{"id":13699,"date":"2018-06-24T09:06:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T14:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lib.luc.edu\/locl\/?p=13699"},"modified":"2026-01-12T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T21:36:19","slug":"world-cup-of-books-june-24th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/2018\/06\/24\/world-cup-of-books-june-24th\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup of Books: June 24th"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer, the Loyola Libraries are excited to bring you the World Cup of Books<\/strong>, an interactive program to encourage reading books from other countries. Show your support for your favorite team by reading books from and about their country!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s match-ups include England v Panama, Poland v Columbia, and Japan v Senegal.<\/p>\n

England: White Teeth by Zadie Smith<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

An impressively witty satirical first novel, London-set, chronicling the experiences of two eccentric multiracial families during the last half of the 20th century. <\/p>\n

When Archie Jones\u2019s suicide attempt on New Year\u2019s Day 1975 is stymied by a finicky butcher (who frowns upon such things taking place in a car parked illegally in front of his establishment, especially when he\u2019s awaiting an early morning delivery), his life is changed forever. Lamenting the break up of his marriage, the distraught and disoriented Archie\u2014a middle aged Brit who fancies himself in the direct-mail business but actually spends his life folding papers\u2014then wanders into an end of the world party where he meets his next wife. Jamaican Clara Bowden is 19 to Archie\u2019s 47, at six feet tall she towers over him, and she\u2019s missing all her upper teeth, the result of a motorcycle mishap. Nonetheless, six weeks later the mismatched pair are married and living near Archie\u2019s WWII buddy Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim. And so begins Smith\u2019s frenetic, riotous, unruly tale, which hops, skips, and jumps from one end of the century to the other while following the Jones and Iqbal broods. \u2013Kirkus Review<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find here!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Panama: The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez [Panamanian American] <\/strong><\/p>\n

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A family from Mexico settles in Delaware and strives to repair emotional and physical wounds in Henr\u00edquez\u2019s dramatic page-turner.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s third book of fiction (Come Together, Fall Apart, 2006; The World in Half, 2009) opens with the arrival of Arturo and Alma Rivera, who have brought their teenage daughter, Maribel, to the U.S. in the hope of helping her recover from a head injury she sustained in a fall. Their neighbors Rafael and Celia Toro came from Panama years earlier, and their teenage son, Mayor, takes quickly to Maribel. The pair\u2019s relationship is prone to gossip and misinterpretation: People think Maribel is dumber than she is and that Mayor is more predatory than he is. In this way, Henr\u00edquez suggests, they represent the immigrant experience in miniature. The novel alternates narrators among members of the Rivera and Toro families, as well as other immigrant neighbors, and their stories stress that their individual experiences can\u2019t be reduced to types or statistics; the shorter interludes have the realist detail, candor and potency of oral history. \u2013Kirkus Review<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find it here!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Poland: Collected stories, Bruno Schulz 1892-1942, author. Madeline G. Levine translator. <\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Omnibus edition of the beguiling, sometimes-unsettling fiction of the great Polish-Jewish writer Schulz, an early victim of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Schulz has been translated into English since the early 1960s, with his book Sanitarium Under the Sign of the Hourglass included in Philip Roth\u2019s series of Eastern European writers for Penguin. That book is translated afresh and included here along with the collection of short fiction previously issued in the U.S. as Street of Crocodiles, here presented under its original title as Cinnamon Shops. The latter title is emblematic; says the narrator, \u201cI call them cinnamon shops because they are paneled with dark, cinnamon-colored wainscoting,\u201d but one has the sense that the shops are so-called because cinnamon would have been an exotic import from some distant outside that magically appeared in a city center made up of strange houses with endless interiors to explore, even if the exterior might be a \u201cmarket square\u2026swept clean of dust by hot winds, like a biblical desert.\u201d \u2013Kirkus Review<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find it here,<\/a><\/strong> or at the IC display!<\/p>\n

Colombia: The Armies by Evelio Rosero, translated Anne McLean <\/strong><\/p>\n

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In Evelio Rosero\u2019s spare novel The Armies, another ancient man is faced with a cruel mob, but there will be no epiphanic recognition to disperse it. The Armies, the first of Rosero\u2019s novels to be translated into English, describes the old age of Ismael Pasos, an elderly retired teacher who lives in the Colombian village of San Jos\u00e9 and has a penchant for voyeurism. In his retirement, Ismael has realized his personal version of Eden by looking over the wall at the beautiful neighbor suntanning in the nude. It is clear from the outset that all that matters to Ismael is to admire women.\u2014the Quarterly Conversation<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find it here,<\/a><\/strong> or at the IC display!<\/p>\n

Japan: The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Allison Markin Powell<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Kawakami (Strange Weather in Tokyo, 2014, etc.) writes of Hitomi, a na\u00efve cashier at the Nakano Thrift Shop, who falls for her co-worker, Takeo. \u201cPeople scare me,\u201d confides Takeo, who wants companionship with Hitomi but nothing more. Though Hitomi and Takeo find friendship on the common ground of Mr. Nakano\u2019s unusual shop, Takeo is taciturn and reluctant; he\u2019s uninterested in sex. (Their boss, Mr. Nakano, on the other hand, openly discusses his sexual exploits, multiple marriages and trips to visit \u201cthe Bank\u201d\u2014his mistress\u2014to the chagrin of his employees.) Frustrated by Takeo\u2019s reticence and lack of attention, Hitomi visits Mr. Nakano\u2019s sister, Masayo, for advice. Masayo, who is in her 50s, attempts to explain to Hitomi how nobody can be taken for granted. \u201cWhen I haven\u2019t heard from someone for a while, the first thing that occurs to me is that they might have just keeled over. This was what Masayo had murmured when Takeo hadn\u2019t been answering my calls,\u201d Hitomi recalls. Masayo\u2019s words prove to be prescient. Several items hint at the greater significance of Nakano\u2019s thrift store, including an old set of photographs and an antique celadon bowl that\u2019s cursed by a breakup. \u2013Kirkus Review<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Find it here,<\/a><\/strong> or at the IC display!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, the Loyola Libraries are excited to bring you the World Cup of Books, an interactive program to encourage reading books from other countries. Show your support for your favorite team by reading books from and about their country! Today\u2019s match-ups include England v Panama, Poland v Columbia, and Japan v Senegal. England: White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[1],"tags":[8926,10331,10332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13699"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13709,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699\/revisions\/13709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/noteworthy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}