The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr. Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor whose late wife had been an ardent Communist, remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite the fact that he has no training or even supplies to use in performing his new task. What he does have is curiosity and integrity. At his age he is not about to let a bunch of ignorant...

Over the course of one year at a Connecticut boarding school and a transformative summer in New York City in the 1980s, three young women negotiate friendship, crushes, parties, privilege, and the sexual interest of older men on the journey from innocence to independence.

"Winner of the Prix Ulysse for best debut novel in France Winner in Croatia and the Balkan region of the Kočićevo Pero Award, the Josip and Ivan Kozarac Award, and the Kiklop Award for the best work of fiction. When the Croatian War of Independence breaks out in her hometown of Vukovar in the summer of 1991 she is nine years old, nestled within the embrace of family with her father, her mother, and older brother. She is sent to a seaside vacation...