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Sigrid Nunez is the author of the acclaimed novels A Feather on the Breath of God and Naked Sleeper. She has won several awards for her work, including a Whiting Writer's Award, the Critic's Choice Award from the San Francisco Review of Books, and has twice been the recipient of the Pushcart Prize; she was also a finalist for both the PEN/Hemingway and the Barnes & Noble Awards for first novels.
For Rouenna
"After my first book was published, I received some letters." So begins Sigrid Nunez's haunting novel about the poignant and unusual friendship between a writer and a retired army nurse who seeks her out decades after their childhood in the same housing project. Among the letters the narrator receives is one from a Rouenna Zycinski, recalling their old connection and asking if they can meet.Though fascinated by the stories Rouenna tells about her life as a combat nurse in Vietnam, the narrator flatly declines her request that they collaborate on a memoir. It is only later, in the aftermath of Rouenna's shocking death, that the narrator is drawn to write about her friend--and her friend's war. Writing Rouenna's story becomes all-consuming, at once a necessity and the only consolation. For Rouenna, an unforgettable novel about truth, memory, and unexpected heroism by one of the most gifted writers of her generation, is also a remarkable and surprising new look at war.
Sigrid Nunez's Summer Reading List
Another Beauty
by Adam Zagajewski
As a great fan of Zagajewski's poetry, I am eager to read his
latest book, which is both a memoir of his coming of age in Poland
and a meditation on the art of poetry.
Samuel Johnson is Indignant
by Lydia Davis
In fact, I have already read this book once. I read it as soon
as it was published last fall. But, as with all her work, I cannot
resist the pleasure of rereading this third collection of stories.
Davis, who has also written one novel, The End of the Story, is one
of the smartest, most original, and funniest writers around.
The Russian Debutante's Handbook
by Gary Shteyngart
I look forward to reading this first novel, just published
this month and receiving excellent reviews, with particular excitement.
I remember reading parts of it when it was still a work in progress
and Gary was one of my students. The Russian Debutante's Handbook is a picaresque novel about the madcap adventures of a young Russian-American
immigrant, and its young Russian-American author is a comic genius.
The Horned Man
by James Lasdun
I first discovered Lasdun when I read his brilliant collection
of stories, Delirium Eclipse, which came out in 1985. Lasdun, who
is also a poet, is known for the elegance and beauty of his style.
This novel, which has been described as a literary psychological thriller,
looks to be one of the most unusual and audacious works of fiction
to appear in years.
The Double Bond: The Life of Premo Levi
by Carole Angier
An enormous new biography of the great Italian writer and chronicler
of the Holocaust. I am especially interested to see what light Angier
is able to shed on the circumstances of Levi's death, which has been
called a suicide but which many believe was in fact an accident.
Back to Authors'
Summer Reading Lists
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