Book Talks with Sandra Didner

Wednesday, January 12 Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Wednesday, February 9 Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi

Wednesday, March 9 The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a haunting novel that depicts how friendship, love, and achievement are affected in a rapidly changing modern world in which built- in obsolescence, genetic “lifting” and AI friends are the norm. Ishiguro won the Booker Prize in 1985 and the Nobel Prize in 2017, however, this latest novel narrated by the empathetic robot Klara may be his most moving work. Through Klara, Ishiguro analyzes our technologically dependent world and how this dependency affects humans emotionally, physically, and sociologically. Klara is one of the most endearing literary characters in modern fiction. This book is short listed for the 2021 Booker Prize.

Sparks Like Stars is a timely novel by Nadia Hashimi, an Afghani-American pediatrician, who beautifully communicates the story of Sitara, the ten-year old daughter of the chief adviser to the president of Afghanistan. She witnesses the murder of her family in the 1978 Russian coup but is rescued by one of the assassins and brought to the home of an American diplomat serving in Afghanistan. Through Sitara, we learn the history of the constant invasions of Afghanistan from the time of Alexander the Great to today. Although the American diplomat arranges her hair escape to America, she never forgets her murdered family and her country. Her remembrance of Afghan’s once great art and culture and how it has changed via both foreign and tribal conquests is eloquently rendered. As an adult she becomes an oncologist and one of her patients is the very assassin who rescued her. Her struggle to deal with the memories he awakes is suspenseful and emotionally compelling. The book imparts an understanding of Afghanistan that illuminates the international intrigue and internal treachery devastating this nation through a young girl’s eyes. - raising

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris is also short listed for the 2021 Booker Prize. Harris vividly writes with an uncanny understanding of bullies and saints, heroes and cowards. The novel takes place just after the Great Emancipation when illiterate black freedmen have no idea how to handle freedom and Southerners will not accept defeat. Harris sympathetically creates unforgettable characters in the fictional town of Old Ox, Georgia with an indomitable heroine who survives great tragedy to provide a healing vision for the land. The richness of Harris’s writing and his psychological insights creates one of the most brilliant novels of the year.