Kirjahaku

Valfierno, the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa is a fascinating novel of intrigue based on a real event at the dawn of the twentieth century: the disappearance of Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre Museum, on August 22, 1911. The police at the time immediately suspected a group of artists who flouted their hatred of all academic painting - among them the young Pablo Picasso; and the soldier-poet Apollinaire, who was detained briefly for the crime. But time passed and the authorities found no clues about the location of either the painting or the actual thieves. Two years later, in 1913, a certain Vicenzo Peruggia was picked up in Florence with the masterpiece in his possession; yet he claimed that he had only wanted to restore it to its rightful home: Italy. What had really transpired during those two intervening years and, above all, who could believe that the humble Peruggia had been the mastermind for the heist of the century?

A masterpiece of literary reportage, Hunger offers a critical global overview of the causes of mass starvation and the gross inadequacy of our response. Each day 25,000 men, women, and children die of hunger or malnutrition. Never in the entire history of humanity has any plague, epidemic, or war taken such a toll. And yet there is no lack of food: our planet is groaning under the weight of its overproduction, and trade continues apace. How can this paradox be investigated and presented without degenerating into a mere list of statistics? Martin Caparros answers this question by telling the stories of the people he has encountered--from Niger to Bangladesh, from the Sudan to Madagascar, from the USA to Argentina, from India to Spain--making them come alive on the page. In the process, he gives us a staggering sense of what we have done wrong by trying to do right, and by letting greed, sloppiness, and lack of vision take over an issue that should have been solved long ago.

An up-to-the-minute global investigation of famine and the persistent issues the keep most of the world hungry. By one of Latin America's most famous and formidable journalists comes a book for the ages. In HUNGER, award-winning author Mart n Caparr s goes in search of why, in the 21st century, most of the world's inhabitants still go hungry daily and To do this he travels to places where food is scarce -- Niger and Northern India, as well as to the cattle grounds of Argentina, the world's biggest beef exporter, and on to the Chicago Food Bank to learn more about the power of food distributors.