Stone Arabia

Stone Arabia is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create-in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture. In the sibling relationship, "there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other," says Denise Kranis. For her and her brother Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work, but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik's most passionate and acute audience, sometimes his only audience. She is also her family's first defense against the world's fragility. Friends die, their mother's memory and mind unravel, and the news of global catastrophe and individual tragedy haunt Denise. When her daughter Ada decides to make a film about Nik, everyone's vulnerabilities seem to escalate. A 2011 Barnes & Noble Best Book for Fiction. A Washington Post Best Book of 2011. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2011. An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2011. A Boston Globe Book of the Year for 2011. A New York Times Notable Book for 2011. A Newsweek Best Book of 2011. A 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. A 2011 New York Times Book Review Notable Book. A 2011 Salon Magazine Best Book of the Year.