A Word About Awards

SERIOUS MEN by Manu Joseph   Award: PEN/Open Book Winner 2011   Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2012   Date Read: March 9, 2025   From The New York Times: “To the list you can add Arvind Acharya and Ayyan Mani, the hero and anti­hero (you decide which is which) of Manu Joseph’s smart and funny first novel, “Serious Men.” Arvind is a legendary astro­physicist, a perennial Nobel candidate banned from the Vatican for having whispered something naughty in the pope’s ear. He lords over the faculty at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai like a cantankerous octogenarian enduring a horde of particularly ungrateful grandchildren. The man’s idea of sentimentality is using his wife’s name as his e-mail password. Ayyan is Arvind’s personal assistant at the institute, a wily sweeper’s son of the untouchable caste with an affinity for mischief equaled only by his aptitude for it. He eavesdrops on all of Arvind’s conversations, subverts every order he’s given and posts, each...

GUN DEALERS’ DAUGHTER by Gina Apostol   Award: PEN/Open Book Winner 2013   Date Read: August 12, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ The stilted reminiscences of a daughter of privilege from the Philippines whose naïve acts of rebellion teach her a tough life lesson. In her third novel, award-winning, Manila-born Apostol delivers a sketchy history of her country’s politics from the solipsistic perspective of a “spoiled brat,” Soledad Soliman, now recovering from a mental breakdown in her family’s luxurious New York mansion. The child of arms dealers, Sol spent the 1970s in the U.S., avoiding the violence at home. Returning to Manila, to a life lived among the elite, she had plans for a foreign education, but illness intervened and instead she attended a local college where she met a political crowd including another Soledad (this one a Maoist) and her wealthy boyfriend Jed. Sol’s attraction to Jed leads to an affair conducted during evening graffiti raids, but her wish to join ...

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie   Award: PEN/Open Book Winner 2007, Women's Prize Winner 2007   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2008, James Tait Black Finalist 2006, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2006   Date Read: November 14, 2021   Half Of A Yellow Sun isn’t a novel as much as it is a saga that will twist you up and wring you out. I am in awe of the detail, the heart, the honesty and the intensity that went into writing this. In a word, I am left speechless.   I never knew of the Nigerian-Biafra War and I once again marvel at human stupidity. I marvel at the waste of life and opportunity and humanity. I continue to be dumbfounded by the pettiness, cruelty and indifference humans can have for one another. Yet, I can’t imagine a world where these things do not exist. For there is no people, no country where this darkness is absent.   Olanna and Kainene come from a privileged background and already begin the war at the top of the pyrami...