Any Human Heart

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Philip Hensher

The first Afghan War of 1839 (the English tried and failed to displace a potentate unfriendly to its colonial ambitions) is the subject of this fascinating US debut. Well-known British novelist and journalist Hensher introduces with considerable flair a dauntingly large cast of characters in England and Kabul, with sidetrips to India and Russia, in a flexible omniscient narrator’s voice that frequently underscores his story with pointed sardonic commentary. The most prominent among them include Alexander Burnes, a dashing writer-adventurer lionized in London when his popular Travels into Bokhara and Cabool makes a reigning expert on those far-off lands indispensable to his government; Bella Garraway, the spirited girl who bears Burnes a son, and is thereafter consigned to “seclusion” at her family’s country estate; and Amir Dost Mohammed Khan, the cunning ruler whose “Napoleonic mind” enables him to play off British strategies against those of Imperial Russia, which also has vested interests (and numerous carefully positioned “agents”) in Afghanistan. Hensher surrounds them with literally dozens of other figures whose experiences embody irreconcilable contrasts between the luxuriant exoticism of the East and the brisk pragmatism of the West—contrasts that are, paradoxically, recognized as inherently simplistic clichés, and noted with urbane irony. Introverted military man Charles Masson, a victim of sexual violence who becomes an itinerant avenging angel, evokes the figure of T.E. Lawrence as vividly as Burnes (whom he’ll meet, in several crucially revealing late scenes) suggests that of the demonic globetrotter Richard Burton. Two matching “bores,” British army officers McNaghten and Elphinstone, are deftly employed both to comment on their country’s adventuring and to embody its ghastly consequences. The scheming Amir’s equally amoral favorite son Akbar, the elegant sadist Shah Shujah, and cultivated, Balzac-loving Russian “explorer” Vitkevich all figure importantly in the catapulting events that lead to the rousing and harrowing climax: the bloody siege of Jalabad, and its sorrowful aftermath.[Kirkus Reviews][1] [1]:

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William Trevor

"Captain Gault had seen off the three intruders easily enough. They had come in the night with the intention of firing the house, but a single shot had sent them scuttling back into the darkness. One, though, had been wounded and for that the Gaults were not forgiven: sooner or later there would be trouble again. Other big-house families had been driven out - the Morells from Clashmore, the Gouvernets, the Priors, the Swifts. It was time to go too.". "But Lucy, soon to be nine, the only child of the household, could not bear the thought of leaving Lahardane. Her world was the old house itself, the woods of the glen, the farm animals, the walk along the seashore to school. All of that she loved and as the day of departure grew closer she determined that this exile should not take place. But chance changed everything, bringing about a calamity so terrible that it might have been a punishment, so vicious that it blighted the lives of all the Gaults for many years to come.". "William Trevor's new novel begins in rural Cork in 1921, in a country still in turmoil. The old order has fragmented, a way of life is already over. Trevor brilliantly conveys the disquiet and confusion that colour the story of Lucy Gault as it's told while it happens, in towns and countryside, and told again when passing has made it different."--BOOK JACKET.

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Mary Gaitskill

When I was young, my mother read me a story about a wicked little girl. She read it to me and my two sisters. We sat curled against her on the couch and she read from the book on her lap. The lamp shone on us and there was a blanket over us. The girl in the story was beautiful and cruel. Because her mother was poor, she sent her daughter to work for rich people, who spoiled and petted her. The rich people told her she had to visit her mother. But the girl felt she was too good and went merely to show herself. One day, the rich people sent her home with a loaf of bread for her mother. But when the little girl came to a muddy bog, rather than ruin her shoes, she threw down the bread and stepped on it. It sank into the bog and she sank with it. She sank into a world of demons and deformed creatures. Because she was beautiful, the demon queen made her into a statue as a gift for her great-grandson. The girl was covered in snakes and slime and surrounded by the hate of every creature trapped like she was. She was starving but couldn't eat the bread still welded to her feet. She could hear what people were saying about her; a boy passing by saw what had happened to her and told everyone, and they all said she deserved it. Even her mother said she deserved it. The girl couldn't move, but if she could have, she would've twisted with rage. "It isn't fair!" cried my mother, and her voice mocked the wicked girl.

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Samantha Harvey

Shapeless Unease is a celebrated work by Samantha Harvey (Booker Prize Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.