The Constellation and the readers

This is a novel we fell in love with from the very first moment – we knew we wanted it for Ikaros’s new list of foreign fiction. Reviews from readers and the press worldwide seem to agree. Anthony Marra’s *Constellation of Vital Phenomena* features on seven different lists of the year’s best books. The Washington Post’s Top 10 Books (24/11/13)Kirkus Reviews (15/11/13)Amazon, Best of the Year List, Top 100 (7 November 2013)Publishers Weekly/ Best Books of 2013 (4 November 2013)Goodreads, nominated for Best Books of 2013 in the fiction categoryLibrary Journal/ Top Ten Books of the Year (14 November 2013)Publishers Weekly/ Top Ten Books of the Year (23 October 2013)Journalist Maria Houkli wrote in a recent article on protagon.gr: It had been a long time since I’d enjoyed a work of fiction. To read breathlessly and not want to put the book down, to enjoy the sequence of words and meanings, the author’s mastery, the translator’s skill, the excellence of a literary work.  Read also reviews by Katerina Schina in Kathimerini and by Nikos Xenios on bookpress.gr From her Instagram @angelina_angelIn the final days of 2004, in a small village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Khavaa hides in the forest as Russian military forces seize her father. Their neighbour, Ahmed, a failed doctor, smuggles her into the bombed-out hospital in the nearest town, where the only doctor, the Russian Sonia, treats a ceaseless stream of wounded rebels and refugees, whilst mourning her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Ahmed and Sonia each look back on their own pasts, seeking to unravel a mysterious puzzle of coincidences, betrayal and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them together and determines their fate.Marra weaves a multifaceted human mosaic around the book’s six main characters, worthy of the most imposing and stirring 19th-century novelistic murals.The book is imbued with and underpinned by a sense of renewal, optimism and redemption. It speaks of those things that survive within us, even when everything material outside us seems lost: of the love of a parent or a sister, of the love that blossoms between two strangers, of the sacrifices that every love demands. It is a novel about six beloved characters who played an important role in my life and whom I hope you will love too.” Anthony MarraConstellation of Vital Phenomena: Life – even at its most basic, microbial level – exists when six vital phenomena are present: organisation, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation… Read an excerpt from the book.