LIFE FOR SALE by Yukio Mishima

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Knopf
Publishing date April 21, 2020

About

After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. But what begins as mere nihilism takes a turn for the unexpected as interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests. What follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots--even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself caught up in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the cross hairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime cartel. Wildly inventive, darkly comedic, and at times deeply surreal, Life For Sale is refreshingly unlike anything else in Yukio Mishima's oeuvre, and an essential work of international literature, finally available in English.

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THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY by Maisy Card

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Simon and Schuster
Publishing date March 3 2020
US/Jamaica


Description

These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.

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A WOMAN IS NO MAN by Etaf Rum

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Personal copy

DescriptionIn Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.

INDELICACY by Amina Cain

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Farrar Strauss and Giroux
Publishing date February 11, 2020


Description

In "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor—social and erotic—but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one’s true calling.

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MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORT LIST 2019

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)

Lucy Ellmann, Ducks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)

Chigozie Obioma, An Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)

Salman Rushdie, Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)

Elif Shafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)

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 Winner anounced October 14, 2019