My New Book: A Mind of Winter
Nov 12
A MIND OF WINTER will be published by Akashic Books in July, 2012.
Summary: Oscar is a mysterious Englishman who presides over Ellis Park, a sprawling mansion in East Hampton, Long Island. It is 1951; as the jazz bands play and the ever-present houseguests waft into the ballroom, the war seems much farther away than a mere, six years. However, Oscar is tormented by his own questionable, moral wartime dealings—and embroiled in a drama involving late-night meetings with an official, with whom he speaks German. He is also haunted by memories of Christine, his great love who, after the war, sailed to Shanghai; he has no idea of the murky, moral depths into which she has fallen.
One of Oscar’s frequent houseguests, Marilyn, a photographer who spent the war years in England, has moved in to Ellis Park for the summer and is working on a book of her wartime photography. Marilyn reminds Oscar of Christine; he finds refuge late at night sitting beside her in the pristine photographic studio he built in a basement area, deep beneath the sumptuous, brightly lit rooms above. Oscar suspects that Marilyn, married to Simon, is embarked on an affair with the adventurous Barnaby, a swashbuckling character whose far-flung wanderings included a long stint in Shanghai, where Barnaby himself had been involved with Christine.
The narrative unfolds through the three different points of view of Oscar, Christine and Marilyn, in cities on three continents—East Hampton, Shanghai and London. A Mind of Winter is a complex, page-turning, literary psychological thriller, which takes up a rich array of themes: the ways in which we choose our beliefs and build our lives around them; the self-deceptive shadings that undulate within; the moral ambiguities of being an artist; and the ways in which socio-historical circumstances inevitably bite into and shape personal identity and destiny.
News: Awake in the Dark Optioned
Nov 12The first two stories of AWAKE IN THE DARK have been optioned by Cicala Filmworks (New York), in association with Egoli Tossell (Berlin), to be made into a movie. More information to come.
An interview with Julie Burstein
Apr 23Mp3 file
Here’s an interview done by Julie Burstein, the creator, founder, and producer of Studio 360 on National Public Radio. Find out more about Studio 360 at their website.
THE LISTENER: A Novel by Shira Nayman
Jan 06
“The madness of war, even after war is over, envelops everyone in this well-paced psychological thriller.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Nayman has written a first novel alive with turbulence.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Dark, obsessive …vividly imagined and evoked.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Nayman plumbs the murky ethics of the analyst-patient relationship and tackles moral questions of collaboration and guilt.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Shira Nayman, the author whose collection of short stories, Awake in the Dark, first won her acclaim three years ago, captivates in this haunting debut historical novel…The surroundings are familiar to Nayman, a clinical psychologist who’s worked in psychiatric hospitals, and her expertise shows.”
—The Daily Beast
“[THE LISTENER’S] probing analysis of the line between sanity and insanity and the questioning of the rules that govern the patient-doctor relationship are consistently intriguing.”
—Booklist
Read More About the Book Read the Reviews Buy the Book
News: The Best of Hanukkah Lights
Jan 04My story “Moon Landing” was featured on NPR’s “Best of Hanukkah Lights” program. It was one of eight stories picked from over twenty years of programming.
Praise for The Listener
Jan 04“The madness of war, even after war is over, envelops everyone in this well-paced psychological thriller.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Shira Nayman, the author whose collection of short stories, Awake in the Dark, first won her acclaim five years ago, captivates in this haunting debut historical novel…The surroundings are familiar to Nayman, a clinical psychologist who’s worked in psychiatric hospitals, and her expertise shows.”
—The Daily Beast
“Nayman has written a first novel alive with turbulence.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Dark, obsessive …vividly imagined and evoked.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Word for word, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, Nayman creates a gripping narrative with style and depth… Nayman paces the narrative well, with thick, sensuous writing throughout, developing each character with a compelling reality. Much like her collection of short stories, Awake in the Dark, this novel continues to explore the ways in which individuals negotiate and construct their sense of identity. Featuring a plot as rich as the characters, this is a thought-provoking and psychological exploration of love, war, and human identity… [for] readers who enjoyed Ian McEwan’s Atonement.”
—Library Journal
“[THE LISTENER’S] probing analysis of the line between sanity and insanity and the questioning of the rules that govern the patient-doctor relationship are consistently intriguing.”
—Booklist
“There is a Gothic feel to this story with the haunted grounds of Shadowbrook making an eerie setting. While the book is a historical, it has even a greater sense of time travel to it when it travels to an opium den. There is more to the Gothic nature then the setting: it extends to the way the characters interact and to the atmosphere established by the dialog.”
—Book Group Buzz, Booklist blog
With U.S. involvement in Afghanistan ramping up, examining the effects of war on the psyche has never seemed more important. Shira Nayman churns up past complications of both World Wars in her new novel. … She purposely blurs the line between sanity and insanity not only to engage readers in solving the plot’s mysteries but also to underscore that when war is involved, the line is always blurry.
—The Miami Herald
On the last page of Shira Nayman’s dark and probing psychological thriller, Dr. Henry Harrison awakens from a deep sleep to one startling thought: “Doctor, heal thyself.” The reader has sensed this all along; the doctor is not well, his sanity and madness inextricably connected. It’s a testament to Nayman’s skill that Harrison’s final realization affects us anew.
The Listener is, at its core, a story of listening, of narration—the lies we tell, the plots and characters we invent. But it is also an honest look at the way trauma and violence afflict an entire generation’s psyche, the way war is a disease that lasts well after the weapons have been laid down. This intelligent and unexpected novel is set in the 1940s, but its message is just as true today.
—Bookpage.com
