Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002
By Salman Rushdie
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rita Dove will discuss her most recent publication, Sonata Mulattica. The book-length lyric narrative was inspired by history and imagination. It re-creates the life of a nineteenth-century mixed-race virtuoso violinist, George Polgreen Bridgetower. He travels to Vienna to meet Ludwig van Beethoven. The great composer's subsequent sonata is originally dedicated to the young mulatto, but George, exuberant with acclaim, offends Beethoven over a woman. From this crucial encounter evolves a grandiose yet melancholy poetic tale.
The author of "The Prince of Tides" and "Beach Music," in this new memoir, reconstructs his senior year as an athlete at The Citadel in 1966-67. He tells the truth about the family he would immortalize in fiction in "The Great Santini" and the school whose secrets he revealed in "The Lords of Discipline." The story is one of a smart, idealistic young man with a brutal father and a habitually abusive coach, who must find self-respect and resilience—and shore up his basketball teammates—through punishing circumstances. (10/22/2002)
This first novel, by the author of the acclaimed memoir The Unwanted, is loosely based on the author's grandfather, court embroiderer to the last King of Vietnam in the early 1900s, as the old ways were giving way to French customs. The story is that of Dan Nguyen, who at seven is married to a woman 20 years his senior so she can function as his family's unpaid slave. When his parents are beheaded their by political enemy, his wife-caretaker hides him as a slave in the murderer's house, where he falls in love and carefully embroiders a plan to win his heart's forbidden desire and his freedom. (10/21/2002)
Times are hard for 10-year-old Bud in 1936 Flint, Michigan. He's motherless, and he's on the run, but he has hope. He's looking for his father. His mother never told him who his father was, but she left him a clue about Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. When he decides to hit the road and find this mystery man, nothing can stop him. (12/16/2002)
Quincy Troupe's poetry is all about rhythm and bass. This new volume captures Troupe's lyrical, rhythmic voice in a collection of his newest work and his best classics, taking on jazz, sports, love, art, literature, and American life. (01/23/2003)
On July 16, 1918, Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the entire Russian royal family. Narrated by the sole witness to the basement execution, the kitchen boy, Robert Alexander's novel takes us through the entire story. "The Kitchen Boy" is historical fiction at its best, and the accessible style and intricate plot will keep readers guessing throughout. (02/19/2003)
In "Stone Heart," Diane Glancy retells the story of American legend Sacajawea, the young Shoshoni woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the West. Presented in Sacajawea's voice in the form of a journal, the book makes moving and illuminating fiction out of a famed piece of history that has long been masked by myth. (03/17/2003)
Offred, a handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in this futuristic and satirical tour de force. (04/14/2003)