Background
Sigrid Nunez is the daughter of a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian father. She was born and raised in New York City.
(A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America’s most este...)
A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America’s most esteemed and fascinating cultural figures, and a deeply felt tribute. Sigrid Nunez was an aspiring writer when she first met Susan Sontag, already a legendary figure known for her polemical essays, blinding intelligence, and edgy personal style. Sontag introduced Nunez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. Soon Nunez moved into the apartment that Rieff and Sontag shared. As Sontag told Nunez, “Who says we have to live like everyone else?” Sontag’s influence on Nunez, who went on to become a successful novelist, would be profound. Described by Nunez as “a natural mentor” who saw educating others as both a moral obligation and a source of endless pleasure, Sontag inevitably infected those around her with her many cultural and intellectual passions. In this poignant, intimate memoir, Nunez speaks of her gratitude for having had, as an early model, “someone who held such an exalted, unironic view of the writer’s vocation.” Published more than six years after Sontag’s death, Sempre Susan is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594633347/?tag=2022091-20
( From one of the most celebrated novelists of her genera...)
From one of the most celebrated novelists of her generation, the story of a woman in the Vietnam War "After my first book was published, I received some letters." So begins Sigrid Nunez's haunting novel about the poignant and unusual friendship between a writer and a retired army nurse who seeks her out decades after their childhood in the same housing project. Among the letters the narrator receives is one from a Rouenna Zycinski, recalling their old connection and asking if they can meet.Though fascinated by the stories Rouenna tells about her life as a combat nurse in Vietnam, the narrator flatly declines her request that they collaborate on a memoir. It is only later, in the aftermath of Rouenna's shocking death, that the narrator is drawn to write about her friend--and her friend's war. Writing Rouenna's story becomes all-consuming, at once a necessity and the only consolation. For Rouenna, an unforgettable novel about truth, memory, and unexpected heroism by one of the most gifted writers of her generation, is also a remarkable and surprising new look at war.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312420633/?tag=2022091-20
( After a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of peopl...)
After a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of people worldwide, the United States has grown increasingly anarchic. Large numbers of children are stranded in orphanages, and systems we take for granted are fraying at the seams. When orphaned Cole Vining finds refuge with an evangelical pastor and his young wife in a small Indiana town, he knows he is one of the lucky ones. Sheltered Salvation City has been spared much of the devastation of the outside world. But it's a starkly different community from the one Cole has known, and he struggles with what this changed world means for him. As those around him become increasingly fixated on their vision of utopia - so different from his own parents' dreams - Cole begins to imagine a new and different future for himself. Written in Sigrid Nunez's deceptively simple style, Salvation City is a story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness, weaving the deeply affecting story of a young boy's transformation with a profound meditation on the true meaning of salvation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004J8HY80/?tag=2022091-20
( A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year A Chris...)
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as freshmen roommates at Barnard College in 1968. Ann, who comes from a wealthy New England family, is brilliant and idealistic. Georgette, who comes from a bleak town in upstate New York, is mystified by Ann's romanticization of the underprivileged class, which Georgette herself is hoping college will enable her to escape. An intense and difficult friendship is born. Years after a fight ends their friendship, Ann is convicted of a violent crime. As Georgette struggles to understand what has happened, she is led back to their shared history and to an examination of the revolutionary era in which the two women came of age. Only now does she discover how much her early encounter with this extraordinary, complicated woman has determined her own path in life, and why, after all this time, as she tells us, "I have never stopped thinking about her."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312425945/?tag=2022091-20
( A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant ...)
A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, she escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning, homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet--these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality. It is a story about displacement and loss, and about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312422733/?tag=2022091-20
(Praised as a "gifted storyteller" by the Chicago Tribune,...)
Praised as a "gifted storyteller" by the Chicago Tribune, the acclaimed author of A Feather on the Breath of God and Naked Sleeper delivers an enchanting fictional memoir about Leonard and Virginia Woolf's pet marmoset. In 1934 "A sickly pathetic marmoset" named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. He nursed her back to health and from then on was rarely seen without the amusing monkey on his shoulder. A ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury society, Mitz moved with the Wollfs between their homes in London and Sussex. She developed her own special relationships with the family's cocker spaniels and with the various members of the Woolfs' circle, among them T.S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. Mitz even played a vital role in helping the Woolfs escape a close call with Nazis in Germany just before World War II. Now, using letters, diaries, and memoirs, award-winning novelist Sigrid Nunez reconstructs this unique creature's life against the fascinating backdrop of Bloomsbury in its twilight years. Tender, affectionate, and filled with humor, Mitz offers a glimpse into a singular time not only marked by the threat of war, the deaths of beloved friends and relations, and Virginia's near-breakdown under the strain of finishing her novel The Years, but also blessed with much happiness and productivity for the literary Woolfs. It is a novel as endearing and unforgettable as Mitz the marmoset herself. One of the most respected writers in America today, Sigrid Nunez lives in New York City.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060174072/?tag=2022091-20
(Young woman recalls her immigrant parents -- China-Panama...)
Young woman recalls her immigrant parents -- China-Panama father and German mother. She is devoted to ballet career, and is often immersed in a dream built with her parents' stories and the literary works she has read... The extremely homesick mother, the silent and lonely father, and the dancing on the toes are internalized into a woman's sex and fantasy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/7532156451/?tag=2022091-20
Sigrid Nunez is the daughter of a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian father. She was born and raised in New York City.
She received her Bachelor from Barnard College and her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University.
After finishing school she worked for a time as an editorial assistant at The New York Review of. She has taught at Princeton University, Amherst College, Smith College, Columbia University and the New School, and has been a visiting writer at Baruch College, Washington University, Vassar College and the University of California, Irvine, among others She has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers" Conference and of several other writers" conferences across the United States.
She lives in New York City.
(Praised as a "gifted storyteller" by the Chicago Tribune,...)
( A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year A Chris...)
( From one of the most celebrated novelists of her genera...)
(A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America’s most este...)
( After a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of peopl...)
( A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant ...)
(Young woman recalls her immigrant parents -- China-Panama...)