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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben OkriMatthew Tree|title=Tales of Freedom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tales of Freedom is a book of two halves, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up the majority of the book. Comic Destiny is made up of a series of short pieces that follow on from each other and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Fernando Pessoa|title=The Book of Disquiet|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of DisquietWe' from cover to cover, it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happens, and what we have is a collection of reveries and thoughts - almost a diary, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts to wear on the reader. '''But''' I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find a work of undeniable genius. It's quite simply a masterpiece of modernist writing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanne Peterson|title=Falling to Heavenll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naive. They've made the long journey Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from America to Tibet. Hardly on the tourist trail and they're not missionarieshis father, so why are they there? This novel is a serious drunk and sweeping narrative trying chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to answer that very question - his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and many moreset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carsten JensenB0C47LV1PC|title=We, the DrownedFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1848Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Laurids Madsen and other men of is the smalltown of Marstal go to war to fight question should you make it? Or is the Germansquestion if you did, and an explosionflings him up to heaven, as far as anyone can tell. But Lauridsreturns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy would it land? The catch is that the answer for him to stay upthere – only to both could well be lost to Marstal anyway, as he abandons his familyto sail the high seas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>}}... no.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Trevor ByrneMosby Woods|title=Ghosts and LightningA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Denny comes home The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenlymend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, and hangs around drinking and taking drugs there was a man with his sister, her girlfriend and some precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of their matescircumstances. That man would be valuable, while he wonders what to do with himselfright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. There are some practical matters to sort out tooImagine then, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings outthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847673309</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Dunmore0571379559|title=The BetrayalHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Andrei ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days story of Stalin’s dictatorshipfour people. He is as quick to notice symptoms Tess Hembry's roots are in his colleagues as Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physicianthe house on the riverbank, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell built of fearbroken bricks. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life Insubstantial as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Goryamight look, it's stood the son passage of Volkhovtime, who is a tyrannical storms and high ranking secret police officerfloods. Therapeutic failure Her husband, in all probabilityRichard, could result in vengeancestruggles to grow his vegetables, arrest to complete the delivery rounds - and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and her young adolescent brotherMax, Kolyathe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mari StrachanKay Chronister|title=The Earth Hums in B FlatDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=General Dystopian Fiction|summary=Choosing With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a child as the viewpoint character world devoid of water or a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding hercathartically experience their most existential fears. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a MockingbirdDesert Creatures', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', by Kay Chronister is a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the characters struggle to cope with their family secretsfears that exist for humanity today. If It is a shocking novel that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp cornersstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Philip SingtonEric LaRocca|title=The Einstein GirlTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=The two central characters are (Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how weas humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''ve come across , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) usually something tangible and his patient (known as , by the Einstein Girl) and hence end of the novelstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's title. ''The case of this girl Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospitallike that. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be It is a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, collection of short stories more interested in the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more horrors of his professional time given over to her recoveryillness, back to mental well-beinggrief and humiliation. It becomes a long Horrors that linger and complicated journey, for both of themare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David MitchellMadelaine Lucas|title=The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de ZoetThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The belly craves food'Love, the tongue craves waterI'd read, the heart craves lovewas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, and the mind craves stories.but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michelle LovricJennifer Saint|title=The Book of Human SkinAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, Elif ShafakI vowed. Set in twelfth century AnatoliaI would take my place, two famous characters from Islamic history meet not just in a gorgeously real worldthe name of the goddess. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around It was for the richsake of my name, meaty historical fictiontoo. DonAtalanta''t be misled by the dodgy-sounding title!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918733</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor CattonAmanthi Harris|title=The RehearsalBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you are Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the type southern coast of person who wants their novels her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to start be at the beginningVilla, how it became her home, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid for this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time gentle and yet subtly violent novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring Padma's present fails to escape her past and complexmuch like the musical score of a film, and yet it works beautifullythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847081398</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara Kingsolver178563335X|title=The LacunaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years ago, Barbara KingsolverWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's [[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver|Poisonwood Bible]] revealed the grim politics a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Congochildren up. The Lacuna has Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a similarly political themesobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, this time turning her focus on Mexico the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the USA in vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the 1940s job for more than thirty years. Rachel and 1950sChristopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057125263X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Eagleman1398515388|title=Sum: Tales from The Boy and the AfterlivesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this review, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, The result was complete and see where we go from thereutter devastation. Of courseThe deaths were uncountable, that's and the key – this book does just loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that – starts with many pets were separated from their owners came far down the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities list of what happens thereafter, in priorities but - six months after the hereaftertsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's not so much 'Five People You Meet comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M J Hyland0989715337|title=This Is HowPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did Some frogs had gotten into the well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ed HillyerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Clay DreamingEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop The summary of fiction this book doesn't come close to create a complex and riveting story. The title explaining what is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already done with the mind bogglespremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251501</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Wendy Law-YoneSally Oliver |title=The Road to WantingWeight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the Chinese side death of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedanticher sister, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting she awakes to commit suicidefind strange, but is interrupted by news thick black hairs sprouting from the hotel receptionist who tells bones of her that spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her guide across the bordergrief, Mr Jiangrecommends she go to stay at Nede, has just committed suicide himselfan experimental new treatment centre in Wales. You might by now have Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the impression that this is not other patients at Nede: a cheery kind metamorphosis of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light toucheskind. In fact itAs Marianne's often quite beautifulmemories threaten to overwhelm her, which makes the exposure Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of the seedier side so much more shockingidentity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184086</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleNatalia Garcia Freire|title=The Dead RepublicThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Henry left in 1922Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, after a delight. I will agree with the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exile, nothing first – tremendous is as he expected. He revisits an old home to find no trace that understatement – but 'a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back delight' is not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but perhaps using the life portrayed expression in it is a way I'm not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of Irish politics and everyday life in the film is not one he recognisesSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. In his late 40s From the little I have read (in translation, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the wife and family he lostmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Revenge 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the Mooncake Vixen (ohheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's tasteClytemnestra, but I confess and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the humour of itmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paolo Giordano8409290103|title=The Solitude of Prime Numbers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Juli Zeh|title=Dark MatterMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German and nothing has Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been 'lost in translation' here. The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian and Oskar are sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the very best of friends; it's almost as if they share young man got on board the same heartbeat. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along boat and tends thereafter Patrick was to get in the waysend him a monthly allowance. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense Patrick sent the money regularly and strained.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Margaret Forster|title=Isa and May|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a wouldcorrespondence -be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and sorts - sprang up between the secrets two although we hear more about their pasts which rise what Lowry has to the surface when she least expects themsay than Patrick. There It wasn's another complication too. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact t that her partnerLowry senior didn't care for his son, Ian, is adamant it was that he doesndidn't want care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The more Isamay delves, alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past tooyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathryn StockettAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The HelpRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi[[:Category: 1960. The talk at the bridge club Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the read in my house. They're trusted to bring the children upAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen and is raising her seventeenth , black and white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other wayand red. They took his body to the coloureds' hospital Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and rolled I think it off 's possible to say not one page lacks the back influence of the truck and leftsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Olga GrushinB098FFFBH9|title=The Concert TicketSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aatish Taseer Fourteen-year-old Rachel is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the Indian pressanimal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, in Prospecta lecturer at Imperial College, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which heLondon, raised by his Indian Sikh motherKate and her twin, traces his absent Muslim father across Nick. Kate runs the border family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Pakistan – and also for his translations Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantoinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ConnollyYancey Williams|title=The Spider TrucesCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is enigmaticgetting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, mysterious. It draws the reader in finds himself living - just like a fly to a spideror imprisoned, from Eddie's web. And point of view - in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on room 315 of the tin as the main characterGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, EllisJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is obsessed and terrified going to keep Eddie from his stock-in equal measure-trade of writing though, of spiders. ... and when you live in an old houseso here, as the O'Rourke family doesfor his readers, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouthis wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Yukari Waters0008421714|title=The FavoritesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from The problem began just after the US publication of George March's most successful novel to stay with family for a few weeksdate. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan Everyone but has lived in the US with Mrs March (we know her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of first name only on the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, Californialast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Here in Kyoto, Every day Mrs March went to the womenlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, including Sarah and her mumPatricia asked, go shopping every day for food, and as she was wrapping the food is very different – in an opening scenebread, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in ''but isn't this the USfirst time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, and becoming aware of the gulf between principal character had 'her life in Japan and in Californiamannerisms''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rose Tremain|title=Trespass|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the hills of Southern France, Trespass fact that Johanna is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident whore of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in Nantes - ''a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Vereyweak, a garden designerplain, and her partnerdetestable, an untalented watercolouristpathetic, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Vereyunloved, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in Franceunloveable wretch. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>
}}
