These Are the Names

US: Melville House, 2016. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. A moody, atmospheric literary thriller and "a timeless tale of migration" ( The Guardian), from one of Europe's biggest-selling authors Despite its Biblical title--which comes from the opening lines of the Book of Exodus--award-winning novelist Tommy Wieringa has crafted perhaps his mo st timely book yet, as he traces two stories doomed to collide. In one, we follow a group of starving, near-feral Eurasian refugees on a ha rrowing quest for survival; in the other, we follow Pontus Beg, a policeman from a small border town on the steppe, as he investigates the death of a rabbi, one of the town's two remaining Jews. What follows is a gripping saga in which the two stories race toward each other, and Beg will be shaken to his core by what each one reveals about man's dark nature, and the possibility--or impossibility--of his own redemption. A virtual parable for our times, These Are the Names offers a suspenseful reading of a crisis that continues to dominate headlines, and simultaneously explores the enduring questions of faith, identity, and what it means to be "home.