The Odessa File

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are: Bangladesh–Taslima Nasrin Chile–Pablo Neruda China–Bei Dao, Shu Ting El Salvador–Claribel Alegria France–Yves Bonnefoy Greece–Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos India–A.K. Ramanujan Israel–Yehuda Amichai Japan–Shuntaro Tanikawa Mexico–Octavio Paz Nicaragua–Ernesto Cardenal Nigeria–Wole Soyinka Norway–Tomas Transtromer Palestine–Mahmoud Darwish Poland–Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz Russia–Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Senegal–Leopold Sedar Senghor South Africa–Breyten Breytenbach St. Lucia, West Indies–Derek Walcott

This ​is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, “Fall of Giants” moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.