One of the years major literary events is the publication of Barracoon by Zora Neale Houston. Houston was an anthropologist and author. Although she was a major figure in the Haarlem Renaissance of the 1920s, she had receded into obscurity by the time of her death in 1960. In recent decades, her star has risen and she is now regarded as one of the major talents of the 20th century. Her Their Eyes Were Watching God is a staple of college curricula and book discussion groups, including The Big Read.
Houston was unable to get Barracoon published during her lifetime, however. Its a nonfiction account of the life of Cudjo Lewis. In 1927, when Houston interviewed him, he was the last surviving African who had been captured and brought to the United States as a slave (long after the transatlantic slave trade had been banned). Cudjo recalls his childhood, capture at the age of 19, the Middle Passage, his five and a half years as a slave, and the terrors visited upon former slaves by ex-Confederates after Reconstruction ended. Barracoon is currently on the best seller lists.
Another major publication of the summer is Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, best known for The English Patient. It begins with Nathaniel saying In 1945, our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals. The term warlight refers to the dimmed lights used for emergency traffic in England during World War II blackouts. Its a metaphor here for this period in Nathaniels life. Twelve years later, violence and shocking revelations begin to pierce the warlight.
Love and Ruin by Paula McLain is a biographical novel based on the life of Martha Gellhorn, one of the 20th centurys premier war correspondents and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway. The book concentrates on the Hemingway period of her life. The two met and became friends in 1936, lovers during the Spanish Civil War, and finally husband and wife from 1940 to 1945. Her frequent absences to cover World War II (she was the only woman journalist to land at Normandy on D-Day) caused resentment in Hemingway. A relationship between two strong-willed writers might have been doomed from the beginning, and they soon became as much rivals as mates. Love and Ruin is an apt title for a book tracing the trajectory of their relationship.
Star of the North by D.B. John is a timely novel looking into closed and paranoid North Korea. Jenna (born Jee-min) joins the CIA and is sent undercover to North Korea as a translator for a U.N. group. This gives her the chance to search for her twin sister, Soo-min, abducted by North Korean commandos twelve years earlier.
