The best books of the year
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Fiction | Simon &Schuster $26. | Asymmetry By Lisa Halliday The first section, "Folly," is the story of a love affair between a book editor and an elderly novelist. The second section, "Madness" describes an Iraqi-American economist who is being held up at Heathrow airport. In "Asymmetry," two seemingly unrelated sections are connected by a shocking finale. |
| Fiction | Viking. $27. | The Great Believers By Rebecca Makkai Set in the Chicago of the mid-80s and Paris at the time of the 2015 terrorist attacks, Makkai's deeply affecting novel uses the AIDS epidemic and a mother's search for her distant daughter to explore the effects of senseless loss and our efforts to overcome it. |
| Nonfiction | Random House $28. | Educated By Tara Westover Westover's extraordinary memoir (回忆录)is an act of courage and self-invention. The youngest of seven children, she grew up in Idaho, in a survivalist family lacking even a birth certificate (证明) and did not attend school until she went to college. The reward for her efforts Is a book that shows to a great thirst to learn. |
| Nonfiction | Simon & Schuster $37.50. | Frederick Douglass By David W. Blight Douglass wrote three autobiographies (自传）himself, describing his rise from slavery to a role as one of the greatest figures of the 19th century, but Blight's work is fuller than any of those, relating both the public and private life in a way that Douglass either could not or would not undertake. |
