Stern’s eagerly-anticipated first novel is at once a wry look at academia, an astute and moving portrait of a marriage, and an insightful exploration of communication. Unfolding over just a few days, the novel focuses on Ivan and Prue, married professors of philosophy and biolingusitics, respectively. While Ivan seems to be going nowhere, Prue is breaking new ground in her field—and possibly in other areas as well, if Ivan’s uneasy feelings about the university’s writer-in-residence can be trusted. As the strains in their marriage surface, the couple is thrown further off balance when Prue’s father, who suffers from a bipolar disorder, flies in to hear his daughter deliver a career-making talk. Nothing goes according to plan and Ivan, who narrates the story, at last has to decide how to fight for what he holds dear.
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Founder and editor in chief of The Common, Acker has published short stories, essays, criticism, and translations. Her first novel is a philosophical and beautifully written story of family and secrets that spans four generations and three continents. It opens in the U.S. where the Chandarias—Premchand, his wife Urmila, and their son Sunil—have built a solid upper-middle class life. Then Sunil learns that his cousin is in fact his older brother. The shock of the betrayal sends the family back to Nairobi—where it’s Sunil’s turn to reveal a secret that unsettles his parents. Elegant and compassionate, Acker’s fiction deftly explores questions of morality and the complex dynamics of communication within families and between generations and cultures.