An ode to George Orwell's "1984" told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer.

When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017--revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)--critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other...

Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous,...

On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest's North Col. Neither of them returned. Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, the author re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory and Irvine, and their fellow climbers as they pursue their efforts to conquer the highest peak as a powerful symbol of national redemption, personal achievement and hope. [From publisher's description]...