In "Eisberge" von Rebecca Johns kämpfen Walter und Al, die einzigen Überlebenden eines Bomberabsturzes in Kanada 1944, ums Überleben. Währenddessen kämpft Walts Frau Dottie mit Einsamkeit und einer verbotenen Anziehung. Der Roman thematisiert Liebe, Untreue und die Verflechtung der Lebenslinien beider Familien.
Indien - wir kennen die orientalische Pracht seiner Bauwerke, den farbigen Wirbel seiner Küche, den spirituellen Glanz seiner Lehren, die tosenden Tänze Bollywoods. Das Indien der Maharadschas und der Kolonialstationen in den Teehügeln existiert aber zwischen Megastädten und Elendsvierteln - und hier wird die Schlacht entschieden werden, die den Subkontinent neben China zur wichtigsten Wirtschaftsmacht unseres Jahrtausends macht. Die beste Software-Ingenieure der Welt stammen aus einem Land, das von Archaik und Kastenwesen, von Religionszwist und Religionshass geprägt ist. §§Diesen Widersprüchen geht Claudia Wenner in ihrer Anthologie nach. Anhand von literarischen Texten der großen Autoren wie Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth und von Zeitungsessays sowie Internetartikeln entsteht ein Kaleidoskop, das dem Alltag Indiens in all seinen Dimensionen nachspürt. Claudia Wenner schreibt seit Jahren für die Neue Zürcher Zeitung über Indien und ist eine genaue Kennerin der Entwicklungen, Debatten und Chancen. Es wird die lebendigste Anthologie aus und zu Indien.
In sixty-eight years, Valeria has never minced her words. Harrumphing through her isolated little village deep in the Hungarian steppes, she clutches her shopping basket like a battering ram and leaves nothing uncriticised - flaccid vegetables at the market; idle farmers carousing in Ibolya's Nonstop Tavern; that gauche chimpanzee of a mayor and his flashy, leggy wife; people who whistle. But one day, her spinster's heart is struck by an unlikely arrow- the village potter, with his decisive hands and solid gaze. Valeria finds herself suddenly dressing in florals and touching her hair, and what's more, smiling at people in the street. The potter makes her the most beautiful vase she has ever seen. The farmers buy a celebratory round. The problem with all this is that Ibolya (herself at least fifty-eight) has been romancing the potter for months and vows to win him back. And then there's Ferenc, the sugar beet farmer, red-headed and married but all the same hopelessly in love with Ibolya. Meanwhile the mayor has his own problems, mostly involving foreign investors and a non-existent railway. And then a roving chimney sweep arrives in the village, to make a quick buck and bring some good luck - or perhaps bad luck; no one can really decide. All anyone knows is, there's never been such a hullabaloo, which just goes to show it's never too late to try something new.
&Quot;The Wish Maker is a coming-of-age story set in 1990s Pakistan, a story about two children and the family they grow up in, the people and the places they come to know and love. It's a story about Lahore, the city, seen gradually through the decades; a story about Benazir Bhutto and the heady promise of democracy, and the recurring nightmare of military intervention; a story about Bollywood movie stars and American TV shows and the different kinds of forbidden love they inspire. But the novel is also intended to be a meditation on the individual consciousness, a journey into the soul's capacity to know other souls, to recognize itself in others and to grant others the validity it grants itself, which is the validity of desire, of wanting more and better things all the time. This, the capacity for wish-making, for ascribing insatiability and incompletion to other people's ideas of themselves is the central concern of the book." --Ali Sethi.
