内容摘要：Any given day, in prisons like Tacumbú, there are stretching sessions in open areas or religious ceremonies. Some inmates play soccer while others prefer bingo. Some try to earn money and shine the guards shoes for 30 cents.

Any given day, in prisons like Tacumbú, there are stretching sessions in open areas or religious ceremonies. Some inmates play soccer while others prefer bingo. Some try to earn money and shine the guards shoes for 30 cents.

Allende previous novel, “The Wind Knows My Name,” published in 2023, was a departure from her familiar tales featuring strong women. In that book, she braided the stories of two young children traveling alone in different times and places – one during the brewing Holocaust in Europe and the other in modern day Arizona on the border with Mexico.But all of Allende’s books, “My Name is Emilia del Valle” included, have the epic feel of a major Hollywood film, the kind of production that everyone will tell you must be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated.

Reading the book, you can almost see young Emilia on the steamboat headed south to Chile, the land at the foot of the volcanos that holds her roots, and her destiny.Keith McNally has been charming New York City diners since he opened his first restaurant, The Odeon, in 1980, helping transform a then-derelict TriBeCa into a hotspot for the “glitterati.”The Odeon’s glowing neon sign was featured on the cover of

1984 novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” and the restaurant was a regular hangout for celebrities fromNearly five decades and 19 restaurants later, McNally’s Balthazar in SoHo, Minetta Tavern in New York and D.C., and other restaurants are still going strong. In his candid, funny and poignant memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything,” McNally, 73, shows that he is, too.

But it might not have been that way. The book opens with a 2018 suicide attempt, sparked by back pain, a crumbling marriage and the aftereffects of a 2016 stroke which left him with aphasia and a paralyzed right hand.

Work — building and operating restaurants — helped keep him going. And with his speech distorted, he found a creative outlet in Instagram, where his filter-free screeds on everything — from dealing with his stroke to Balthazar’s evening recap by staff — often go viral.Pavlo Romanovskyi, chief of a Ukrainian drone laboratory who lost a leg in battle, talks to a fellow soldier in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

It is this dire situation that has driven wounded soldiers back to the front, where little has changed since they first left their civilian lives to defend their families from an invading neighbor.For them, lying in a hospital bed was unbearable compared to standing alongside their brothers-in-arms to defend Ukraine. But they all agree on one thing — when the war ends, they won’t spend another day in uniform; joining the army was never their first choice.

Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)