The Bloomberg List 2023 #2
Trust
A rare novel about money where the author understands market dynamics. Technically interesting, brilliantly written and a Russian doll-style plot that keeps you reading and guessing.
Published on May 3, 2022
It’s a tightly woven story of ordinary people in a familiar present-day setting. The themes it deals with are commonplace—loss, courage, sacrifice, casting off the anchors that keep us from going beyond the familiar. But the rest of it is hardly ordinary, from the masterly use of language to portray vivid images to the layering of metaphors. The reader may be excused if the initial expectation is of a story somewhere between The Old Man and the Sea and Tatizo La Kisauni. And it does not disappoint.
Published on October 19, 2021
This powerful novel, whose title translates into English as “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” has been much discussed in France and in Italy in 2022. The main character, Baranov, is modeled on Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s longtime spin doctor. Written just before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, this book is a necessary read to understand Putin’s vision and objectives for the empire.
Published on April 14, 2022
This epic first novel by poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the coming-of-age story of Ailey Pearl Garfield—smart, funny and blunt—as she finds her calling as a historian. Moving backwards through time, this novel also captures the full sweep of the history and horrors of the American South and the incredible courage of many of its Black women through its lyrical and powerful prose.
Published on August 24, 2021
It’s a novella, almost a short story, set in rural Ireland in the 1980s and told from the perspective of a family man, a coal merchant, who confronts the cruelties of the Magdalene Laundries. The prose is precise and paced; every word counts. The story is devastating in its gentleness and its moral clarity: A Christmas Carol of our times.
Published on November 30, 2021
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