16
DECEMBER 29, 2021�JANUARY 5, 2022
FROM THE SHELF
CHECKING OUT THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
In the mood for
some fiction? Here’s
a look at books for
your reading list
By Malcolm Forbes
Star Tribune
‘THE PROMISE’
by Damon Galgut
The title of this powerful,
emotionally charged novel —
winner of this year’s Booker
Prize — refers to a pledge made
by Rachel Swart, the matri-
arch of a white South African
family, to bequeath a house on
her farm to loyal Black servant
Salome. But when Rachel dies,
so too does Salome’s hope of
claiming her inheritance. Galgut
charts the wayward progress
and mixed fortunes of Rachel’s
racist husband, Manie, and
their three children — feck-
less Anton, faithless Astrid and
guilt-ridden Amor — through
subsequent decades, while
simultaneously depicting a
nation undergoing tumultuous
change.
‘RADIANT FUGITIVES’
by Nawaaz Ahmed
This hugely accomplished
debut expertly traces the fault
lines within a Muslim Indian
family. After being cast off by
her father, Seema has made a
new life for herself in the West.
In her last weeks of pregnancy
she is reunited at her home in
San Francisco with her devoutly
religious sister Tahera and their
terminally ill mother, Nafeesa.
But can they heal old wounds?
Ahmed aims high and explores
politics, race and his charac-
ters’ fates through an extraor-
dinary narrative voice — that of
Seema’s newborn (and at times
unborn) son.
‘MRS. MARCH’
by Virginia Feito
Spanish-born Feito’s epony-
mous heroine exerts a strong
hold on the reader. Mrs. March
leads a charmed life on Man-
hattan’s Upper East Side. But
when she suspects that she
was the inspiration for her
author husband’s latest protag-
onist — “a weak, plain, detest-
able, pathetic, unloved, unlov-
able wretch” — her safe world
collapses. Soon she believes
he is even capable of murder.
With echoes of those doyennes
of suspense Patricia Highsmith
and Daphne du Maurier, this
is a darkly comic portrait of a
woman spiraling out of control.
‘CHINA ROOM’
by Sunjeev Sahota
Sahota’s bravura third novel
is made up of two neatly inter-
woven narratives set 70 years
apart. In one strand, Mehar, a
young bride, conducts an illicit
romance with her husband’s
brother on a farm in rural
Punjab in 1929. In the other,
Mehar’s great-grandson travels
to the same location where he
battles addiction and becomes
curious about his relative’s
tragic history. An intense and
moving depiction of endur-
ance and defi ance through the
generations.
‘OPEN WATER’
by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Two young Black British
people meet, then fall passion-
ately for each other. “What is
better than believing you are
heading towards love?” asks
Azumah Nelson. Gradually, how-
ever, their relationship is tested
by outside forces. The simple
framework of this debut belies
the riches within. The charac-
ters — he a photographer, she
a dancer — are unnamed yet
fully knowable, the prose is lush
and rhythmic, and the bold use
of second-person narration
ensures that the situations and
emotions are nothing less than
intimate and intense.
‘THE LOVE SONGS OF
W.E.B. DU BOIS’
by Honorée Fanonne Jeff ers
Weighing in at almost 800
pages and spanning two cen-
turies, Jeff ers’ fi rst novel is a
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