![]() ![]() Deftly moving between flashbacks to pre-war Cambridge and present-day interrogations by MI5 agents, Rooney weaves a compelling novel that provides no easy answers. Spurred by her love for Leo and her desire to see such dangerous knowledge dispersed to the many rather than hoarded by the few – especially after the atomic bomb is deployed under horrifying circumstances – Joan finds herself compromising her career, her conscience, and her only chance at a normal life. ![]() ![]() As an attractive young woman in a male-dominated field, Joan occupies a unique position: she is knowledgeable enough to pass valuable information to the Soviets and innocuous enough to get away with it. As nations around the world falter before the rising tide of fascism, Joan’s colleagues in Cambridge race to perfect the one weapon guaranteed to end the war: the atomic bomb. An impressionable girl from a small village, Joan quickly befriends the enigmatic Sonya and her charismatic cousin Leo, both of whom are known communist sympathizers with ties to Russia and Germany. Inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, unmasked in 1999 (at 87) as the KGB’s longest-serving British spy, this briskly paced and well-researched historical novel centers on the life of Joan Stanley, a young physicist at Cambridge during the early years of World War II. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Penguin will reissue the first three volumes of the Buru quartet in paperback to coincide with the publication of House of Glass. (May) FYI: Pramoedya is currently under city arrest in Jakarta: all his books remain banned in Indonesia. Here, by filtering the anti-colonialist struggle through Pangemanann's ambivalent, warped perspective, Pramoedya spikes his epic saga with slyly modernist irony, creating a work that is as subversive today as when it was written. ![]() The first three volumes of Pramoedya's quartet (This Earth of Mankind Child of All Nations Footsteps)-written during the author's 14-year banishment, 1965-1979, to the prison island of Buru-were narrated by Minke, a progressive witness of world events. Yet, as an obedient tool of the Netherlands Indies' ruling elite in the period from 1912 through the end of WWI, Pangemanann feels duty-bound to crush Minke and the native movement he represents, whether by arrest, torture or counterinsurgency terrorism. ![]() House of Glass by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Literary Fiction. Recognizing the rottenness of the colonial administration, he greatly admires Minke, crusading newspaper editor and nationalist fighter against Dutch imperialism, considering him a man of principle. With House Of Glass comes the final chapter of Pramoedyas epic quartet, set in the Dutch. Police commissioner Tuan Pangemanann, narrator of this concluding volume to Pramoedya's extraordinary tetralogy set in colonial Indonesia, is a Sorbonne-educated reactionary, a consummate hypocrite, a cultivated monster, a sadist with pangs of conscience. ![]() ![]() ![]() The forgetting of birthdays and the lack of feeling that she had for her daughter when she was approached by the man in the leather jacket. Innocent victims in all this and that it was the destruction of this which was heart breaking. We all agreed that actually, what we felt the most was for Sally’s children Jamie and Tilly. L felt no empathy with her at all and I think the rest of us actually changed their minds about half way through the book, and actually started to feel for her as Sally’s downward spiral became more apparent. General opinion was that Sally made you want to scream you wanted to actually get into the book and give her a good shake. S could not make it but as I have the group (closed) up on Facebook, it means those that missed can still make comments! Of everyone there we had 1 ‘loved’ it, 1 ‘hated’ it and 3 ‘not quite sure’. Three little cards, with three faces – and around we go with what card and image best summed up the book for each member. Perhaps something different to start the book group meeting this time. ![]() |