These Are the Names

by Tommy Wieringa Narrated by Arthur Morey

Overview

A moody, atmospheric literary thriller and “a timeless tale of migration” (The Guardian), from one of Europe's biggest-selling authors
*
Despite its Biblical title-which comes from the opening lines of the Book of Exodus-award-winning novelist Tommy Wieringa has crafted perhaps his most timely book yet, as he traces two stories doomed to collide.*

In one, we follow a group of starving, near-feral Eurasian refugees on a harrowing quest for survival; in the other, we follow Pontus Beg, a policeman from a small border town on the steppe, as he investigates the death of a rabbi, one of the town's two remaining Jews.*

What follows is a gripping saga in which the two stories race toward each other, and Beg will be shaken to his core by what each one reveals about man's dark nature, and the possibility-or impossibility-of his own redemption. A virtual parable for our times,*These Are the Names*offers a suspenseful reading of a crisis that continues to dominate headlines, and simultaneously explores the enduring questions of faith, identity, and what it means to be “home.”

Editorial Reviews

JANUARY 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Arthur Morey’s storytelling skills are on full display in this bittersweet story. Dutch novelist Tommy Wieringa weaves the plight of a group of refugees set adrift on the Russian steppes with the story of Police Commissioner Pontus Beg. Beg is himself a lost soul who in midlife discovers that his mother was Jewish, which causes him to reconsider his beliefs. The lives of the starving wayfarers and the commissioner intersect after they’re arrested and come under his care. Morey’s vocal style and narrative gifts shine in his measured presentation of these haunted travelers and in his portrayal of the inner struggle of Pontus Beg—especially when his renewed faith is challenged by the horrific pasts of the interlopers. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/19/2016
Bestselling Dutch writer Wieringa’s (Joe Speedboat) novel offers two searing portrayals of transformation on the unforgiving Eurasian Steppe. Pontus Beg is a policeman in Michailopol, a once-thriving small town whose “demise had been as turbulent as its rise.” At 53, “still too young to really be considered old, but he could see the writing on the wall,” Beg reexamines his life’s work: not a failure, but perhaps not the path of wisdom he might have imagined as a child. When Yehuda Herz, one of the town’s two remaining Jews, is murdered, Beg investigates, and with the guidance of Rabbi Zalman Eder, he has a revelation that both haunts and rejuvenates him. In a parallel story, seven desperate refugees—five men, a woman, and a child—suffer betrayal and extraordinary hardship to make new lives in an elusive promised land. One of their number, a man imbued by the others with talismanic powers, brings Beg and the nomads together, irrevocably changing everyone. Biblical symbolism and themes of wandering, suffering, and redemption pervade the novel. There are echoes of John Steinbeck’s intrepid dust bowl survivors, the voyeuristic allure of Franz Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist,” and the quiet nihilism and documentary detail of British novelist Jim Crace. Wieringa, whose longtime collaboration with translator Sam Garrett pays off again with deft, muscular prose perfectly suited to the author’s harrowing vision, strips lives bare and drills to their essence. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

A quasi-mythic novel...[These Are the Names] possesses a symbolic sweep that recalls J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians...Wieringa reminds us that the refugees' desire to find a safe, nurturing place to call home doesn't make them unspeakably alien. It makes them just like us.”—John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air

“Part fable, part murder mystery... this touching novel insistently affirms the values of civilization above tribalism and fear.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A haunting tale about migration, about faith, and about new beginnings.”—Alex Kotlowitz

“Lyrical...With the meticulous brushwork of small colourful phrases...this Dutch master vividly brings to life a world resonating with symbolism, metaphor and myth.”—1843 (The Economist)

“A quiet masterpiece. Combines the primal, raw, archetypal vision of José Saramago with the apocalyptic sweep of Cormac McCarthy...Wieringa's prose is lucid as cut glass, his images stark, his landscape desolate and otherworldly at the same time that it is contemporary. His unalloyed depiction of emigration will reverberate keenly in a Europe facing ever growing numbers of exiles, evacuees, escapees of war. It will reverberate, as well, in a United States muddled by its own border policies...A magnum opus from a leading young writer takes on the meaning of exile, identity, faith, and the limits of endurance.” —Kirkus (starred)

“Masterful (and eerie) storytelling. These Are the Names balances the mundane and the mysterious between two seemingly inharmonious stories—the famine-swept journey of a pack of wanderers trekking thought the Eurasian wilderness and a solitary policeman's investigation into the death of a rabbi—without ever striking a discordant note.” —Jewish Book Council

"This probing novel from one of the Netherlands' best-selling authors tackles head-on the knotted complex of issues surrounding the resettlement of refugees...Wieringa's prose is lyrical...He executes his story with great poise and, above all, an unmistakable sense of humanity."—World Literature Today

“Wieringa’s novel offers two searing portrayals of transformation on the unforgiving Eurasian Steppe...Biblical symbolism and themes of wandering, suffering, and redemption pervade the novel. There are echoes of John Steinbeck’s intrepid dust bowl survivors, the voyeuristic allure of Franz Kafka’s 'The Hunger Artist,' and the quiet nihilism and documentary detail of British novelist Jim Crace. Wieringa...strips lives bare and drills to their essence.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Mixes a crime investigation with a probe into humanity's nature.”—Booklist/American Library Association

“The novel’s brilliance is in its juxtaposition of the two storylines...Both brutal and redemptive.”—The Christian Century

“An important and profoundly felt book . . . Fast-paced, often humorous, and full of lyric power.” —Patrick McGuinness, author of The Last Hundred Days

“Highly intelligent. Wieringa will make you think and keep you reading eagerly to the final page.” —Claire Lowdon, The Times Literary Supplement

“Poetic . . . Wieringa’s novel treads restlessly between genres, from middle-aged Bildungsroman and urban comedy to dark fairytale and Confucian parable . . . A sense of timeless, elemental human battles, conjuring King Lear’s unaccommodated man in the pitiless storm.” —Phoebe Taplin, The Guardian

“There are echoes of the great J. M. Coetzee’s elegant irony . . . It is the prose and Wieringa’s relaxed style that make this novel so good . . . A bravura performance. Far closer to Joseph Conrad than one might expect.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

“An astonishing book . . . It speaks to the mood of our times. It is a novel about violence and barbarism, the fragility of civilization and a world of people on the move, migrants desperate for a better life.” —David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle

JANUARY 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Arthur Morey’s storytelling skills are on full display in this bittersweet story. Dutch novelist Tommy Wieringa weaves the plight of a group of refugees set adrift on the Russian steppes with the story of Police Commissioner Pontus Beg. Beg is himself a lost soul who in midlife discovers that his mother was Jewish, which causes him to reconsider his beliefs. The lives of the starving wayfarers and the commissioner intersect after they’re arrested and come under his care. Morey’s vocal style and narrative gifts shine in his measured presentation of these haunted travelers and in his portrayal of the inner struggle of Pontus Beg—especially when his renewed faith is challenged by the horrific pasts of the interlopers. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-07-27
While one man struggles with his origins, a ragged group of wanderers walks across the steppe.A small band of refugees is walking across the Eurasian steppe. They’d signed up to be ferried, illegally, across the border to a better life. They’d been tricked. Now, they must walk. They are starving to death. One by one, their members drop. Meanwhile, in a small, provincial town far away, a police commissioner named Pontus Beg is growing old. As he goes about clearing up the minor transgressions of his community—a man has run over another man’s sheep—he struggles to make sense of his position in the wider world. What puzzles him is the memory of a song his mother sang to him when he was a child. It’s a Yiddish song; but why would his mother sing a Yiddish song? As Beg uncovers a secret his mother kept from him, a secret that changes the way he understands his own identity, that ever shrinking band of refugees keeps creeping through the steppe. They’re not unlike the Israelites who wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. Gradually, Beg’s story begins to merge with the lonely band’s, a band that includes a tall man, a young boy, an addict, a poacher, an Ethiopian, and a woman. This latest novel from Libris Prize winner Wieringa (Little Caesar, 2012, etc.) is a quiet masterpiece. Wieringa combines the primal, raw, archetypal vision of José Saramago with the apocalyptic sweep of Cormac McCarthy. The result is entirely his own. In Garrett’s elegant translation, Wieringa’s prose is lucid as cut glass, his images stark, his landscape desolate and otherworldly at the same time that it is contemporary. His unalloyed depiction of emigration will reverberate keenly in a Europe facing ever growing numbers of exiles, evacuees, escapees of war. It will reverberate, as well, in a United States muddled by its own border policies. To open the doors or shut them? As it turns out, that’s only one of the questions.A magnum opus from a leading young writer takes on the meaning of exile, identity, faith, and the limits of endurance.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171906726
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/08/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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