World Book Club Folgen

Serious Men tells the intertwined stories of wily Ayyan Mani - who tries to pass off his son as a mathematical genius - and life at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai, where Ayyan works, and where veteran scientists battle over their pet theories about how life began on Earth.Serious Men won the Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010 and the 2011 PEN Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. It’s an unsettling comedy about inequalities in Indian society; it’s a portrait of a man doing his best for his family with unorthodox methods and unexpected results, and it’s a look at the romance and frustrations of scientific research. Manu Joseph is a novelist and columnist.(Picture: Manu Joseph. Photo credit: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images.)

This month World Book Club talks to acclaimed Canadian writer Louise Penny about the very first in her astonishingly successful series of Inspector Gamache crime novels.When a much-loved inhabitant of the village of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec is found dead in the woods during Thanksgiving, the locals are certain that it was just a tragic hunting accident.But Chief Inspector Armand Gamache from Montreal suspects foul play and won’t rest until he’s rootled out the darkness at the heart of this seemingly peaceable and bucolic community. His always courteous but also insistent sleuthing gradually brings to light the family secrets and long-held grudges seething under its apparently serene surface.(Picture: Louise Penny. Photo credit: Jean-Francois Berube.)

Spanning much of the twentieth century and told with an elegant simplicity which belies the harshness of the tale it tells, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is the story of one man's relationship with an ancient landscape.Andreas Egger knows every nook and cranny of the Alpine mountain valley that is his home and from which vantage point he witnesses the arrival of the modern world, in all its many and daunting forms.A stark yet tender book about love, loss and endurance, and about finding dignity and beauty in solitude A Whole Life has already touched many thousands of readers with its message of solace and truth.(Picture: Robert Seethaler. Photo credit: UrbanZintel.)