Akin: A Novel - Hardcover

Donoghue, Emma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1443458945 ISBN 13: 9781443458948

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019

Synopsis

In her first contemporary novel since Room, bestselling author Emma Donoghue returns with her next masterpiece, a brilliant tale of love, loss and family. A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France.

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both of them come to grasp the risks that people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

 

About this title

About the Author

Born in Dublin in 1969, EMMA DONOGHUE is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright who lives in Canada. Her novel Room won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada/Caribbean) and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes, selling more than two million copies. Donoghue scripted the Canadian-Irish film of Room which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Her fiction (short and long) ranges from the contemporary (Stir-fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects) to the historical (Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Astray, Frog Music).  Donoghue’s books for young readers are The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More Or Less. Her last novel for adults, The Wonder, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

 

Review

“Donoghue’s writing is as lush as it is clear-eyed; her characters and settings emerge in richly detailed prose, but there’s never a word out of place.” (Quill & Quire)

“Emma Donoghue again demonstrates her facility for tension-ridden storytelling and unusual empathy.”  (NOW Magazine)

Praise for The Wonder: (No Source)

“Heartbreaking and transcendent” (New York Times)

“Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep”   (USA Today)

“A tense gothic page-turner in which nobody, including the unreliable nurse narrator, are entirely what they seem. A powerful exploration of religion and the sway it holds, The Wonder is equal parts psychological drama and unorthodox love story. A thoroughly enjoyable read from one of the country’s premier storytellers.” (Toronto Star)

“[B]ack with a novel as gripping and intense as the popular Room. The Wonder, is set in 1850s Ireland and will undoubtedly also be adapted to the big screen. The prose is so intensely alive, so cinematic that you truly can see the action unfolding before your eyes.” (Ottawa Citizen)

“Her contemporary thriller Room (2010) made the author an international bestseller, but this gripping tale offers a welcome reminder that her historical fiction is equally fine.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

“Donoghue’s literary prowess creeps like a dark, menacing fog across the pages.” (Quill & Quire)

Praise for Room: (No Source)

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1443458945
• ISBN 13: 9781443458948
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352