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Book Description
"Tan is one of the prime storytellers writing fiction today."
NEWSWEEK
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.
"The kind of novel that can be read and reread with enormous pleasure."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
From Publishers Weekly
Tan's ( The Joy Luck Club ) mesmerizing second novel, again a story that a Chinese emigre mother tells her daughter, received a PW boxed review, spent 18 weeks on PW 's hardcover bestseller list and was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection in cloth.
From Library Journal
The Joy Luck Club ( LJ 2/1/89), Tan's remarkable and successful first novel, is followed by this chronicle of Chinese-American life, which shows Tan's growth as a writer. Pearl, the American-born daughter of immigrants, begins the tale with an uneasy visit to her mother for Grand Auntie Du's funeral. Misunderstanding runs deep between mother and daughter: Pearl is married with two young girls of her own, but her mother's life is largely incomprehensible to her. This leads to the large second part of the novel, told in mother Winnie's voice of her young womanhood in World War II-era China. Tan is a gifted natural storyteller. The rhythms of Winnie's story are spellbinding and true, without the contrivance common in many modern novels. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/90; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections; first serial to McCall's .
- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
From School Library Journal
YA-- Fans of Tan's Joy Luck Club (Putnam, 1989) will love her powerful second novel. Here she creates an absorbing story about the lives of a Chinese mother and her adult American-born daughter. Pressured to reveal to the young woman her secret past in war-torn China in the 1940s, Winnie weaves an unbelievable account of a childhood of loneliness and abandonment and a young adulthood marred by a nightmarish arranged marriage. Winnie survives her many ordeals because of the friendship and strength of her female friends, the love of her second husband, and her own steadfast courage and endurance. At the conclusion, her secrets are uncovered and she shares a trust/love relationship with her daughter, Pearl, that was missing from both their lives. Some YAs may find the beginning a bit slow, but this beautifully written, heartrending, sometimes violent story with strong characterzation will captivate their interest to the very last page.
--Nancy Bard, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
Midwest Book Review
Tan herself reads an exceptionally well-done abridged version of her story of Winnie Louie and Helen Kwong, who find their confidences shattered. This is more than a story about family relationships at a crossroads: it captures the essence of Chinese heritage and culture.
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith
Winnie is a powerhouse who has fought, laughed at, and struggled with life; Pearl is the daughter who grew up in Winnie's shadow. Pearl has a secret she doesn't want her mother to know because Winnie will blame herself, worry, be mad she wasn't told right away. Winnie has secrets she doesn't want to tell Pearl: she's afraid she won't understand, that she'll be hurt. Auntie Helen knows their secrets and thinks it is time for each of them to tell. Winnie was born in China seventy years ago and experienced her mother's desertion, a cultural revolution, and a very bad marriage. How can she explain these things to her American-born daughter, the one who keeps to herself and wouldn't even allow herself to cry when her father died? But as Winnie lets Pearl in, Pearl learns more than just her mother's story. She learns about herself, about the costs she and her mother pay to keep their secrets, and she learns to share her own secrets. Mothers can both support our roots so we can stand on our own and remove the top soil that nurtures us - this is a story of mothers doing both.
Book Dimension
length: (cm)20.6 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)13.6

"[An] essential Beat masterpiece." -- The Village Voice .
Perhaps one of the last great dual correspondences of the twentieth century, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters reveals not only the process of creation of the two most celebrated members of the Beat Generation, but also the unfolding of a remarkable friendship of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Through this exhilarating exchange of letters, two-thirds of which have never been published before, Kerouac and Ginsberg emerge first and foremost as writers of artistic passion, innovation, and genius. Vivid and enthralling, the letters, which date from their first meeting in 1944 to Kerouac's untimely death in 1969, chronicle the endless struggle, anguish, and sacrifice involved in giving form to their literary visions.

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A spectacular treasury of the best British short stories published in the last twenty years
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In August 1966 a group of Red Guards ransacked the home of Nien Cheng. Her background made her an obvious target for the fanatics of the Cultural Revolution: educated in London, the widow of an official of Chiang Kai-Shek's regime, and an employee of Shell Oil, Nien Cheng enjoyed comforts that few of her compatriots could afford. When she refused to confess that any of this made her an enemy of the state, she was placed in solitary confinement, where she would remain for more than six years. "Life and Death in Shanghai" is the powerful story of Nien Cheng's imprisonment, of the deprivation she endured, of her heroic resistance, and of her quest for justice when she was released. It is the story, too, of a country torn apart by the savage fight for power Mao Tse-tung launched in his campaign to topple party moderates. An incisive, rare personal account of a terrifying chapter in twentieth-century history, "Life and Death in Shanghai" is also an astounding portrait of one woman's courage.

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Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

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"Why Read the Classics?" is an elegant defence of the value of great literature by one of the finest authors of the last century. Beginning with an essay on the attributes that define a classic (number one - classics are those books that people always say they are 'rereading', not 'reading'), this is an absorbing collection of Italo Calvino's witty and passionate criticism.

A fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Fall Of Berlin 1945
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In 1940, Gustav Herling was arrested after he joined an underground Polish army that fell into Russian hands. He was sent to a northern Russian labour camp, where he spent the two most horrible years of his life. In this book, he tells of the people he was imprisoned with, the hardships they endured, and the indomitable spirit and will that allowed them to survive. Above all, he creates a portrait of how people - deprived of food, clothing, proper medical care, and forced to work at hard labour - can come together to form a community that offers hope in the face of hopelessness, that offers life when even the living have no life left.

Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming with expatriates, businessmen, students, scholars, and indigents. Struggling to support his studies, he travels throughout the United States and Canada, becoming by turns a traveling salesman, a domestic worker, and a farmer, and observing along the way the idealism, greed, and shifting values of the industrializing twentieth century. Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature.

Few forces in the world are as potent as religion: it comforts people in their suffering and inspires them to both magnificent and terrible deeds. In this provocative and timely book, Daniel C. Dennett seeks to uncover the origins of religion and discusses how and why different faiths have shaped so many lives, whether religion is an addiction or a genuine human need, and even whether it is good for our health. Arguing passionately for the need to understand this multifaceted phenomenon, "Breaking the Spell" offers a truly original - and comprehensive - explanation for faith.

A gift to the next generation of engaged citizens, from one of our most celebrated intellectuals.
As the economic collapse of 2008 made clear, the social contract that defined postwar life in Europe and America-the guarantee of security, stability, and fairness-is no longer guaranteed; in fact, it's no longer part of the common discourse. Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far Right and the debunked socialism of the past. In reintroducing alternatives to the status quo, Judt invigorates our political conversation, furnishing the tools necessary to imagine a new form of governance and a better way of life.

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