Books by Hugo Claus
Wonder
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Millions of people have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face—who shows us that kindness brings us together no matter how far apart we are. Read the book that inspired the Choose Kind movement, a major motion picture, and the critically acclaimed graphic novel White Bird.
And don't miss R.J. Palacio's highly anticipated new novel, Pony, available now!
I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.
August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Beginning from Auggie’s point of view and expanding to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others, the perspectives converge to form a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance. In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope.
R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel “a meditation on kindness” —indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.
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$17.99
Wonder
While exposing the remains of Flemish fascism twenty years after the War, Wonder tracks one man's descent into madness. Victor, a bewildered teacher, pursues a mysterious woman to a castle in a remote village. There he finds himself trapped among a handful of desperate individuals still living out their collaboration with the Nazis. As Victor's sanity begins to crumble, he poses as an expert on their messianic leader, who disappeared at the Russian front but whose return they believe imminent. The rich cadences of the prose and dense emotional texture of characters lost in complex moral labyrinths make Wonder a symphony only Claus could have composed.
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Ed van der Elsken: Jazz
by Hugo Claus, Jan Vrijman, Simon Carmiggelt, Friso Endt, Michiel de Ruyter
Jazz was originally published in 1959, and since then it has become one of the most collectible photography books of the mid-twentieth century, ranking alongside the more widely known work of Christer Strömholm and Robert Frank. Like William Claxton's Jazzlife and Dennis Stock's Jazz Street, van der Elsken's entry into the niche of music photography appeared just before the decisive moment when rock cemented its place as the popular music of choice for young people. It is perhaps the most successful of the era's many photographic attempts to capture the essence of jazz, because it is more than just a succession of musicians' portraits or even a documentary record of performance, but a book that visually echoes the music itself. Van Der Elsken's work is that of both an authentic jazz fan and an experienced creator of photography books, who improvises in ways perfectly hooked in to both fields. Vince Aletti, writing in Artforum in 2000, said, "His jazz photos, made without flash in Amsterdam nightclubs, are gorgeous fields of grain, as moody and soulful as a sax riff," and called Jazz "utterly original."
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Even Now: Poems by Hugo Claus
by Hugo Claus
Beautifully translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, the IMPAC Award-winning translator of Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin, Hugo Claus’s poems are remarkable for their dexterity, intensity of feeling, and acute intelligence. From the richly associative and referential “Oostakker Poems” to the emotional and erotic outpouring of the “mad dog stanzas” in “Morning, You,” from his interpretations of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a modern adaptation of a Sanskrit masterpiece, this volume reveals the breadth and depth of Claus’s stunning output. Perhaps Belgium’s leading figure of postwar Dutch literature, Claus has long been associated with the avant-garde: these poems challenge conventional bourgeois mores, religious bigotry, and authoritarianism with visceral passion.
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