Speed Reader

 

Hakakian relates what it was like for a young Jewish girl to live through the tumultuous 1979 Iranian Revolution, a rebellion that she initially sympathized with, only to soon discover the nightmare it presented for Jews and women.

 

A novel about the silent screen star Fatty Arbuckle told from the perspective of Fatty's butler, I, Fatty retells the tragic true-life tale of Arbuckle's crash from grace following a false accusation of rape and murder.

 

The author of Schindler's List crafts this clever political allegory about a writer living in a fictional but somehow quite familiar desert nation who's asked (that is, commanded) to ghost write a novel that will undermine Western democracies' support for sanctions. The term deadline has never been taken quite so literally.