New York Times review of The Angel of Grozny

The Angel of Grozny, by Asne Seierstad
9780465011223 | $27.95 hc | in stock
Basic Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

The latest book from Asne Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul) has been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review September 21, who claim that “Seierstad has produced a masterly and much needed call to attention for the international community:”

Chechnya’s Victims

By PETER BAKER

Published: September 19, 2008

They steal, they hit, they kill dogs. And for New Year, they decorate the holiday tree in the backyard with the skeleton of a Russian soldier.

After some 14 years of war, terror and lawlessness, the children of Chechnya have been damaged in ways outsiders can barely fathom. Even now, with the war part of the war essentially over, Chechnya remains a place of hidden horrors, where life is fragile and exceedingly cheap.

The world long ago turned its gaze away, content that the big guns had been silenced and uninterested in peering beyond the illusion of stability that Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow presents. But Asne Seierstad forces us to look again, to confront the reality of a savage place, to recognize that a broken, brutalized people have only begun to figure out how deep the wounds really go.

“The Angel of Grozny,” as it happens, comes at a grimly appropriate moment, as Russian tanks have once again been rolling through the tumultuous Caucasus, this time in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and its breakaway enclave of South Ossetia, not all that many miles from where Seierstad’s narrative plays out. As a French journalist friend who also once covered the region suggested in an e-mail message, you have a pretty chilling sense of déjà vu if you swap the words “Georgia” and “Chechnya.”

This remote part of the world, with its mix of nationalities, religions and languages, has long endured or rebelled against domination from Moscow, making it the tinderbox at the bottom of the Russian empire. But the trials of these people last far longer than any particular burst of shelling or cascade of bombing. The fear and dysfunction of daily life after the wars, or between them, are no less profound.

Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist who achieved international fame with the best-selling “Bookseller of Kabul,” has gone back to Chechnya, long after most Western writers have moved on, and produced a gripping portrait of a forgotten war zone, looking past the superficial signs of recovery to find that while buildings may be reconstructed, souls are not so easily repaired.

Seierstad was one of many Moscow correspondents who trekked down south during the first Chechen war, which lasted from 1994 to 1996. She did not return until 2006, after the second Chechen war, launched by Putin in 1999, had largely ended, won by Moscow not so much through force on the ground as by buying off enough of the other side and giving converted separatists free rein to rule as they wished so long as they paid official fealty to the Kremlin.

Even now, Chechnya remains a land of disappearances and destitution, torture and travail, reprisals and repression. As Seierstad prepares to enter the region in disguise, she is advised to stop smiling because of course no Chechen woman would have much to smile about. “Keep your head down, frown and look unfriendly,” she is instructed.

Finalists Announced for CCBC Awards

Groundwood has 3 finalists for the 2008 Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards (This is in addition to the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award nomination for Please, Louise), and Tradewind Books has a finalist as well. Winners will be announced at the award ceremony on November 6:

Norma Fleck for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction
Weird Weather, by Kate Evans 
9780888998415 | $9.95 pb | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

 

 

 

The Eco-Diary of Kiran Singer, by Sue Ann Alderson
978-1896580470 | $18.95 hc | in stock
Tradewind Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

 

 

 

Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award
Pink, by Nan Gregory, illustrated by Luc Melanson
9780888997814 | $17.95 hc | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

 

Please, Louise, by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay
9780888997968 | $17.95 hc | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

America and the World in the NYT

America and the World, by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft
978-0465015016 | $29.50 hc | in stock
Basic Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

The New York Times reviewed Brzezinski and Scowcroft’s America and the World (in a co-review with The Limits of Power) on Sept. 22:

A Dialogue and a Discourse on America’s Global Role

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: September 22, 2008

In the months before the American invasion of Iraq, among the few members of the foreign policy establishment to speak out forcefully about the dangers of going to war unilaterally against Saddam Hussein were Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In August 2002 Mr. Scowcroft warned that a “virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq” would degrade “international cooperation with us against terrorism,” and he presciently predicted that such a war “would not be a cakewalk,” as some members of the George W. Bush administration contended, but could involve “a large-scale, long-term military occupation” and “would be very expensive — with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy.”

That same month Mr. Brzezinski cautioned that “war is too serious a business and too unpredictable in its dynamic consequences — especially in a highly flammable region — to be undertaken because of a personal peeve, demagogically articulated fears or vague factual assertions.” In February 2003, he added that “an America that decides to act essentially on its own regarding Iraq” could “find itself quite alone in having to cope with the costs and burdens of the war’s aftermath, not to mention widespread and rising hostility abroad.”

In a trenchant new book, “America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy,” Mr. Brzezinski and Mr. Scowcroft (along with the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, acting as moderator) incisively discuss the fallout of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, including the empowerment of Iran, the recruitment of more terrorists and the inflaming of hatreds within the region. They also survey the foreign policy landscape as a whole: the consequences of globalization, the rise of China as a new economic behemoth, the ambitions of a new Russia under the leadership of Vladimir V. Putin and Dmitri A. Medvedev.

Their wide-ranging dialogue gives the reader an acute sense of the daunting challenges (including nuclear proliferation, global warming and terrorism) confronted by America in a rapidly changing international environment, even as it emphasizes the importance of the coming presidential election in picking a leader to grapple with those issues at what could well be a hinge moment in modern history.

New Release Roundup: Titles Shipping Now

Here’s a quick list of some of the more important fall books that are in the warehouses and shipping now:

Doors Open, by Ian Rankin
9780752890715 | $24.95 pb | in stock
Orion / McArthur & Co. (HarperCollins)

Ian Rankin’s DOORS OPEN is now shipping from Harper Collins (McArthur) and will be soon on National bestseller lists. And don’t forget the final Rebus novel, Exit Music, is now out in mass market paperback (978-0752893952).

Payback, by Margaret Atwood
9780887848100 | $18.95 pb | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Also, Margaret Atwood’s new Massey Lecture PAYBACK (Anansi) will hit Harper’s warehouse Sept 12. She hits the road to deliver the lectures in October, and they’ll be broadcast on CBC in early November.

Cockroach, by Rawi Hage
978088784209 | $29.95 hc | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Off to War, by Deborah Ellis
9780888998958 | $12.95 pb | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Both Deborah Ellis’s book OFF TO WAR and Rawi Hage’s book COCKROACH are getting lots of fabulous reviews and media attention. Cockroach has just been longlisted for this year’s Giller Prize as well.

 

Born With a Tooth, new edition, by Joseph Boyden
978-1-897151-34-1 | $20.00 pb | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

Joseph Boyden’s new book is coming from Penguin this fall and will push sales for this paperback. His new book has also been longlisted for the Giller.

M is for Moose, by Charles Pachter
978-1-897151-33-4 | $20.00 hc | in stock
Cormorant Books (UTP Distribution)

This book is beginning to take on a life of its own: please take note. I’ll update publicity and promotion developments as they are booked. At the moment, the book will be featured in the October issue CANADIAN FAMILY.  This could be THE kids Canadiana art book of the Christmas season!

Fourth Starred Review for The Black Book of Colors

The Black Book of Colors, by Menena Cottin
978-0888998736 | $17.95 hc | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

The Black Book of Colors has been given a starred review in October’s Booklist, bringing the total number of starred reviews for this title to four:

How do you describe the colors of the rainbow to someone who cannot see them? This inventive picture book relates the ways the unseen Thomas experiences colors—through his senses of smell, taste, touch, and hearing. To Thomas, red is the sting of a skinned knee or the tartness of an unripe strawberry; green, the scent of freshly mown grass. What is most remarkable about this book’s captivating concept, however, is its execution. Black raised line art is set against black pages that echo Thomas’ spirited imagery and invite readers to explore what it’s like to read with their fingertips. The descriptive, sensory text, which also incorporates white type and Braille, combined with an innovative design, makes this book the perfect starting point for discussions on difference, perspective, and experiencing and describing the world in new ways, topics that are relevant to readers of all ages. Winner of the New Horizons Prize at the 2007 Bologna Children’s Book Fair and originally published in Spanish, the text is translated here by Elisa Amado. A Braille alphabet is appended.
— Kristen McKulski

Butterfly Mind reviewed in The Walrus

Butterfly Mind, by Patrick Brown
978-0887842146 | $29.95 hc | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Patrick Brown’s Butterfly Mind has been reviewed in The Walrus by Patrick White. From the review:

Butterfly Mind exposes the vomit and liver rot of life “under a personal dictatorship as ruthless and hard to overthrow as any of the regimes I was covering.” But it is so much more than an exdrunkard’s mea culpa; it’s also an incisive analysis of the major political convulsions of the past three decades by someone who’s witnessed a good number. Brown weaves his own decline into a larger tale of tyranny and resistance in Lebanon, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Burma, Bulgaria, and, especially, China, where he now lives. As he stumbles toward honesty, openness, and eventual recovery in his personal life, hope mounts that his political characters can do the same.

Upcoming media for Between the Covers

Between the Covers, by Ellen Heltzel
9780738212296 | $18.50 pb | available November
Da Capo Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Between the Covers has reviews and features forthcoming in Elle (review in December issue), More (November issue), Body + Soul (December issue), and Publishers Weekly (interview in November 10 issue).

Born Digital in the New York Times

Born Digital, by John Palfrey
9780465005154 | $27.95 hc | in stock
Basic Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

John Palfrey was interviewed for the “Parenting 2.0” article that ran in The New York Times on September 11:

Twittering From the Cradle

By CAMILLE SWEENEY

Published: September 10, 2008

From the article:

Daniel Hallac and his wife Carole, co-founders of Kidmondo, believe that someday children themselves will go to the site. “Our son Shaun is only a year and a half so he’s not all that interested yet,” Mr. Hallac said. “But we have a page on our site for our older son Davide, who is 6. He checks up on it a lot and loves to read his story. Sometimes he’ll say something like ‘How come you didn’t write about my baseball game yesterday?’”

These sites allow parents to create “attractive and compelling versions of a kid’s story,” said John Palfrey, a professor at Harvard Law School and an author of “Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.”

But Mr. Palfrey warns that parents posting the intimate details of their children’s lives need to ask not only who has access to this content, but also who owns it. “Whether or not they realize it as such,” he said, “parents are contributing to their child’s digital dossier. And, who sees that dossier later on may be of concern.”

Skim up for two Ignatz Awards

Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
9780888997531 | $18.95 hc | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

Skim has two nods for the 2008 Ignatz Awards: Outstanding Artist for Jillian Tamaki, and Outstanding Graphic Novel!

The Ignatz Awards, named for the character in the classic comic strip Krazy Kat by George Herriman, is a festival prize that recognizes outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning. The ballot is created by a panel of five cartoonists and is then voted on by the attendees at the event. This offers a unique reflection of the views the professionals and their fans.

The award winners will be announced on Saturday, October 4th, 2008.

Solitude author to be interviewed on CBC Radio’s Tapestry

Solitude, by Robert Kull
9781577316329 | $27.50 hc | in stock
New World Library / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Some fantastic news on the media front for Robert Kull’s Solitude as we have a confirmed interview on CBC’s "Tapestry". They will be taping in mid-October with an air date to be announced shortly thereafter.