The Kindness of Women

Published in 1991, this semi-autobiographical novel is a daring masterpiece from "one of the most important and intelligent voices in contemporary fiction" (Susan Sontag). "Rueful the way Primo Levi's work was" (New York Times Book Review), the novel follows fifteen-year-old Jim Graham as he leaves the ruins of postwar Shanghai, only to find that he cannot escape his own obsession with death.