
The Sisters Brothers

In his novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy writes, of the terminally ill Ivan: “The syllogism . . . ‘Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,’ had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. . . . He was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
“These sunflower seeds are good,” I said, taking a couple more. Kojima was drinking his bourbon and soda at a leisurely pace. I took a small sip from the glass in front of me. A flawless martini. I set down my drink with a sigh. The glass was cold, its surface ever so slightly frosted over. “The rainy season is almost here,” Sensei said. Right, Sat
... See moreHiromi Kawakami • Strange Weather in Tokyo: A Novel
But there were two things they agreed upon wholly and that were never spoken and that was that God had put horses on earth to work cattle and that other than cattle there was no wealth proper to a man.
Cormac McCarthy • The Border Trilogy: Picador Classic
ROBERT KENNEDY, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago
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