What Nicole is reading

Nicole says: A reader knows when they're in the presence of something special, brilliant. It's a voice familiar, kind. A plot careful, unraveling. A set of characters whose hearts pound between the boards. Taiye Selasi delivers a powerful debut about family, race and the nature of story in this contemporary novel, set against neighborhoods from Brookline, MA to Lagos, Nigeria. A literary descendant of Zadie Smith and Arundhati Roy, Selasi is a new force in the global community of readers.

Nicole says: If you read Ishmael Beah's "Long Way Gone" or Helene Cooper's "House at Sugar Beach" then you must pick up this one. It's the fictional story of Jean Patrick Encuba, a boy whose Olympic dreams are tested when the Hutus and Tutsies clash in his native Rwanda. This is a novel that will ignite discussion and transport readers to a time in the not-so-distant past. Appropriate for high school readers, too.