Bøger af Nell Zink

Named a Best Book of 2016 by Slate and the Dallas Morning NewsUnemployed?and unmoored by her father's death?recent college graduate Penny Baker decides to fix up her dad's childhood home in New Jersey. Instead, she finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property ?Nicotine.? The residents (united in defense of smokers' rights) and the other squatters in the neighborhood provide a sense of community and purpose that Penny feels she's desperately lacking. She soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in their political fervor, and falling irredeemably in love with an asexual resident by the name of Rob. But the rest of Penny's family has other plans?her mother and older half-brother would prefer to evict the squatters and gentrify the neighborhood. As the Baker family's lives begin to converge around Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more determined to protect it.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDA sharply observed, mordantly funny, and startlingly original novel from an exciting, unconventional new voice?the author of the acclaimed The Wallcreeper?about the making and unmaking of the American family that lays bare all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire.Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The two are mismatched from the start?she's a lesbian, he's gay?but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee's children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie deals with his father's compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother's lies?she knows neither her real age, nor that she is ?white,? nor that she has any other family.Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

The new novel from one of America's most original voices. A blackly funny and profoundly singular Cinderella story about a young woman finding her place in the world: she knows how to survive, but now she must learn how to live. A short and classic coming-of-age tale - but with an edge; this is voice-driven and fresh literary fiction.

'A gorgeous love story and a hilarious political novel about precarity and abuse in the era of late capitalism.' Neel Mukherjee, author of Man Booker Prize-shortlisted The Lives of Others'Zink's confidence and authority as a writer are evident from Avalon's killer first sentences.' LA TimesBran's Southern California upbringing is anything but traditional. After her mother abandons her and joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her 'common-law stepfather' on Bourdon Farms - a plant nursery that doubles as a cover for a biker gang. She spends her days tending plants, slogging through high school and imagining what life could be if she had been born to a different family.Then she meets Peter-a charming, troubled college student from the East Coast - who launches his teaching career by initiating her into the world of art. The two begin a seemingly doomed long-distance relationship as Bran searches for meaning in her own surroundings. She knows how to survive, but now she must learn how to live.'Zink is a comic writer par excellence.' New Yorker'An extraordinary talent.' Daily Telegraph

A fierce and audaciously funny new novel from the author of Mislaid and The Wallcreeper.Unemployed?and unmoored by her father's death?recent college graduate Penny Baker decides to fix up her dad's childhood home in New Jersey. Instead, she finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property ?Nicotine.? The Nicotine residents (united in defense of smokers' rights) and the other squatters in the neighborhood provide a sense of community and purpose that Penny feels she's desperately lacking, and she soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in their political fervor.But the rest of her family has other plans?her mother and older half-brother would prefer to evict the squatters and gentrify the neighborhood. As the Baker family's lives begin to converge around Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more determined to protect it?and its residents, specifically Rob, the asexual man with whom she's fallen irredeemably in love.Nell Zink exquisitely captures the clash between idealism and pragmatism, between the have-nots and the want-mores, in a riotous yet insightful novel that brilliantly encapsulates our time.

Fiction. "Who is Nell Zink? She claims to be an expatriate living in northeast Germany. Maybe she is; maybe she isn't. I don't know. I do know that this first novel arrives with a voice that is fully formed: mature, hilarious, terrifyingly intelligent, and wicked. The novel is about a bird-loving American couple that moves to Europe and becomes, basically, eco-terrorists. This is strange, and interesting, but in between is some writing about marriage, love, fidelity, Europe, and saving the earth that is as funny and as grown-up as anything I've read in years. And there are some jokes in here that a young Don DeLillo would kill to have written. I hope he doesn't kill Nell Zink."--Keith Gessen "Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know. You might not want to believe this, but her sentences and stories are so strong and convincing that you'll have no choice."--Jonathan Franzen

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A profound and singular story about a young woman searching for her place in the world, from one of America’s most original voices—the irresistible story of one teenager’s reckoning with society at large and her search for a personal utopia.“Effulgent and clever.... What fun.” —The New York TimesBran’s Southern California upbringing is anything but traditional. After her mother joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her “common-law stepfather” on Bourdon Farms—a plant nursery that doubles as a cover for a biker gang. She spends her days tending plants, slogging through high school, and imagining what life could be if she had been born to a different family.   And then she meets Peter, a beautiful, troubled, and charming train wreck of a college student from the East Coast, who launches his teaching career by initiating her into the world of literature and aesthetics. As the two begin a volatile and ostensibly doomed long-distance relationship, Bran searches for meaning in her own surroundings—attending disastrous dance recitals, house-sitting for strangers, and writing scripts for student films. She knows how to survive, but her happiness depends on learning to call the shots.   Exceedingly rich, ecstatically dark, and delivered with masterful humor, Avalon is a poignant portrait of a young woman who, against all odds, is determined to find her place in the world and find clarity in its remote corners.

Brans Southern California upbringing is anything but traditional. After her mother abandons her and joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her common-law stepfather on Bourdon Farms - a plant nursery that doubles as a cover for a biker gang. She spends her days tending plants, slogging through high school and imagining what life could be if she had been born to a different family.And then she meets Peter-a charming, troubled college student from the East Coast-who launches his teaching career by initiating her into the world of art. The two begin a seemingly doomed long-distance relationship as Bran searches for meaning in her own

From the letters of Nell Zink: two wildly funny novellas now available for the first time.Years ago, Nell Zink took on the challenge of reading a novel by a friend, the Hebrew-language writer Avner Shats. Unable to make sense of his work, she resolved to rewrite it for him from scratch. Now her tongue-in-cheek homage is available for the first time, accompanied by a dazzling and imaginative novella that ingeniously explores questions of art, language, and life.?Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats? is Zink's faux translation of Shats' 1998 novel Lashut el Ha-Shkiah (Sailing Toward the Sunset). A romantic thriller involving a Mossad agent, a mythical silkie, and fictionalized versions of characters from Shats' life, including the author herself, the work incorporates a number of previously unpublished short stories, plus Zink's heartrending memoir ?My Memoirs.?A fast-moving portrait of expat artists, authors, and academics on fellowships at a villa in Florence, ?European Story for Avner Shats? centers on a trio of indelible characters: a German specialist in ancient lint, an Israeli writer in an extended midlife crisis, and a beautiful and fraudulent Russian performance artist.Demonstrating the hallmarks of Zink's unique talent, Private Novelist is an intimate look into this acclaimed novelist's early fiction?touching, sociable, and uproariously funny.

Named a Best Book of the Year by:The New York Times * New York Magazine * Lit Hub* TIME* O, the Oprah Magazine* Good HousekeepingTwo generations of an American family come of ageone before 9/11, one afterin this moving and original novel from the intellectually restless, uniquely funny (New York Times Book Review) mind of Nell ZinkPam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivalsa daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the 90s wane, the three friends share in one anothers successes, working together to elevate Joes superstardom and raise baby Flora.On September 11, 2001, the citys unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Floras family will have no choice but to look to the pastboth to examine wounds that have never healed, and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten.At once an elegiac takedown of todays political climate and a touching invocation of humanitys goodness, Doxology offers daring revelations about Americas past and possible future that could only come from Nell Zink, one of the sharpest novelists of our time.

Two generations of an American family come of age - one before 9/11, one after - in this moving and original novel from the "intellectually restless, uniquely funny" (New York Times Book Review) mind of Nell Zink

From the much acclaimed author of MISLAID and THE WALLCREEPER, a fierce and audaciously funny novel of families-both the ones we're born into and the ones we create-a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late father's childhood home. "e;She wills her body to be equally wraithlike. Not sodden, not heavy, not dead, but filled with crackling, electric life, like a stale Marlboro on fire."e;Unemployed business major, Penny, has rebelled against her family her whole life - by being the conventional one. Her mother was a member of a South American tribe; her father was a Jewish Shamanist with a psychedelic 'healing centre'. But everything changes when her father dies and Penny inherits his childhood home. Left weightless and unmoored after being the only member of her family with time for her dying father, Penny then finds his property occupied by a group of squatters, united in defence of smokers' rights - and herself unexpectedly besotted with them, particularly Rob, the hot bicycle-and-tobacco activist. Totally addictive and dangerously good, 'Nicotine' is a fiercely funny novel in which passion is politics and nonviolence is the opposite of surrender.

`Heady and rambunctious ... Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humour, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows - this book is a wild thing.' New York Times Book ReviewInterlaken, Berne, 21st century. Several things happen after the car hits the rock. Tiff ceases to be pregnant. Stephen captures, like, the most wonderful bird - fleet, stealthy, and beautiful - a real "e;lifer"e;. And the wallcreeper, the wallcreeper says "e;twee"e;. The Wallcreeper is nothing more than a portrait of marriage, complete with all its requisite highs and lows: drugs, dubstep, small chores, anal sex, eco-terrorism, birding, breeding and feeding.