Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena | 2013 | Anthony Marra | Buy |
| 2 | Mercury Pictures Presents | 2022 | Anthony Marra | Buy |
Anthony Marra’s two standalone novels are set decades and continents apart but share a focus on people trying to survive in the middle of history’s worst moments. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2013) takes place in a small village in Chechnya in December 2004. When eight-year-old Havaa’s father is taken by Russian soldiers, her neighbor Akhmed brings her to a bombed-out hospital run by a surgeon named Sonja. The novel tracks their intertwined lives across years of war. It won the John Leonard Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Mercury Pictures Presents (2022) moves to wartime Hollywood, where Maria Lagana has reinvented herself after escaping fascist Italy. She works at Mercury Pictures, a second-tier movie studio, and the novel expands outward from her daily life to cover the Italian front, the internment of Italian Americans, and the strange business of making movies while the world falls apart. Both novels show Marra’s gift for weaving together multiple timelines and large casts of characters without losing the emotional core of the story.