On a sunny May day, postgraduate student Phineas G. Nanson abruptly renounces the "unreality" of literary criticism for a "life full of things." Drawn toward the seemingly precise world of biography, Phineas finds the factual as equally unstable and abstract as the theoretical. In her latest novel, Booker Prize-winner A.S. Byatt once again creates an elegant journey through academia and self-discovery that makes up The Biographer's Tale.
		For an American audience, there can be no better introduction to Siberian-born author Ludmila Ulitskaya than The Funeral Party, her account of Russian émigré life in New York City.