November Publications

In a tortured burst of introspection, the Hungarian-Jewish narrator of Nobel Prize—winner Imre Kertész's brief novel Kaddish for an Unborn Child examines his reasons for choosing not to have a child, addressing his monologue to the son or daughter he never had. His refusal stems from his experiences as a Holocaust survivor and costs him his wife. The intricacies of his philosophical objections are sometimes lost in a tangle of verbiage, but the magnitude of his loss is eloquently expressed. (Vintage International, $12.95 paper 128p ISBN 1-4000-7862-8)

The Irish-American O'Malley clan ushers in the 1980s in Golden Years, the sixth volume in Andrew M. Greeley's unabashedly old-fashioned (though curiously sex-laced) series. Chucky O'Malley, a former ambassador, and his doting wife, Rosemarie, a New Yorker writer, weather the crises of friends and family—including the death of Chucky's father—with their usual grace. The true subject of Greeley's series is Chucky and Rosemarie's blissful marriage, which is as passionate as ever as they enter their 50s in this latest installment. (Forge, $24.95 304p ISBN 0-765-30338-8)

A fashion designer struggles to cope with second-hand fame when she marries a hot young movie star in Laura Caldwell's The Year of Living Famously. Kyra Felis's whirlwind romance with Irish actor Declan Kenna begins after a brief encounter at a Las Vegas casino. At first, Kyra loves the glamour, but as Declan's star rises, they're besieged by armies of paparazzi. Can love survive the flashbulb frenzy? Caldwell's probing of the downside of fame doesn't go very deep, but insider dish will satisfy People readers. (Red Dress Ink, $12.95 paper 336p ISBN 0-373-25075-4)

The unswerving loyalty of an indentured servant sold to a family of khans in 1928 is the prism through which Morteza Baharloo explores the 20th-century history of Iran in The Quince Seed Potion. Sarveali knows no other life than the one he leads as the personal slave of Teimour Khan, a spoiled, handsome young aristocrat. Neither marriage nor opium addiction can distract Sarveali from his duties; it's only death and the Iranian revolution that separate him from the family he reveres at the end of this vivid, uneven first novel. (Bridge Works, $23.95 256p ISBN 1-882593-87-1)