personajes de ficción. Esta es la historia que Jonathan Lethem nació para contar. Esta es La fortaleza de la soledad.
Jonathan Lethem (Nueva York, 1964) es una de las voces más inventivas de la ficción contemporánea. Es autor de nueve novelas y depositario de distinguidos galardones, como el Premio Nacional de la Crítica de Estados Unidos.
Жанр: Детективы и Триллеры
Dagger Awards
Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. the Human Freakshow, is a victim of Tourette's syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach and stroke people. Local tough guy hires Lionel and other boys and grooms them to become the Minna Men, a detective-agency-cum-limo service.
“Under the guise of a detective novel, Lethem has written a more piercing tale of investigation, one revealing how the mind drives on its own ‘wheels within wheels.’ ”
– The New York Times Book Review
“Who but Jonathan Lethem would attempt a half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette’s syndrome?… The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity… Jonathan Lethem is a verbal performance artist.”
– The Boston Globe
“Part detective novel and part literary fantasia, [Motherless Brooklyn] superbly balances beautiful writing and an engrossing plot.”
– The Wall Street Journal
“Intricately and satisfyingly plotted… Funny and dizzying and heart-breaking.”
– Luc Sante, Village Voice Literary Supplement
“A tour de force… With one unique and well-imagined character, Jonathan Lethem has turned a genre on its ear. He doesn’t just push the envelope, he gives it a swift kick.”
– The Denver Post
“Aside from being one of the most inventive writers on the planet, Lethem is also one of the funniest.”
– San Francisco examiner Chronicle
“In Essrog… Jonathan Lethem has fashioned a lovably strange man-child and filled his cross-wired mind with a brilliant, crashing, self-referential interior monologue that is at once laugh-out-loud funny, tender and in the honest service of a terrific story.”
– The Washington Post Book World
“A true risk-taker… Lethem uses a familiar genre as the backdrop for his own artistic flourishes.”
– The Hartford Courant
“Wildly inventive… Jonathan Lethem has a knack for pushing commonplace ideas to absurdly literal ends.”
– City Pages
“Marvelous… Motherless Brooklyn is, among other things, a tale of orphans, a satire of Zen in the city and a murder mystery.”
– Time Out New York
“Finding out whodunit is interesting enough, but it’s more fun watching Lethem unravel the mysteries of his Tourettic creation.”
– Time
“Wonderfully inventive, slightly absurdist… [Motherless Brooklyn] is funny and sly, clever, compelling and endearing.”
– USA Today
“Utterly original and deeply moving.”
– Esquire
“Motherless Brooklyn is a whodunit that’s serious fiction… Lethem is a sort of Stanley Kubrick figure… stopping off in flat genres to do multidimensional work, blasting their hoary conventions to bits.”
“A pure delight.”
– The New York Observer
“A detective story, a shrewd portrait of Brooklyn, a retold Oliver Twist and a story so baroquely voiced (the hero has Tourette’s syndrome) that Philip Marlowe would blush. And tip his fedora.”
– Newsweek
“Wildly imaginative.”
– Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Funny, delightfully complicated and so outrageously inventive that no pitch could do it justice.”
– Baltimore Sun
“A multi-layered novel that’s fast-paced, witty and touching… Prose diatpunches its way down the page, every word loaded with energy and ready to explode.”
– The Oregonian
“Compulsively readable… Genuinely entertaining… Improbably hilarious… Lethem is at his peak Nabokov-meets-Woody-Allen verbal frenzy.”
– Bookforum
“Most rewarding… Delightfully oddball.”
– The New Yorker
“Motherless Brooklyn is Lethem’s finest work yet-exciting, strange, original, hilarious, human and soulful.”
– The Memphis Commercial Appeal
“A staggering piece of writing… On the edge of genius… The accents, class distinctions, highways, neighborhoods, grocery stores, flavors, scents and, yes, car services in a certain corner of [Brooklyn] are made vividly tangible, arising from these pages as if scratch-and-sniffs were embedded in the margins.”
– San Jose Mercury News
“Imagine the opportunities to explore language that arise when the narrator of a novel has Tourette’s syndrome… Unforgettable.”
– Los Angeles Times