Christopher New: 5 books

A harrowing yet darkly humorous novel of a half-Jewish family trying to survive in Nazi-controlled Austria, by a New York Times–bestselling author. The Kaminsky Cure is a poignant yet comedic novel of a Jewish/Christian family caught up in the machinery of Hitler’s final solution. The matriarch,...

Literature, like the visual arts, poses its own philosophical problems. While literary theorists have discussed the nature of literature intensively, analytic philosophers have usually dealt with literary problems either within the general framework of aesthetics or else in a way that is accessible...

Franziska Goldmann, an opera singer fallen on hard times, has become the star courtesan in 19th century Hong Kong. A chance encounter with Queen Victoria’s musical second son seems to offer Franziska an opportunity to resume her career as a singer. But, it is the other unpredictable characters in...

Almost the first thing callow young Englishman John Denton sees when he steps ashore in Shanghai in 1903 is the public beheading of some pirates. Shocked and sickened though he is, he must adapt himself to the brutal but fascinating city of extremes, and he spends the rest of his life there, through...

In China, have things really changed for the post-Tiananmen generation? Hong Kong, 2012. Dimitri Johnson discovers that he is a dead man walking. Stunned by his doctor’s prognosis, he nevertheless makes his ritual annual pilgrimage to the candlelight vigil for the victims of the Tiananmen...