“Six o’clock. Six in the evening and not the slightest pain. How extraordinary. As though I was rid of ... ” He stopped, a funny, childlike grimace on his face, which the magistrate had never seen. The priest started walking with a lighter step and was now overtaking the young woman in the aisle. Behind a pillar, he noticed an elderly lady, lonely, who looked as though she was waiting for Mass to begin. She kept both hands on the back of the chair in front of her, and was wearing a hat decorated with flowers. Father Kern let out a sigh. “Mademoiselle Kauffmann, would you tell this lady that the cathedral has been evacuated? Otherwise, she’s likely to spend the night here.”
“I was the one who asked her to stay.”
“You?”
“If you’re still alive, it’s thanks to this lady on her chair over there.”
“Thanks to Madame P–?”
“Yes, thanks to her. In a way, she knew everything from the start.”
“From the start?”
“Ten days ago, she saw Luna Hamache talking with Bracy, demanding money. She saw the rector send her away unceremoniously. She was sitting in her usual place, where she’s sat for the past ten years. Nobody notices her anymore. Nobody pays attention to her. Everybody thinks she’s just a crazy old woman. She’s somehow part of the furnishings, of the cathedral furniture. And yet. After Luna’s body was discovered, she was the only one to suspect your boss was somehow involved.”
“Good God ... But why didn’t she say something sooner?”
Claire Kauffmann couldn’t suppress a sarcastic pout. “Father, I don’t think she’s ever found anyone to talk with, here. Lieutenant Gombrowicz was the only one willing to listen to her.”
Kern took his head in his hands. He remembered now. The attempts the lady with the poppies had made, and his efforts to avoid her. If only he’d known ... If only he’d been a better listener ...
She was watching him from behind her pillar, sitting on her chair, her eyes perpetually anxious. He made a friendly gesture, and a wide smile immediately blossomed on the solitary old lady’s face.
“Please, Father, you can speak with her later. I’d like us to go see the lieutenant now.”
Kern nodded. They resumed their walk toward the sacristy. On the way, they walked past the Virgin of the Pillar, and Kern asked the young magistrate for a moment’s solitude. He kneeled on the podium steps, closed his eyes, and joined his hands in prayer. His lips uttered words Claire Kauffmann could not hear from where she was standing. Father Kern looked up at the stone Madonna. Her translucent face seemed to have recovered its legendary serenity, and, in the evening light bathing the cathedral, she looked even whiter.
IF VENICE DIES BY SALVATORE SETTIS
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED ART HISTORIAN Salvatore Settis ignites a new debate about the Pearl of the Adriatic and cultural patrimony at large. In this fiery blend of history and cultural analysis, Settis argues that “hit-and-run” visitors are turning Venice and other landmark urban settings into shopping malls and theme parks. This is a passionate plea to secure the soul of Venice, written with consummate authority, wide-ranging erudition and élan.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/if-venice-dies/
A VERY RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS
THIS is RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS CELEBRATED IN supreme pleasure and pain by the greatest of writers, from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to Chekhov and Teffi. The dozen stories in this collection will satisfy every reader, and with their wit, humor, and tenderness, packed full of sentimental songs, footmen, whirling winds, solitary nights, snow drifts, and hopeful children, the collection proves that Nobody Does Christmas Like the Russians.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/a-very-russian-christmas/
YEAR OF THE COMET BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF Oblivion comes Year of the Comet, a story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. Sergei Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with shattering beauty and insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/year-of-the-comet/
MOVING THE PALACE BY CHARIF MAJDALANI
A YOUNG LEBANESE ADVENTURER EXPLORES THE wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. This is a captivating modern-day Odyssey in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/moving-the-palace/
ADUA BY IGIABA SCEGO
ADUA, AN IMMIGRANT FROM SOMALIA TO ITALY, has lived in Rome for nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of film stardom ended in shame. Now that the civil war in Somalia is over, her homeland calls her. She must decide whether to return and reclaim her inheritance, but also how to take charge of her own story and build a future.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/adua/
THE 6:41 TO PARIS BY JEAN-PHILIPPE BLONDEL
CÉCILE, A STYLISH 47-YEAR-OLD, HAS SPENT the weekend visiting her parents outside Paris. By Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she recognizes as Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, Cécile and Philippe hurtle towards the French capital in a psychological thriller about the pain and promise of past romance.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-641-to-paris/
ON THE RUN WITH MARY BY JONATHAN BARROW
SHINING MOMENTS OF TENDER BEAUTY PUNCtuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London’s Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they’re off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes that the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can’t stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible 20th century.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/on-the-run-with-mary/
OBLIVION BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
IN ONE OF THE FIRST 21ST CENTURY RUSSIAN novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
THE LAST WEYNFELDT BY MARTIN SUTER
ADRIAN WEYNFELDT IS AN ART EXPERT IN AN international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he’s given up on love until one night—entirely out of character for him—Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman and gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens his buttoned up existence. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-weynfeldt/
THE LAST SUPPER BY KLAUS WIVEL
ALARMED BY THE OPPRESSION OF 7.5 MILLION Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories to learn about their fate. He found a minority under threat of death and humiliation, desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope their situation will improve. An unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group liv
ing, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, Why have we not done more to protect these people?
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-supper/
GUYS LIKE ME BY DOMINIQUE FABRE
DOMINIQUE FABRE, BORN IN PARIS AND A life-long resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift. He’s looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/guys-like/
ANIMAL INTERNET BY ALEXANDER PSCHERA
SOME 50,000 CREATURES AROUND THE GLOBE— including whales, leopards, flamingoes, bats and snails—are being equipped with digital tracking devices. The data gathered and studied by major scientific institutes about their behavior will warn us about tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but also radically transform our relationship to the natural world. Contrary to pessimistic fears, author Alexander Pschera sees the Internet as creating a historic opportunity for a new dialogue between man and nature.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/animal-internet/
KILLING AUNTIE BY ANDRZEJ BURSA
A young university student named Jurek, with no particular ambitions or talents, finds himself with nothing to do. After his doting aunt asks the young man to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. This short comedic masterpiece combines elements of Dostoevsky, Sartre, Kafka, and Heller, coming together to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and— just maybe—redemption.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-auntie/
I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAŠAR
TWENTY-YEAR-OLD TAGUCHI HIRO HAS SPENT the last two years of his life living as a hiki-komori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/called-necktie/
WHO IS MARTHA? BY MARJANA GAPONENKO
IN THIS ROLLICKING NOVEL, 96-YEAR-OLD ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. This gloriously written tale mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/martha/
ALL BACKS WERE TURNED BY MAREK HLASKO
TWO DESPERATE FRIENDS—ON THE EDGE OF the law—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov’s younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov’s business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn’t help that a beautiful German widow is rooming next door. A story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, conveyed in hard-boiled prose reminiscent of Hammett and Chandler.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/backs-turned/
ALEXANDRIAN SUMMER BY YITZHAK GORMEZANO GOREN
THIS IS THE STORY OF TWO JEWISH FAMILIES living their frenzied last days in the doomed cosmopolitan social whirl of Alexandria just before fleeing Egypt for Israel in 1951. The conventions of the Egyptian upper-middle class are laid bare in this dazzling novel, which exposes sexual hypocrisies and portrays a vanished polyglot world of horse racing, seaside promenades and nightclubs.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/alexandrian-summer/
COCAINE BY PITIGRILLI
PARIS IN THE 1920s—DIZZY AND DECADENT. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits … unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine’s dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli’s classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and retains its venom even today.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/
KILLING THE SECOND DOG BY MAREK HLASKO
Two DOWN-AND-OUT POLISH CON MEN LIVING in Israel in the 1950s scam an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the widow who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. What follows is a story of romance, deception, cruelty and shame. Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hard-boiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-the-second-dog/
FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: DAUGHTER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT BY HILDE SPIEL
IN 1776 FANNY VON ARNSTEIN, THE DAUGHter of the Jewish master of the royal mint in Berlin, came to Vienna as an 18-year-old bride. She married a financier to the Austro-Hungarian imperial court, and hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted luminaries of the day. Spiel’s elegantly written and carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a passionate woman who advocated for the rights of Jews, and illuminates a central era in European cultural and social history.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/fanny-von-arnstein-daughter-of-the-enlightenment/
SOME DAY BY SHEMI ZARHIN
ON THE SHORES OF ISRAEL’S SEA OF GALILEE lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/some-day/
THE MISSING YEAR OF JUAN SALVATIERRA BY PEDRO MAIRAL
AT THE AGE OF NINE, JUAN SALVATIERRA became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of canvases on which he detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with rolls over two miles long. But an essential roll is missing. A search ensues that illuminates links between art and life, with past family secrets casting their shadows on the present.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra/
THE GOOD LIFE ELSEWHERE BY VLADIMIR LORCHENKOV
THE VERY FUNNY—AND VERY SAD—STORY OF A group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts to emigrate from Europe’s most impoverished nation to Italy for work. An Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; and thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the Italian Promised Land. A country where 25 percent of its population works abroad, remittances make up nearly 40 percent of GDP, and alcohol consumption per capita is the world’s highest – Moldova surely has its problems. But, as Lorchenkov vividly shows, it’s also a country whose residents don’t give up easily.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-good-life-els
ewhere/
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