The House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits

My wife didn’t miss the refinements she had been accustomed to, and the day the shipment of furniture and household goods I had ordered to surprise her arrived at the door, all she said was how “lovely” it was. I myself had to figure out where...
The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Six Trends. To give some coherence to the many developments that make up our species’ retreat from violence, I group them into six major trends. The first, which took place on the scale of millennia, was the transition from the anarchy of the hunting, gathering, and...
Love In The Time Of Cholera

Love In The Time Of Cholera

The years of immobilized waiting, of hoping for good luck, were behind him, but on the horizon he could see nothing more than the unfathomable sea of imaginary illnesses, the drop-by-drop urinations of sleepless nights, the daily death at twilight. He thought that all the moments in the day, which had once been his allies and sworn accomplices, were beginning to conspire against him.

American Pastoral

American Pastoral

Five years pass, five years searching for an explanation, going back over everything, over the circumstances that shaped her, the people and the events that influenced her, and none of it adequate to begin to explain the bombing until he remembers the Buddhist monks,...
First They Killed My Father

First They Killed My Father

One evening, three soldiers went to the family’s hut and told her parents they needed Davi and another friend to go with them. They said they needed the girls to help them pick corn for a special event. Davi’s mother cried and wrapped her arms around her...