John Rowan Wilson

#2

Gillian Slovo's life has been extraordinary. She is the daughter of South Africa's most prominent white anti-apartheid leaders: Ruth First, the journalist and political activist assassinated in exile in 1982, and Joe Slovo, South African Communist Party head and eventual Minister of Housing in the government headed by his old friend Nelson Mandela. Slovo grew up in a household fraught with secrets, where a police tail was commonplace on every family outing, and where letters were written in code and phones were tapped. In telling her story, she recounts her childhood agony at always coming second to "the cause" and gives us an illuminating portrait of the mysteries and turmoil at the heart of every family's history. For her own safety, she was sent to England at the age of twelve, leaving behind a troubling family past. With the end of apartheid, Slovo returned to South Africa to reclaim her childhood - and to confront her mother's murderer. Delving into her past, she uncovered the parents she never knew. What she learned - about their public roles and their private lives, including their affairs - shocked and angered her but ultimately gave her the strength to make peace with the past. In a voice that makes the extraordinary sweep of history fresh and intimate, she brings sharply into focus all the brutality of the apartheid system. At the same time, she provides splendid glimpses of the leaders who, like her parents, fought against it.

#3

Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post--World War II America--a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. In this disquieting tale, the investigation into a string of mysterious disappearances turns surreal for two detectives, when they pay a visit to the home of a celebrated hypnotist. But who will turn the tables on whom when the final spell is cast?Hall of Mirrors and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever--and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.