Foreign Affairs: A Novel
Alison Lurie
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0812976312
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.
Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to.
Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, Foreign Affairs remains an enduring comic masterpiece.
“A splendid comedy, very bright, brilliantly written in a confident and original manner. The best book by one of our finest writers.”
–Elizabeth Hardwick
“There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy. . . . Foreign Affairs earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton.”
–John Fowles
“If you manage to read only a few good novels a year, make this one of them.”
–USA Today
“An ingenious, touching book.”
–Newsweek
“A flawless jewel.”
–Philadelphia Inquirer
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for political grandstanding. Still others worry that bringing together multiple Taliban factions, their Pakistani patrons, the Karzai administration, the governments of the United States and its allies, and intermediaries such as Qatar will simply prove too complex. Conservatives in the United States, meanwhile, doubt the Obama administration’s motives, worrying that negotiating with the enemy signals weakness and fearing that the White House will make unnecessary concessions simply to cover its
issue for the United Kingdom. But on close inspection, none of these concerns holds up. The idea that the United Kingdom would be better off outside the eu is misguided, since it is based on a finance-centric view of the British economy. This view holds that the United Kingdom’s comparative advantage is in financial services, a sector that needs to be protected at all costs from burdensome regulations. According to this school of thought, Thatcher’s liberalization and deregulation of the economy
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manifest will to stabilize its own country. At the same time, the un peacekeeping mission has been stripped of any role in negotiating between the Congolese government and its enemies. This approach is mistaken. In order to foster a lasting peace, donors must use the billions of dollars in aid money disbursed each year as leverage to induce the governments in Kinshasa and Kigali to stop using armed violence for political gain. Making peace on the back of war Congo represents a cautionary tale