Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Rashid is the greatest storyteller in all the land, but after his wife runs away with a neighbor, he’s reduced to babbling gibberish. Then one night, the storyteller’s young son Haroun meets a genie plumber. Off they go on a mechanical bird to Kahani, a magical realm where they encounter a pair of talking fish, a gardener made of vines, and an army of pages ready to defeat the Dark Lord Khattam-Shud and his warriors of silence, who are poisoning the Sea of Stories. Welcome to the wonderful genius of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist known for his use of magical realism and exotic plots. Rushdie is perhaps best known for living under death threats after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa on the writer for penning Satanic Verses in 1988. The book was deemed an insult to Islamic zealots for its irreverent depiction of the prophet Mohammad and was banned and burned in some countries. Rushdie spent nearly a decade underground and missed seeing his family, including his son Zafar. Haroun and the Sea of Stories was the first book Rushdie published after Satanic Verses, so its father/son plot is a tribute to Zafar. This happily-ever-after gem offers fantasy, humor, fun puns and clever characters you grow to love — my new favorite book.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

For your reading pleasure this summer, check out Junot Diaz, a gifted writer from the Dominican Republic. His debut novel, which just won the Pulitzer Prize, took more than a decade to write, but it was well worth the wait. Street-smart, pop-culture packed and unapologetically Spanglish, the book presents a unique perspective on the immigrant experience. With references to The Lord of the Rings, TV shows and comic books, as well as footnotes on D.R.’s notorious dictator Trujillo, Diaz takes us on a multigenerational, historical journey from New Jersey to island life and back with Oscar, an overweight ghetto geek in search of a girlfriend; sister Lola, rebellious runaway and track star; and their beauty-queen, viper-tongued mother, who works multiple jobs as a single parent. Diaz, who recently spoke at Warren Wilson College, said he wanted the structure of the book to coalesce around the idea of the Fantastic Four, the comic world’s first family of superheroes. A voracious reader who’d much rather read 500 books a year than write one, Diaz gives us a powerful voice for modern literature.

— Michael Beadle