Man Booker Prize Research Articles

‘So Much for Literary Democracy’

Abstract This study examines the effect and impact of literary prizes, focusing on the Not the Booker Prize (NTBP) and its reception on social media platforms. The NTBP, organized by The Guardian, served as a counter to the prestigious Man Booker Prize, offering a more democratic alternative in which the audience is allowed a central role in nominating and voting for books. This article examines the impact of the 2012 scandal surrounding the NTBP, in which allegations of vote-rigging and author canvassing led to significant controversy. By analysing the Twitter discourse, the study explores how scandal influences the perception and value of literary awards. The findings highlight the tension between professional and lay criticism, the role of social media in literary evaluation, and the transformation of literary prizes in the digital age. Finally, the article emphasizes that cultural gatekeeping is undergoing significant change, while pointing out contradictions and frictions besetting the democratization of the literary field.

The English Studies Interview with Alan Hollinghurst: In Conversation with Dominic Dean

ABSTRACT Alan Hollinghurst is the author of seven novels including The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), The Stranger’s Child (2011), The Sparsholt Affair (2017), and The Line of Beauty (2004), with the latter winning the 2004 Man Booker Prize. He is widely celebrated for his distinctive style, his tragicomical explorations of English life in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and his introduction of richly imagined and humanely observed gay themes to mainstream literary fiction. His latest novel is Our Evenings (2024). Alan Hollinghurst spoke with Dominic Dean about Our Evenings, its themes, inspirations and treatment of social and political history; the role of buildings and material objects in his fiction; his style and formal innovations and influences; and his relationships with TV adaptations and with the literary academy.

Analysis of Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse from the Perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism

The Lighthouse is an excellent contemporary novel that tells the family tragedies of two generations which involve numerous individuals and families. After being shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, it has been noticed by many researchers and scholars from home and abroad. Starting from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, this paper intends to have a detailed analysis of the ethical issues existing in The Lighthouse through the method of close reading. This paper also attempts to have an insight into the moral and ethical problems in modern families, or the problems between contemporary people, trying to analyze the main characters’ self-developments of morality and the author’s ethical values from the discussion of the main characters’ ethical choices, the construction of ethical identities and the human and human relationship in this novel.

Ne rien avoir ou ne rien être, au gré des variations : une analyse de l’œuvre Nous qui n’étions rien de Madeleine Thien (trad. Catherine Leroux) en tant que « nouveau » roman historique

Various Variations from Having Nothing to Being Nothing, an Analysis of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing (and its French Version) as a “New” Historical Novel
 Traditionally, historical novels have been subjected to various negative preconceptions and have often been categorized as lowbrow. Despite their popular and commercial success, authors of such novels rarely win prestigious literary awards. However, 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing,' a historical novel by Madeleine Thien published in 2016, was critically acclaimed and received high praise, winning two major Canadian prizes— the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Its French translation, 'Nous qui n’étions rien,' also gained significant recognition, as Catherine Leroux, Thien’s translator, was awarded a Governor General’s Literary Award for the French version in 2019. The novel has been translated into thirteen other languages, another significant sign of consecration. In this paper, two questions will be explored. Firstly: what characteristics of 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' (and of its French translation 'Nous qui n’étions rien') explain its critical success? Secondly: do these characteristics match those of the 'new' historical novel? 'New' historical novels are here understood as well-documented, complex, and intertextual works that started to appear in the 1980s and tend to break away from the tradition of historical novels based on bewildering action and detailed descriptions, often written in plain language. A general finding is that the appreciations of the juries of two important English-language literary prizes in Canada, as well as many reviews published in different journals and magazines, mention that the book’s complexity and the reflections it prompts are two major positive aspects of the novel. As for the writing itself, whereas Thien’s style has been deemed 'simple,' consistent with traditional historical novels, Leroux’s version does not appear to be as accessible. Nevertheless, it was lauded by critics and the Governor General’s Literary Awards jury. It is worth asking if this more formal and literary style was not seen as an additional strength by the French institution and reviewers. A brief analysis of fiction works winning major prizes in Canada in the years prior to and following 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' has also been conducted and seems to indicate that historical novels tend to win more prizes in English Canada than in French Canada.

A Study Of Family Ties In The Novel The Lowland By Jhumpa Lahiri

True to the words of Michael J. Fox, Family is an important place to share love and care among the relations. Family relationships help the child to develop communication skills and builds trust and respect. The keys to developing healthy family relationships include making relationships a priority, communicating effectively and providing support for each other. Families vary in the expectations they hold regarding children’s behavior and this leads to differences in family relationships and communication styles. In the novel The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri portrays the life of two inseparable brothers Subash and Udayan and how their life gets changed when they grow up. Their ideologies are changed and as a result, Udayan becomes a naxalite and Subash takes up further studies at Rhode Island much against his brother’s wish. The novel depicts the relationships between the two brothers Subash and Udayan and between Udayan’s wife Gauri and Subash and between Gauri’s daughter Bella and Subash. Thus it is a sort of complicated family relationship that Lahiri portrays in The Lowland. The Lowland was a nominee for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book award for Fiction.

A Saga of Cosmopolitan Friendship in Time of the Breaking of Nations: A Study of Ali Smith’s Autumn

Brexit, Britain’s exit from the supranational polity of the European Union has unsettled the vision of European unity. Rather than nourishing an “and/ both” cosmopolitan view even in the limited context of continental relationship, Britain inculcates an “either/ or” jingoistic nationalism fed on Euroscepticism. English literature has a long tradition of invoking political issues and Brexit has inaugurated a new sub-genre, ‘BrexLit’. The paper seeks to attempt a detailed study of Scottish writer Ali Smith’s novel Autumn (2016), designated by The New York Times as “the first great Brexit novel”. The first of the seasonal quartet, this novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and bagged the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Embedded in the Brexit Britain, the novel raises questions of citizenship, particularly in relation to immigration, and mirrors the loss of cultural conviviality. The paper discusses anti-immigrant toxicity, the upsurge of nostalgic appetite for national heritage, and the territorial social ontology of the contemporary English national outlook. The paper studies, in the context of the narrative, how the media resorts to post-truth politics and right-wing nationalistic propaganda in media resulting in the death of democracy and the end of dialogue. The paper explores how the novel advocates an inclusive, realistic cosmopolitanism through Elisabeth-Daniel friendship.

Long Journey to Freedom: An Interpretation of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard from the Perspective of Existentialism

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is the debut work of the 2006 Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai. There are many discussions on the novel from the perspective of ecocriticism, but existentialism in the work has received less attention. This article intends to start with Sartre’s existentialism, expounding how the protagonist Sampath lives in an absurd world, gets rid of the control of others and seeks the freedom he desires in his heart. This paper believes that by shaping Sampath’s image of pursuing freedom, Kiran Desai embodies his exposure to the absurd society of India and her yearning for spiritual freedom.

MATRIX OF POWER POLITICS IN NOVELS OF ARAVIND ADIGA

Aravind Adiga, a Man Booker Prize winner, aims at depicting a realistic picture of Indian society along with its root cause of evil. He attempts to bring the dark side of India over the ‘shining India’. He criticised the moral decadence and lack of basic principles among Indians. In The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower he portrays the power game in metropolis like; Delhi and Mumbai. This paper studies the socio-political realities of Indian society through the lens of power politics. Adiga makes an effort to showcase the experiences which underprivileged Indian people go through their entire lives. This paper also describes how Adiga depicts socio-cultural encounters in India; especially in power-politics, the Caste system, and master-servant society. It demonstrates the colossal fight between the common man and the dominating political issues such as the caste system, democracy and justice. The research depicts the miscarriage of justice, corruption and other alarming issues of contemporary Indian society. Adiga spotlights modern India by comparing India of darkness and India of light. Adiga’s work of fiction unveils the dark web of politics behind the frame of globalisation and development.

Reflection of Immigration, Alienation, and Identity Crisis in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss: A Saga of “Middle of Nowhere”

The Inheritance of Loss, written by Kiran Desai, won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. The book thoroughly explains the modern problems brought on by globalisation and technological advancement, followed by the escalating perceptions of economic disparities, diversity, fanaticism, and rationalism as the main contemporary survival threats. Kiran Desai has accurately captured the state of homelessness, alienation, estrangement, marginalisation, and lack of belongingness that immigrants face in both foreign countries as well as in their own countries in the name of class-culture disparities. The novel tells the story of people from various backgrounds battling social norms while being stigmatised by their caste, class, culture, and country. It depicts post-globalization effects, which have ironically had a greater impact on the segment of society known as the middle class, further divided into the higher middle class and lower middle class, despite having made notable changes in the world spectrum in various aspects. The novelist has amazingly succeeded in portraying the negative aspects of the ongoing changes occurring on all levels, regardless of geographic borders, in the technical, economic, social, cultural, and ethical spheres.
 New York city, one of the two major locations of the plot, happens to be home to a large population of legal and unauthorised immigrants from various ‘Third World Nations’, and the other is Kalimpong, a small Indian town at the base of Mount Kanchenjunga in the north-eastern Himalayas, which is shown to be experiencing political unrest in the middle of the 1980s following the launch of the liberation movement by the Indian Nepalese. Kiran Desai has effectively depicted the effects of the Gorkha movement of the time, linking it to the main plot. The purpose of this paper is to study the novel's extensive treatment of the themes of home, homeland, alienation, immigration, identity crisis, and above all, the pain of isolation in the shadow of belongingness.

Traces of the Queer Child in Shuggie Bain

ABSTRACT Known as the winner of the 2020 Man Booker Prize, Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain evokes childhood queerness, which is entangled in the deindustrialised urban landscape of 1980s Glasgow. Synthesising queer and trace theory in nine steps—disruption, bent temporality, materiality and embodiment, physical orientation, medium specificity, reading and bearing traces, involuntariness and the lack of motive, absence, and, lastly, ambiguity and story—, the present article argues that traces in Shuggie Bain are vital for the evocation of the queer child. Traces such as ghostly footprints; trampled grass; blood, saliva, and chlorophyll smears; and ripped clothing entangle the protagonists in their environment. The use of traces helps to transcend a single turning point of retrospection since the web of traces evokes nuanced changes in the protagonist’s embodiment.

The Translation Politics of Han Kang's The Vegetarian; or, The Task of the Reader of the Work in (English) Translation

AbstractThis essay argues that the translation controversy surrounding the South Korean novelist Han Kang's Man Booker Prize–winning novel, The Vegetarian, offers a useful model for thinking about both the politics of translating into English and what the stakes of these politics are for scholars of world literature invested in questions of globalization and empire. Positing a model of “reading like a translator” as a way of engaging meaningfully with a text from a source language that one does not have a foundation in—and applying this practice to a reading of The Vegetarian that turns on an understanding of a Korean untranslatable, han—this essay argues that the task of the reader of The Vegetarian in English is to take seriously the “textured moments” that populate the text, in order to reflect on the larger histories of encounter and violence that color South Korea's geopolitical entanglements and shape the literature of its diaspora.

‘There is Nothing Post-Colonial About it’

This interview with the writer Indra Sinha, conducted in Toulouse, France in June 2017 and reworked in January 2020, is a product of my research on the relatively recent theoretical endeavour to interrogate the relationship between postcolonial and ecocritical studies. Indra Sinha’s fictional and non-fictional works have substantially contributed to the international visibility of human and environmental injustices around the world, suggesting his potential engagement with the relationship between these two theoretical frameworks. In the interview conducted within this context, Sinha’s debut novel Animal’s People (2007), shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker prize, is discussed as a postcolonial eco-socialist work offering a fictitious account of neo-colonial practices in India. The novel, particularly as the literary representation of the Bhopal disaster, sheds light upon the continuous destruction of human and non-human beings in postcolonial lands under neo-colonial policies. Yet, Sinha’s ardent problematization of ‘postcolonialism’ as a label in particular, and of all labels in general for delineating literary works, complicates, albeit fruitfully, the course of the interview and our discussion of new theoretical frameworks emerging out of postcolonial theory. His responses on this issue are powerful statements calling for a particular focus on, if any -isms deemed necessary, transnational capitalism and ‘traditional old-fashioned extortionism’ instead of postcolonialism.

The Analyses on Themes and Images of the Film Never Let Me Go

Contemporary Japanese British writer Ishiguro Ishiguro has been deeply concerned by academia and readers since his creation and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. Never Let Me Go has been praised for its profound and diverse themes. It was not only nominated for The Man Booker Prize, but also listed by Time Magazine as “one of the 100 greatest English novels since the magazine was founded in 1923”. The film of the same name, Never Let Me Go, which was released in 2010, won the 37th Saturn Awards for “Best Science Fiction Film” nomination. This paper reveals the theme of soul and ethics in the film by analyzing the various images of the film Never Let Me Go. This paper is composed of four parts. The first chapter is an introduction, introducing the research background, literature review, research purpose and significance, and related theories. The second chapter analyzes the object image, space image, character image and their meaning in the film. The third chapter explores the soul theme and ethical theme of the film through the analysis of related imagery and the description of the fate of clones, and at the macro level, it analyzes the reasons for the phenomenon of clones and complaints about this social situation by comparing clones with normal human. The fourth chapter is the conclusion. On the basis of summarizing this paper, it is shown that the use of technology to create human clones to prolong human life is not desirable. Human beings are in a universal community of human destiny and the emergence of clones is contrary to human relations, and human beings should shoulder more responsibility and respect the laws of nature.

Masculinity In Spark’s The Best Me And Yanagihara’s A Little Life : A Study Of Comparative Literature

This study aims to explain the differences and similarities of masculinity depicted in the 17th American novel The Best of Me (2011) by Nicholas Sparks which is ranked 2 of the top 10 lists in weekly publishers, with romance and fiction genres, with Novel A Little Life (2015) the work of the United States novelist Hanya Yanagihara who won both the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the Goodreads choice awards for the best fiction category and the national book award for fiction. Using the fiction genre, this research is comparative literature. It uses gender theory with masculine concepts from John Beynon (2002) which is written in his book entitled Masculinities and Culture. This study uses a context-oriented approach,Data Collection Techniques using literature study by reading, taking notes, and documenting data. After the data is collected, data reduction is carried out. The data that has been selected will be classified to take action to analyze the differences and similarities of masculinity in the male main character Dawson Cole in the Novel The Best of Me with Jude in the Novel A Little Life. The author finds some differences in reading aspects of masculinity according to John Beynon in the two characters. The difference lies in aspects: Age & Physical, Education, Sexual Orientation, Class & Occupation, Status & Lifestyle. The author finds similarities in reading aspects of masculinity according to John Beynon in Dawson and Jude in the Historical Location aspect. Both of them have pasts that they dont not want to open up.

A study of diasporic elements in the select works of Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri and Kiran Desai

After the two world wars and India's independence from the British in 1947, English-language writing in India has advanced significantly. Since the two world wars and India's independence from the British in 1947, Indian Writing in English, as it was once known, has advanced significantly with a few countable writers on the horizon. There weren't many writers in the corpus of works that were produced in the English language by Indian writers, especially before the label changed from Indo-Anglian Literature (that was named such before) to Indian Writing in English. The two most recent female authors to contribute to the field of Indian English literature are Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri, yet their creativity transcends the confines of gender. They speak to an Indian culture that has experienced social anguish and cultural displacement both inside and outside of their own nation as a result of globalisation and immigration. They express the suffering of Indian immigrants who have migrated in foreign countries and are filled with sentiments of loneliness and displacement while having no other options for freedom on many fronts. The selection of these two highly regarded and award-winning authors was made for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they are both contemporary writers with a wide range of parallels and differences. They share a lot of traits, yet they also naturally vary in overt and subtle ways. Nonetheless, the literary output they provide readers with is overwhelmingly impressive, and they give voice to the world's silent immigrants. They present sorrowful, yet true, stories. For instance, the fictional character Biju from Kiran Desai's novella “Inheritance of Loss” has heart breaking anecdotes to share with us about his status as an illegal immigrant and how he concealed from American Immigration police agents by vanishing from the restaurant and through the hotel's mouse hole. There are now tens of thousands of Bijus living in countries like the United States, Germany, France, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. Lahiri contrasts the two lives of two brothers who are travelling in opposite directions in her novel “Lowland”, which is a poignant and emotional depiction of immigrants. State terrorism claims the life of a young man as the wealthy continue to amass ever-increasing wealth at the expense of the poor, who continue to live in poverty. The “Lowland”, which was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2013, is sensitive to the brutal realities of society and the way the state uses the rural and ignorant majority for political purposes. The handling of female characters in immigrant stories also calls for a critical examination of Lahiri and Desai's literary creations. Another one of the well-known female writer Margaret Atwood in her novel “Surfacing” the main subject is separation. This is established in the opening chapter, as it is revealed that the narrator is politically dispossessed as an English speaker living in Quebec at a period when Québec was wanting to become an independent French-speaking nation. The narrator compares human contact to that of animals because she feels cut off from the people around her. As an illustration, the narrator thinks of an animal "at the instant the trap closes" while overhearing David and Anna having sex. Extremist David, who argues that Canada would be better off without the "fascist pig Yanks" and advises that they be driven out of the country by assault beavers, is the face of nationalism. The researcher opted to pick these two Indian immigrant women writers and Margaret Atwood for the dissertation as a result.

Sociological dimensions of existence: Analysis of Arvind Adiga’s fiction

Arvind Adiga is a versatile writer of post-colonial Indian English Literature and the winner of Man Booker Prize in 2008.As a journalist Adiga observed Indian society and existence in the society at close quarters. He has been praised worldwide for his depiction of Indian novels. The White Tiger (2008), Between the Assassinations (2008), Last Man in Tower (2011), and Selection Day (2016). The writings of Adiga are heart touching to his readers. The study of his novels reflect the life of middle class in India with contrast to the Indian economy that is increasing day by day. Millions of Indians live in deteriorating condition and they are living below poverty line. His works reflect that middle class Indians work with the system and take poverty and inequality without being sentimental. Adiga also talks of servants enveloped in darkness and injustice, social evils, customs and illiteracy.

Modern Egyptian novel: development trends

The purpose of the work is to consider two trends in the development of the Egyptian novel on the examples of the works by Tawfiq al-Hakim, Yahya Haqqi, Naguib Mahfouz, Abd ar-Rahman ash-Sharkawi on the one hand, and Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, and Abbas al-Akkad, on the other hand; to trace their development and manifestation in the works by famous contemporary Egyptian authors, winners of the Man Booker Prize − Bahaa Taher and Yusuf Zeidan. It is necessary to point out the main features laid down by the founders of the novel genre, are awareness of national tasks, ideas of national unity, subordination of personal interests to public ones, attention to social problems, and high spiritual content. These features were equally inherent in such works as Return of the Spirit, A Bird from the East, The Lamp of Umm Hashim, Earth and many novels by Naguib Mahfouz. The democratism of these novels, their high moral potential, focus on national themes, and patriotism are noted. On the other hand, the works Ibrahim the Writer and Sarah are considered, where the philosophy of egoism, the opposition of the individual to public interests, the ideas of free love and ‘liberation of the flesh’ are cultivated. Novels that demonstrate these two different tendencies have one thing in common − the influence of an external model, as, for example, in the novel The Writer Ibrahim of M. Artsybashev’s novel Sanin. The continuation of these two directions of the Egyptian novel is demonstrated by the example of the works Love in Exile and The Nabatean.

Paul Beatty’s The Sellout as Allegory of the U.S. Carceral System

This study looks into Paul Beatty’s 2016 Man Booker Prize winning novel The Sellout (2015) as a powerful literary elaboration on the politics of racial identity. In naturalizing slavery and segregation in current U.S. society—the idea at the core of The Sellout—Beatty deploys racism along a continuum from the past to the present, rather than something in the past or a memory in the contemporary so-called post-racial world. The present analysis examines how the literary devices of parody and allegory assist in the creation of a satire, particularly of the U.S. carceral system. The fictional events at Dickens, as well as Bonbon Me’s story, it is argued, are only the first layer of signification in a plot that allegorizes what is perhaps the most racialized criminal system in the world, one that several critics see as the most efficient apparatus of social control after Jim Crow. Through a second layer of meaning, the most controversial representations in the novel, namely slavery and segregation, are explored. The signs of parody in his use of hyperbole and stereotype, are also marks of a black postblackness critique that registers Beatty’s literary voice in the current debate on ‘blackness’ as identity.

LOSS AND REDEMPTION EXPERIENCED BY JAMUBHAI PATEL IN KIRAN DESAI’S THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS: A POST-COLONIAL ANALYSIS

Kiran Desai as a diasporic Indian novelist has convincingly presented the experiences of life in England or America in her acclaimed Man Booker Prize winning novel The Inheritance of Loss. Immigrants from India, Pakistan or other such third world countries face issues of identity. They become witness to clash of the Eastern and the Western cultures. They show mixed reactions to the happenings over there. Some people show their deep concern about the threat which their native culture and identity face during their lives over there. Some other individuals like Jemubhai Patel in the said novel create a shell around themselves in which they hide their true feelings. The latter want to do mimicry of the White race in their appearance through dress, language, and lifestyle. Because of their non-acceptance by the West as their part, they confine themselves to their very self and remain victim to inferiority complex. After completing education or training abroad and assuming important and influential positions as government officials, their previously experienced inferiority complex turns into superiority complex when they go back to their respective native lands. They imitate the English people and deal their own people with strong hatred by treating them as ignorant and ill-cultured. Their relations are no exception in this regard. They are also in the row of all others who are to be ruled and subjugated. Jemubhai too loses relations like parents, wife, daughter, and granddaughter. For him his pet dog Mutt becomes the recipient of his love, care and attention. It is only through the loss of Mutt his journey of redemption begins. Only then, by the end of the novel, does he realize the significance of human relations. But this realization has been a torture process for him. It costs him mental calm and composure. Keywords: Loss, Redemption, Mimicry, Identity, Diaspora, Relationship.

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Reviewed by: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi Colin Cutler (bio) frankenstein in baghdad Ahmed Saadawi, trans. Jonathan Wright Penguin Books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529924/frankenstein-in-baghdad-by-ahmed-saadawi/ 288 pages; Print, $18.00 I grew up on and around Air Force bases, and was twelve when I watched the Twin Towers fall; my dad's flight out of Offutt Air Force Base was grounded while they were taxiing. Six years later, my older brother was in Iraq with the Army as part of the surge, and I signed up for Army ROTC the next year—I eventually became an infantry officer with the Virginia National Guard. While I was in training, I read books about our current wars: Lone Survivor and House to House stand out in my memory. The main thing that I remember is the intensely personal detail about fellow soldiers, down to their hobbies and quirks, and the relative facelessness of those they ran across in the course of their missions, whether combatant or noncombatant or in that murky area between. When I first read Frankenstein in Baghdad a few years ago, it was a revelation: here were the faces of the Iraqi people who lived through a war that went on around them and sometimes cut through them, punctuating their lives with the uncertainty of bullets and suicide bombers and vehicle-borne IEDs. Part magical realism, part war story, part political intrigue, part neighborhood drama, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad is set in the cracked-windowed suburbs of Iraq's capital in 2005. It revolves around an aspiring journalist, an Assyrian Orthodox widow with her ikon of St. George, an arak-drinking junkman, and the corpse the junkman stitches together from the unburied body parts of IED victims. Winner of the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, with the English translation shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Frankenstein in Baghdad is an eviscerating look at America's most recent wars through the eyes of those who lived through them as bystanders. [End Page 27] The book opens with a bang. Starting off with an IED may be initially shocking to the reader, but two hundred yards from the exploding bomb, a widow continues on her way to prayer at the Orthodox church and doesn't notice. Similar scenes throughout the book display the randomness of violence in a war zone and how it is absorbed into daily life. This, in turn, contributes to a pervadingly dark humor both among the characters and in the narration. The cordons are inept at catching a monster terrorizing the neighborhood, and the intelligence directorate attempting to catch the monster relies on astrologers for its assessments. Faces and their transformation are crucial to the book. Elishva, the Orthodox widow, is in nearly constant conversation and negotiation with her ikon of St. George the Martyr and his "angelic face" for the return of her son, lost in the Iran-Iraq War two decades before. When she believes she has finally received her wish, she cuts the face out of the portrait. Hadi, the junkman who stitches together the pieces of IED victims because the police will only bury complete bodies, creates a monster—and is later shocked when his own face is burned and turned into a grotesque. Meanwhile, when the monster begins his forays for vengeance, he is only known as having a deformed face. At one point, a cordon is formed around the neighborhood by the Iraqi and US militaries, and Mahmoud, the journalist, realizes that "what … all [the detainees] had in common … was that they were ugly. Some had genetic defects, others had been disfigured by burns, and others seemed to be insane." When one of the astrologers encounters the Whatsitsname, he asks to see his face. The monster responds, "What's the point of that? It changes. I don't have a permanent face." But the astrologer's wish is granted, and he believes "it was the face of his own personal past, which he had thought had no face or features." What he realizes, with the brutality of an axe blow, is that even those who are trying to solve...