Woah. Time does fly fast. August has just closed its curtain. I hope that the first two-thirds of the year has been great for everyone. August was rather uneventful for me after a very hectic birth month. Nevertheless, I am grateful just to be able to make it through the month, especially as August is considered an ominous month, the ghost month. Regardless, we are now welcoming a new month. Hello September! I hope that you will be a month full of blessings and good tidings. I hope that the remainder of the year will be great for everyone. But before I could wave August goodbye, let me share the book titles I was able to acquire during the month. After a rather sparse book-hauling month in July, I again picked up pace this August, acquiring more books that I have read. As such, I will be dividing it into two parts. Reading-wise, August was dedicated mainly to books published in the past two years, thus, I will be featuring recently published books in the first part of this book haul update.

Title: The Women
Author: Kristin Hannah
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 464

Synopsis:

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it was a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets – and becomes one of – the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under the fire will come to define an era.

Title: The Road to the Country
Author: Chigozie Obioma
Publisher: Hogarth
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 355

Synopsis: 

Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle’s search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, who marks Kunle as an abami eda – one who will die and return to life.

The story of a young man seeking redemption in a country on fire, Chigozie Obioma’s novel is an odyssey of love and unimaginable courage set during one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of the African continent. Intertwining myth and realism into a thrilling, inspired, and emotionally powerful novel, The Road to the Country is Chigozie Obioma’s masterpiece.

Title: Litte Rot
Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 274

Synopsis:

Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over all of them.

Title: Long Island
Author: Colm Tóibín
Publisher: Scribner
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 294

Synopsis: 

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town in Ireland where she grew up remain strong, she has not returned in decades.

One day, out of the blue, a man comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child, and that when the baby is born, he will deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep It is what Eilis does in response to this stunning news – and what she refuses to do – that makes Tóibín’s novel so extraordinarily riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’s life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to Enniscorthy, Ireland, to the place and people she left behind, and to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost. Eilis is Tóibín’s most compelling and unforgettable character, and this novel is a masterpiece.

Title: The Colonel and the Eunuch
Author: Mai Jia
Translator (from Chinese): Dylan Levi King
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publishing Date: 2024 (2019)
No. of Pages: 388

Synopsis:

A boy grows up in a small village in south China listening to stories about the Colonel: some say he was a legendary army doctor during the war, some say he was a traitor to the Party, others say he is sex-crazed. The stories are bawdy and mesmerizing, always larger than life. Yet in reality, few know the true man that lies behind the rumours.

From these disparate sources, the boy tries to piece together who the Colonel really is, just as he himself grows up in a rapidly changing Chia. It is not until many years later, when the boy also becomes a middle-aged man, that he is able to look back and finally solve the puzzle.

The Colonel and the Eunuch is Mai Jia’s first new novel in eight years and his most ambitious work to date. Confirming Jia’s status as one of China’s greatest literary writers, the tale is a coming-of-age story, a family saga, and ultimately, a searing exploration of what makes a hero.