Ishiguro's delicate investigation of cloning and genetic interference is really a story about thwarted dreams.

A novel about the end of the world could use fewer mentions of multinational blunders. Still, Brockmeier is a great dreamer.

Israeli Keret is so clever that he swallows up what he has to say about contemporary Israel.

How we mate, writes David Buss, is driven by the demands of the gene pool, so cut the romance.

Luca Turin's examination of scent takes a plunge into science and the perfume industry.

Don't get Nora Ephron going about women and aging. Oh no, too late. And she's off...

At his best — and he's awfully close here — Australian David Malouf is almost untouchable as a storyteller.

Martin Amis, in his Martin Martinovich guise, goes for gulags and high crimes in this novel of imagined Soviet-ness.

The ever-inventive Auster returns to "New York Trilogy" territory in this eerie "Oracle Nights" prequel.

Lebanese-Canadian Rawi Hage's novel stitches enough rough themes and clunky sentences to sink the whole.