Love Writ Large

For a fifteen-year-old, falling in love can eclipse everything else in the world, and make a few short weeks feel like a lifetime of experience. In "Love Writ Large", Navid Kermani captures those intense feelings, from the emotional explosion of a first kiss to the staggering loss of a first breakup. As his teenage protagonist is wrapped up in these all-consuming feelings, however, Germany is in the crosshairs of the Cold War – and even the personal dramas of a small-town grammar school are shadowed by the threat of the nuclear arms race. Kermani's novel manages to capture these social tensions without sacrificing any of the all-consuming passion of a first love and, in a unique touch, sets the boy's struggles within the larger frame of the stories and lives of numerous Arabic and Persian mystics. His becomes a timeless a tale that reflects on the multiple ways love, loss, and risk weigh on our everyday lives.