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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. New York. 2014. Tor. 9780765377067. Translated by Ken Liu. 399 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Stephan Martiniere. Original title - 三体. 

DESCRIPTION - The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award, an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant. His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. Ken Liu is an award-winning author of speculative fiction. His books include the Dandelion Dynasty series (The Grace of Kings), The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and the Star Wars tie-in novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on topics like futurism, machine-augmented creativity, the mathematics of origami, and more. He lives near Boston with his family.

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I Give You My Silence: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2026. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374616250. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 246 pages. hardcover.  Jacket design by Alex Merto. Jacket art: ‘The Musicians, 1979, by Fernando Botero. Translation of Le dedico mi silencio. 

DESCRIPTION - In his final novel, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa returns to his native Peru. Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the solitary and elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music, as he has long suspected, has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture. Both a send-up of parochial idealism and a love song to the culture of his homeland, Mario Vargas Llosa’s I Give You My Silence is the final novel of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, whose enduring works captured a changing Latin America. His tragic hero Toño, a man whose love for a democratic, proletarian music is at odds with the culture and politics of a modern Peru scarred by violence, is the writer’s last statement on the revelatory, maddening, and irrepressible belief in the transformative power of art.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2021. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374601232. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alex Merto. Premio Francisco Umbral al Libro del Año (2019). Translation of Tiempos recios. 

DESCRIPTION - The true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it. Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo's regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Queen of the Sea: A History of Lisbon by Barry Hatton. New York. 2018. Hurst. 9781849049979.  328 pages. paperback. Cover: Lisbon: view of the city before the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1 November 1755 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images).

DESCRIPTION - Lisbon was almost somewhere else. Portuguese officials considered moving the city after it was devastated by what is believed to be the strongest earthquake ever to strike modern Europe, in 1755, followed by a tidal wave as high as a double-decker bus and a six-day inferno that turned sand into glass. Lisbon's charm is legendary, but its rich, 2,000-year history is not widely known. This single-volume history provides an unrivalled and intimate portrait of the city and an entertaining account of its colorful past. It reveals that in Roman times the city was more important than initially thought, possessing a large theatre and hippodrome. The 1147 Siege of Lisbon was a dramatic medieval battle that was a key part of the Iberian reconquista. As Portugal built an empire spanning four continents, its capital became a wealthy international bazaar. The Portuguese king's cortège was led by a rhinoceros which was followed by five elephants in gold brocade, an Arabian horse and a jaguar. The Portuguese were the world's biggest slavers, and by the mid-16th century around 10 percent of the Lisbon's population was black, imbuing the city with an African flavor it has retained. Invasion by Napoleon's armies, and the assassination of a king and the establishment of a republic, also left their marks. The city's two bridges over the River Tagus illustrate the legacy of a 20th-century dictator and Portugal's new era in Europe. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Barry Hatton has been a British foreign correspondent in Lisbon for three decades. His previous book is The Portuguese: A Modern History.

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My Christina & Other Stories by Merce Rodoreda. Port Townsend. 1984. Graywolf Press. 0915308649. Translated and with an introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 128 pages. hardcover. Translated from: La meve Christina i altres contes; with 1 additional story from Semblava de seda i altres contes.

DESCRIPTION - My Christina and Other Stories Years after her death, Mercè Rodoreda's work is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance. The seventeen stories that comprise this volume vary tremendously in tone and style, from the hallucinatory to the bleakly realistic, from tales of tenderness and love to stories that might best be called folktales, reality merged with dream.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda. New York. 1980. Taplinger. 0800877314. Translated from the Catalan & With An Introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 201 pages. hardcover. Cover: Ivy Strick. Translation of La plaça del diamant. 

DESCRIPTION - The Time of the Doves, the powerfully written story of a naive shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda. Rochester. 2009. Open Letter. 9781934824115. Translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent. 155 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Milan Bozic. Translation of Mort i la primavera.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, DEATH IN SPRING is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story or the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy. The boy struggles to come to terms with the rhyme and reason of the town's ritual violence, and with his wild, teenaged stepmother, who becomes his playmate. By developing the relationships between the boy and the townspeople, and examining the town's rituals, Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions - DEATH IN SPRING is musical and rhythmic, and it is truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers. A book for the ages, DEATH IN SPRING can be read as a metaphor for Franco's Spain (or any oppressed society), or as a mythological quest novel. Similar to Shirley Jackson's work (especially THE LOTTERY), and featuring the imaginative qualities of Raymond Roussel's IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA, Rodoreda's last novel is a bold, ambitious statement, and a fitting capstone to her remarkable career.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. New York/Boston. 2007. Twelve. 307 pages. hardcover. 9780446579803. Jacket design by Anne Twomey.

DESCRIPTION - From the author hailed as ‘one of the A most brilliant journalists of our time’ (London Observer) comes a book that redefines the debate about religion in public life. With his unique brand of erudition and wit, Christopher Hitchens addresses the most urgent issue of our time: the malignant force of religion in the world. In this eloquent argument with the faithful, Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion (and for a more secular approach to life) through a close and learned reading of the major religious texts. Hitchens tells the personal story of his own dangerous encounters with religion and describes his intellectual journey toward a secular view of life based on science and reason, in which the heavens are replaced by the Hubble telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix. ‘God did not make us,’ he writes. ‘We made God.’ Religion, he explains, is a distortion of our origins, our nature, and the cosmos. We damage our children - and endanger our world - by indoctrinating them. Whether lifelong believer, devout atheist, or someone who remains uncertain about the role of religion in our lives, you will want to consider and engage in the arguments within these pages.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and. is a columnist for The Nation, Washington editor for Harper’s, and a book reviewer for Newsday. Christopher Hitchens joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in November 1992 and wrote regularly for the magazine until 2011. In May 2011, he won the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary for a series of columns on his having cancer. In recent years, Hitchens was a contributing editor to The Atlantic, where he wrote a monthly essay on books, and a regular columnist at Slate. From 1982 to 2002, he wrote a biweekly column for The Nation. Throughout his singular career Christopher Hitchens wrote for The New Statesman, the London Evening Standard, London’s Daily Express, Harper’s, The Spectator, and The Times Literary Supplement, among others. His books include THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER (VERSO, 2001), LETTERS TO A YOUNG CONTRARIAN (BASIC, 2001), GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING (TWELVE, 2007), HITCH-22: A MEMOIR (TWELVE, 2010), and ARGUABLY: ESSAYS BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (Twelve, 2011), a collection of his later essays. Christopher Hitchens died on December 15, 2011.

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Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano. New York. 1974. Monthly Review Press. 085345308x. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. 339 pages. paperback. Cover: Antonio Frasconi (Uruguayan artist)-'The Gnat, the Lion, and the Spiderweb'. Translation of Las venas abiertas de América Latina.

DESCRIPTION - Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Spanish: Las venas abiertas de América Latina) is a 1971 book written by Uruguayan journalist, writer, and poet Eduardo Galeano that analyzes the impacts of European settlement, imperialism, and slavery on Latin America. The book was published during the ideological divide caused by the Cold War, when most Latin American countries had brutal, United States-sponsored right-wing dictatorships. Open Veins was banned in several countries and became a reference for an entire generation of left-wing thinkers. In the book, Galeano analyzes the history of the Americas as a whole, from the time period of the European settlement of the New World to contemporary Latin America, describing the effects of European and later United States economic exploitation and political dominance over the region. Throughout the book, Galeano analyses notions of colonialism, imperialism, and the dependency theory. Open Veins illustrates Latin America's resistance literature of the twentieth century, characterized by opposition to imperialism and a heightened Pan-American sentiment. he book has sold over a million copies and been translated into over a dozen languages.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'

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Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. Minneapolis. 2020. Graywolf Press. 9781644450215. 346 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: John Lucas. Jacket art: Nona Faustine.

DESCRIPTION - In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? “I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room,” she writes. This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness deflect true engagement in our shared problems. Rankine makes unprecedented art out of the actual voices and rebuttals of others: White men responding to, and with, their White male privilege; a friend clarifying her unexpected behavior at a play; and women on the street expressing the political currency of dyeing their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complement Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Funny, vulnerable, and prescient, Just Us is Rankine's most intimate and urgent book, a crucial call to challenge our vexed reality.

Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G. Lee Professor of Poetry at Pomona College.

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