Contemporary fiction: literary and general

Book SynopsisThe Fig Tree is a novel composed of the intertwining stories of the family of Jadran, a 30-something who tries to piece together the story of his relatives in order to better understand himself. Because he cannot understand why Anja walked out of their shared life, he tries to understand the suspicious death of his grandfather and the withdrawal of his grandmother into oblivion and dementia. With all his might, Jadran tries to understand the departure of his father in the first year of the war in the Balkans as he also tries to comprehend his mother, with her bewildering resentment of his grandfather, and her silent disappointment with his father. The Fig Tree is a multigenerational family saga, a tour de force spanning three generations from the mid-20th century through the Balkans wars of the 90s until present day. Vojnovic is a master storyteller, and while fateful choices made by his characters are often dictated by the historical realities of the times they live in, at its heart this is an intimate story of family, of relationships, of love and freedom and the choices we make.Trade Review"The Fig Tree is an exquisitely rendered novel, it's a big and satisfying read, and among others calls to mind Colum McCann's TransAtlantic and Orhan Pamuk's Silent House." Kon-teksti

Read more less

Book SynopsisA roofless library in the middle of war-torn Bosnia, staffed by a mysterious woman who leads a young solider through hidden doorways. A businessman hiding from an angry mob of unpaid workers in a suitcase and a lonely divorce who picks up a mysterious hitch-hiker, only to be lured by her into an unfamiliar forest. The End. And Again offers a beguiling, imaginative reworking of the history of the independence of Slovenia and the break-up of Yugoslavia through the eyes of its four main characters - like the line-up of a pop group - Peter, Goran, Denis and Mary. Their memories of the years when their interests revolved more around music and love than around the turbulent political situation that derailed their lives intersect with those of Denis, the only one of them to be enlisted and sent into battle. A lack of any meaningful resolution to their mutual story haunts them all and forces them to search for a different end(ing). (And) Again.Trade Review"Bauk's novel throbs with the wounds of his generation and at the same time tells an intense, dazzling story of love and friendship." --Kreuzer Magazine "An exciting and remarkable portrait of a generation, a book about books and what they can do to and with people." --Kleine Zeitung

Read more less

Book SynopsisA complex novel of migration told from the point of view of an un-named narrator. Full of the paradoxes of a life lived in exile and the inevitable doubts and nostalgia for Home, this is a gentle and charming read.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGrandma Non-Oui is a biographical novel that tells the life story of a woman from Split, Croatia. In her youth, Grandma Nedjeljkaor Non-Oui, as she goes by the nickname given to her by her French teacher (a literal French translation of the syllables of her nickname Ne-Da, Slavic for No-Yes)falls in love with an Italian soldier, Carlo, at the end of the second World War and later moves to Sicily to marry him. Written as an exchange between Grandma and Nedjeljka, her granddaughter and namesake, a conversation unfolds that encompasses a broad range of times and places between 1938 to 2016, moving back and forth temporally from past to present, and geographically between Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily and Split, Croatia. Their imagined conversations reveal the lives of these two different women and the deep cross-generational bond between them, as they discuss cross-cultural love, private life, and family, as well as the public sphere of war, politics, and migration.

Read more less

Book SynopsisZvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. At the beginning he only makes small mistakes, forgetting first names and taking home the wrong child from his grandson's kindergarten, but he knows that things will only get worse.He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of comabtting it, with the help of his wife Dina.Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority. This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert planning a secret road for the army with the son of his former colleague. But there's a mystery about a certain hill on the route of this road. Who are the people living there and why are they trapped? And should the hill be flattened and the family evicted, or should a tunnel beneath it be built?With humour and great tenderness, A.B. Yehoshua depicts the love between Luria and his wife as they confront the challenges of his illness. Just when Luria's sense of identity becomes more compromised, then does he find himself, enabling a rich meditation on the entwined identities of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and on the nature of memory itself.Yehoshua weaves a masterful story about a long and loving marriage, interlaced with biting social commentary and caustic humour.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRachele Luzzato is 12 years old when she learns her father is seriously ill. While her family are looking forward to her Bat-Mitzvah, Rachele's teachers happen to cast her as the Madonna in the school's Christmas play. Pulled in opposing directions, Rachele feels the threads of her life begin to untangle. With the fear of losing her father, various forces compete to guide and take care of Rachele: from her charismatic Jewish grandfather, to her Catholic grandparents on her mother's side; and even an old teacher who believes the young girl might take solace from a nineteenth-century novel. These disparate influences ultimately blend in Rachele's imagination to create a fantasy that transcends the religious and cultural conflicts of her everyday life with one simple hope: to end the loneliness felt by an only daughter. With great subtlety and tenderness, A.B. Yehoshua paints a portrait of a young girl at the beginning of her journey into adulthood.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection brings thirty authors in from the margins to occupy centre-page. Queer storytellers. Working class wordsmiths. Chroniclers of colour. Writers whose life experiences give unique perspectives on universal challenges, whose voices must be heard. And read. Emerging writers chosen from open-submission are placed alongside established authors— Aisha Phoenix, Alex Hopkins, Bidisha, Chris Simpson, DJ Connell, Elizabeth Baines, Gaylene Gould, Giselle Leeb, Golnoosh Nour, Hedy Hume, Iqbal Hussain, Jonathan Kemp, Julia Bell, Juliet Jacques, Justin David, Kathy Hoyle, Keith Jarrett, Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal, Lisa Goldman, Lui Sit, Nathan Evans, Neil Bartlett, Neil Lawrence, Neil McKenna, Ollie Charles, Padrika Tarrant, Paul McVeigh, Philip Ridley, Polis Loizou.Trade Review"In these locked down and unfocused times the short story is a much needed respite from the current Covid-19 bleakness. With Mainstream, Inkandescent has gathered together a wonderful collection of fascinating and eclectic stories. Sad, funny, horrifying and demystifying, the unique voices within take us on an open-minded journey around the world. Loved it." – Kathy Burke; "A riveting collection of stories, deftly articulated. Every voice entirely captivating: page to page, tale to tale. These are stories told with real heart from writers emerging from the margins in style." – Ashley Hickson-Lovence, author of The 392 and Your Show; "A triumphant celebration of exiled voices" – Cash Carraway, author of Skint Estate; “MAINSTREAM. An Anthology of Stories from the Edges was published by the indie publisher Inkandescent, crowdfunded through Unbound and edited by Justin David and Nathan Evans, who also run the press. So many aspects about this book and the stories caught my interest – from the publisher to the crowdfunding campaign, to the way they 'found' the authors and, of course, the stories themselves. I’m always a bit nervous to write about anthologies, concerned not to do justice to their authors and the breadth of their topics, takes and techniques, but I will give it my best because I really enjoyed it and encountered so many authors I would like to read more from. The publishers actually had me at their name… (I’m a sucker for an evocative pun). But it’s not just the name, it’s also their "by outsiders for outsiders" statement and their invitation in the anthology’s dedication that reads: "for everyone who’s ever been kept out because of who you are or where you are from, come in…" I’ve heard a few of those promises and they often wake the cynic in me. After having read the stories in the anthology and after having browsed their front- and backlist, this seems to be one of the genuine ones. Interestingly, in our research about the 'diversity' in British publishing, my colleague Anamik Saha and I encountered an unease or ignorance of publishing staff about how to approach and sell to people beyond the white middle-class and their fictitious impersonation "Susan". Inkandescent just do it. Another revealing but maybe not surprising observation is that MAINSTREAM (Inkandescent, 2021) – just like Common People (Unbound, 2019 ), The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Writers (Unbound, 2022), The Good Immigrant (Unbound, 2016; UK edition), and Nasty Women (404ink, 2017), to name just a few – is yet another crowdfunded anthology that aims to rectify an imbalance in publishing and give a stage to voices that are often marginalised and/or ignored. I’ll leave it at that. Golnoosh Noor read from her story "Happy Ending" at the anthology’s launch in July 2021. There are 30 contributions in this anthology – 15 written by established writers, 15 by emerging ones – and it’s rather impossible to sum them all up. They vary in style, theme, mode, perspective and every other possible element of a good story. Some follow realistic conventions, others not at all; one contribution even uses the structure of a nursery rhyme. While some stories are rather straight-forward, others take more time to figure out. The narrators reveal different levels of reliability, but they all suck you into their respective story. I was tempted to just quote some of the endorsements, but I’ll try to be more specific. Let me start with this first observation: what the stories have in common is that they don’t fall into the trap of the single story. There would have been many opportunities to tell the story of a queer Muslim woman in Iran and Saudi Arabia or an encounter between a gay teenager and an older man in the lavatories of a train station that would have perpetuated the stereotypes with which we are so often confronted. Golnoosh Nour ("Happy Ending") and Neil Bartlett ("Twickenham") created complex characters and scenarios with round characters (and, in my opinion, very credible teenage minds) that give you a completely different view. Throughout the book, I found, the round characters provided a welcome change from often stereotypical depictions of, e.g. gay teenagers, working-class children, trans women, people who are HIV positive, street sweepers (not that I have come across that many before), and Muslim families. In the MAINSTREAM anthology, you will find stories written from the point of view of children and elderly people with dementia and everything in between. In fact, the stories are arranged according to the age of the characters and that makes for a very interesting read (says the person who likes to jump around in anthologies). Some of the recurring topics are the barriers that marginalised people encounter in the UK and beyond – and it’s not just London or England and not just contemporary settings – experiences of a pressure to conform as well as the search for and finding ones 'tribe'. Hedy Hume’s "The Beach" is such a story about the life-changing effect that the encounter of a loving community and becoming part of it can have. Some stories are told in retrospect from a more mature perspective, so we’re observing the characters trying to make sense of their lives and how they got where they are now. In "The Beach", the retrospective is interrupted by some memories on another time level, while the act of remembering and sense-making is solved differently in other contributions. In Neil Bartlett’s "Twickenham", the narrator thinks about the many "kinds of silence there are in this story" and how these could be seen as "places we might need to get back to, if we are ever to understand how we got from there to here". Families play a rather important role throughout the anthology. As they do in life, I guess. Here, I felt they were often included as the first space in which the characters explored their identities – or the first collective that demanded conformity ("people like us aren’t like that" – Nathan Evans, "Going Up, Going Down"). Many contributions directly or indirectly allude to the past and the families of their protagonists. How families can be a loving and nurturing environment, or how they can have a detrimental effect on the very fabric of your body (an allusion to "Scaffolding" by Giselle Leeb). And in some cases, the reflection of the protagonists can change their perception of the past: “sometimes the way we choose to love perpetuates the damage we seek to diminish.” (Alex Hopkins, "Last Visit") However, the stories are never just about one thing, one aspect of a character’s identity, one issue with the family or one ‘problem’ they need to overcome. They are also not 'just' about the struggles the off-mainstream characters face, even though it does play a role how the characters are marginalised and hindered in their choices by ‘mainstream’ society. Or how they are discriminated within what one could see as ‘their own’ community at first glance, e.g. for being gay and HIV-positive. The 30 stories leave lots of space to come to one’s own conclusion. And they also provide opportunities to check your own perception and maybe even your own tendency to pigeon-hole as you read.” – Sandra van Lente, Literary Field; "Mainstream, the new anthology of short stories from Inkandescent, is a kaleidoscope of experiences. For a reviewer, this is a challenge — it seemed almost impossible to compress each narrative together into one single review. The resounding message from the collection, ‘stories from the edges’, is as promised in the title and also more – these are universal challenges told from the margins, but also with the ugliness and discomfort which is symptom of demystifying hard truths. Mainstream should come with a trigger warning: it’s furious and it doesn’t take prisoners. You can expect to feel uncomfortable as you intrude on the lives of each of the narrators in these works. You can also rest assured that nothing will be glamorised for your benefit. David and Evans write in their introduction that their publishing company was: founded "by outsiders for outsiders", to celebrate original and diverse talent and to publish voices and stories the mainstream neglects – specifically those of the working class and financially disadvantaged, ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community and, crossing the Venn diagram, those with physical disabilities and mental health issues. From this, you can gain that Mainstream will not be a smooth or homogenous read, but I also had my concerns upon reading this. Would it be one of those book collections that only accepted each ‘minority’ writer under a certain condition? That they might be compelled to only talk about their particular disadvantage? But Inkandescent are more aware than that. While each story does chime with the next, following a coming-of-age trajectory that navigates desire, identity and self-worth, there is very little else that joins each of the writers together. Whether you are reading about the fantastical island of Massor in Bidisha’s 'The Initiation' or the heart-wrenching autofiction-esque talk on a park bench in DJ Cornell’s 'Coup de Grace', there is a lack of pandering to a reader’s desire for a similar tone or genre. There are no heroic, plain and likeable underdogs. Cruelty and neglect are systemic to the five very different childhoods that are presented in the opening five stories by Kathy Hoyle, Lui Sit, Padrika Tarrant, Lisa Goldman and Gaylene Gould respectively. The distorted grip on reality that each of these young narrators show reveal real worlds that have turned against them, although some understandings of this are better than others. In Lisa Goldman’s 'Easy Peelers', the death of a loved one and the discrediting of the working class are recounted through the easily impressionable nature of a young girl. With her mastery of the slightly-altered language in this piece, the writer shows how an impressionable mind is shifted from what is real into the dominant version of a tragedy: where being an 'easy peeler' is due to your own laziness, where ‘England’s plugged into the sun’ and it’s ‘making the world better […] because we’re the best and things are bad', and finally where the 'May Day Massacre' can be quickly softened into the 'London riots'. Innocence is synonymous with invisibility, and imaginative inner worlds are often discredited in these stories – 'we’d just read a story about an alien who talked to a flower [..] she had to believe me,' Lui Sit’s narrator writes in 'Giant’' and yet his inner world must be disbelieved if he is to conform to his mother’s idea of the real world. The final story I wanted to single out from this impressive, opening five was Gaylene Gould’s 'The Spinney'. Tracing the movement through puberty of a young woman, Gould presents stigmas around period shame and rape culture in the unfolding of a painful warning tale. The power of myths written in to cover up a taboo, in this case the 'Witch' who is fabricated in the place of a rape at school, holds such influence that it remains with the narrator even when she reaches adulthood with a daughter of her own — 'Elaine breaks into a run and with each breathless step reminds herself that she is no longer ten years old, and that there is no such thing as witches, especially those that come to take your bleeding daughter as retribution.' The power of the myth is tangible and silencing, leaving a terrible taste in the reader’s mouth. Being susceptible to the power of someone (or something) else is also another ongoing presence throughout the collection, and there are no sudden acts of heroism or deus ex machinas popping out through the structures of any of these stories. Neil Bartlett’s 'Twickenham', Golnoosh Nour’s 'Happy Ending', Juliet Jacques’s 'A Review of "A Return"', Justin David’s 'Serosorting' and Keith Jarrett’s 'It May Concern' all resonate in their navigation of love and its disturbing relationship with power. Sometimes brutally sensory and exciting, other times revealing the blandness of casual relationships, self-worth is often a victim here. As Keith Jarrett’s narrator writes — 'I searched for the ugliness I thought I deserved'. Being an object of desire also feeds off these narrators, and relationships are formed out of disassociations where even being named becomes a danger — 'if you name something, you can fix it to you'. There is also a lonely beauty in the language and detail of these stories too, like this passage from Neil Bartlett’s 'Twickenham': 'Most inexplicably of all, there’s a piano — really — a great, big, black grand piano– something I didn’t know anybody had in their house — and it seems to be collecting all the light in the room. The lid is a pool of oil — and there’s a sheet of music on it, floating. It looks like something somebody must have lost.' Another connection to make between these stories is an obsession with physical and psychological dismorphias. Giselle Leeb’s haunting 'Scaffolding' is a frightening study of the psychosomatic, finding parallels with DJ Connell’s comment in 'Coup de Grace' that 'this caring for the bruises of others was what had me trapped'. The AIDS crisis looms in several of the stories too – it is a grim shadow running through the bodies and psyches of multiple characters. Justin David’s character in 'Serosorting' pointedly marks it as the 'grubby stains of mortality… an infection running through us all […] we are all unclean'. Polis Loizou’s 'Pixmalion' is a subtle study of the impact of social media on the modern relationship. Louizou’s multimedia narrative describes the defensive rhythms of messaging a stranger online, and the desire to seem both unattainable and uninterested: 'There’s a "sticker" on the photo, with a flame emoji to slide up so as to express your lust for him. It takes Herculean effort, but I only slide the flame to just over halfway. I’m sure I’m alone in doing so. Let his ego be starved a little; the doubt may even nourish him.' This piece exposes those safe, 'screen' flirtations which usually trail off immediately. It is brilliantly captured. Iqbal Hussein’s 'The Reluctant Bride' is the study of the Partition, in which the harsh politics of love are told through the allure of an almost unbelievable fairy tale. A homage to the magical realist format, a semi-real churail narrates the piece with a playful layering of stories and a spine that 'rat-a-tats like a burst of firecrackers'. Full of imagination yet equally weighted and painful, I was glad that the curators of this anthology included the more fantastical and speculative genres alongside pieces that were more obviously social commentary. Mainstream is blunt, sexy and unapologetic. I was intrigued by the liveliness of each voice that Inkandescent gave ear to, and the great difficulty for a reviewer trying to pull each of the works together. Each story is its own very different act of defiance, making for an unexpected and addictive read.” – Georgie Proctor, The Word Factory

Read more less

Book SynopsisAddress Book is the new work of fiction by the Costa-shortlisted author of Skin Lane. Neil Bartlett's cycle of stories takes us to seven very different times and situations: from a new millennium civil partnership celebration to erotic obsession in a Victorian tenement, from a council-flat bedroom at the height of the AIDS crisis to a doctor's living-room in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, they lead us through decades of change to discover hope in the strangest of places. 'Bartlett is a pioneer on and off the page and we are lucky to have him telling our stories' DAMIAN BARR 'One of England's finest writers' EDMUND WHITETrade Review"Vivid characters, a fascinating subject and an expertly evoked setting. Excellent’"– Daily Mail; "Bartlett delights in taking that which was once hidden and making it clear for all to see." – Independent; "This book and its enchanting characters had me under their spell. I was bewitched." – Sheila Hancock; "Mysterious, tender and utterly compelling." – S.J. Watson "One of England’s finest writers" – Edmund White

Read more less

Book SynopsisA novel based on the struggles of indigenous peoples in the fictional country of Kayana, 'Land of Many Waters'.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe debut novella by Stella Bech.Madeleine is everything Angela is not: charismatic, lovable, certain. A story of two people who find and lose each other, and the ways love, loss and memory shape a life.

Read more less

Book SynopsisKate and her teenage daughter return to Ireland to sort through what is left of the family farm. Source is a book about beginnings and homeland and the words that accompany us on our journey.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA hurricane is about to hit New York City and Edward Bradington IV has (probably) just been dumped by his boyfriend. He could use a holiday. But with planes grounded and duties to attend to, he decides to drive across the country to his family estate. Accompanied by a photo of his Grams and Gramps and a heart heavy with loss, Edward embarks on a journey into the heart of America. Stopping at roadside bars, diners, and even the grave of the Kentucky Colonel, he will find that - thankfully - journeys home rarely go as planned. Alaric Mark Lewis's debut is an unforgettable epic. Bradington Bay is Homeric in scope, suffused with the adventurous energy of Jack Kerouac, and the heart of James Baldwin.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSixteen-year-old Pen Flowers is angry. She's furious about climate injustice and social inequality, her parents' separation, and her own lonely single existence. The only thing that makes life worth living is dancing. And with that she plans to change the world. But when romance arrives unexpectedly on the No 11 bus, Pen leaps in. Once her heart's set ablaze, she's gripped by passion. With emotions running high, can she stay true to herself, her art, and all the things that matter most to her? Love Like Your Heart's On Fire is the stunning sequel to Live Like Your Head's On Fire. It is a celebration of the power of dance to drive change, and a page-turning story of teenage dreams and devastation. Sally-Anne Lomas's On Fire Trilogy is destined to become a must-read for everyone who wants to live life with passion and make the world a better place.Trade Review'In this searing follow-up to Live Like Your Head's on Fire, Sally-Anne Lomas delivers a gripping and relevant novel, one that roars with intrigue and passion, firing both the head and the heart, while also being a true book for our time.' (Yvvette Edwards, author of Booker longlisted A Cupboard Full of Coats, and The Mother)

Read more less

Book Synopsis1960. The height of the Cold War. Maths prodigy Ginny Matlock is appointed to be the first woman computer at a secretive nuclear testing facility off the East Anglian coast. She quickly finds, in this landscape of endless skies and shifting shorelines, that nothing is what it seems. What is the terrible secret of Briar Cottage? What dark tale haunts the local pub? And who is the mysterious Artist with whom Ginny's fate becomes entangled? As the Berlin Wall rises and nuclear Armageddon threatens in Cuba, can Ginny build a life for herself among so many mysteries or will the terrors of the age suck her under? Sarah Bower's brilliant novella blows the spy thriller genre to pieces and creates a feminist masterpiece from what is left of the rubble. A swirling mystery in which mathematical proof is always just out of reach. Lines and Shadows is the strange lovechild between Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent and John Le Carre.Trade Review'Lines and Shadows is a rich beauty of a novella - part love story, part thriller, with an undertow of the uncanny.' (Heather Richardson, author of A Dress for Kathleen)

Read more less

Book SynopsisMoving On bristles with the talent of writers from Zimbabwe. This collection brings together twenty of Zimbabwe's finest storytellers, from within the country and without.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIt is 1958: Isolde Dahl is a young teacher who goes to work in a British school on the shores of Lake Ploen in north-west Germany. She is returning to a country she fled as a child refugee with her mother, Renate. Her father has disappeared into the chaos of a continent ravaged by war. Isolde has grown up in a Wales both strange and familiar. 1945, Lake Ploen. Michael Quantz is an officer in what is left of a shattered German military command as they stage a last chaotic stand before the Allied armies in the final days of the World War II. Everyone has secrets. Michael wants to survive: his wife and son may still be alive. He will hide, change, become a teacher of music. As Isolde and Michael meet on the shores of a German lake, the choices they have made and the stories they have told will change their lives again.Trade Review`Truly extraordinary' - A L Kennedy, The Guardian; `Davies's fusion of past and present is masterly. A revelation' -Independent; `A timely study of race, identity, prejudice and forgiveness' -Big Issue; `Resonating with poignant imagery, this outstanding novel examines the best and worst of human nature' - The Times

Read more less

Book SynopsisHELLO FRIEND WE MISSED YOU is a deeply poignant and bleakly comic debut novel about loneliness, the 'violent revenge thriller' category on Netflix, solipsism, rural gentrification, Jack Black, and learning to exist in the least excruciating way possible. Its story of depression and death on the small Welsh island of Mon, of people armed with every social media completely failing to communicate, is far, far funnier than it has any right to be. It's also, ultimately, extremely moving. An incredible debut novel from a truly unique prose stylist.Trade Review'Richard Owain Roberts is one of the most distinctive and exciting voice in literature today. In Hello Friend We Missed You we get to see that not only is he a writer of exceptional stylistic talent but one who manages to bring characters and places into vibrant life. This is an undeniably cool book but it also has a great deal of soul. He could be the voice of our generation, I hope people are reading.' - Amy Lloyd, One More Lie (Penguin)

Read more less

Book SynopsisCountry Dance is a story of passion, jealousy and revenge centred around ayoung woman torn between the opportunities and dangers of her life who growsup in an isolated rural community on the border between England and Wales. A classic love story where the rural way of life is no idyll, but a savage andexacting battle for survival.Trade Review`Written with terse incisive power... the novels of Margiad Evans glow with a dark... passionate light..' Derek Savage

Read more less

Book SynopsisBound together by blood ties, Martha, Jack and Shanco live on a farm in west Wales where their lives unfold in their eerie half- presence of their dead parents. Glimmers of understanding punctuate their relationship with one another, but unspoken animosity seems to be the most potent ingredient. A lament for the prizes and the price of nurturing a landscape: an antidote for anyone impatient with those who choose to stay in one place.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Perseids brought it all out of the past, with a force like a blow that leaves you winded. The night lurched and seemed to swoop suddenly down. The boy still lay on his back, but when I sat up, gasping, I glimpsed the pale disc of his face as he turned to see what had startled me. 'It's all right,' I said, though it wasn't. It is the summer of 1954. Four young men, on a summer vacation buy an old car from a farmer and drive it from the hills of Wales all the way to the mountains of Spain. It is only a few years since the war, Europe is still in ruins. They are innocent and war-scarred, dreamers and realists, men but not much more than boys. They have their whole lives ahead of them. This will be their summer to remember. A beautiful, elegiac rumination on youth, friendship and the dreams that we hold. "A haunting meditation on memory and loss that takes the reader on a summer road trip to a vanished Spain. In this well-crafted, wistful novella, Sam Adams weaves his tapestry from fragments of a remembered friendship in a coming of age tale written with sixty years' bitter hindsight." - Richard Gwyn Sam Adams has created a rare novel in The Road to Zarauz, both timeless and very much of a time and a place, a past of hope and expectation erased in a moment, and what remains when hope is gone.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe history of walls – as a way to keep people in or out – is also the history of people managing to get around, over and under them. From the Berlin Wall and the Mexico–US border, to the barbed wire fences of Bangladesh’s refugee camps, the short stories in this anthology explore the barriers that have sought to divide communities and nations, and their traumatic effects on people’s lives and histories. At a time when more walls are being built than are being brought down, All Walls Collapse brings together writing from across national, ethnic and linguistic borders, challenging the political impulse to separate and segregate, and celebrating the role of literature in traversing division.Table of ContentsForeword vii Philippe Sands Introduction ix Will Forrester & Sarah Cleave Translucency 1 Paulo Scott Translated by Daniel Hahn These Days 11 Geetanjali Shree Translated by Daisy Rockwell The Gap 23 Maya Abu Al-Hayat Translated by Yasmine Seale Collateral Damage 29 Zahra El Hasnaoui Ahmed Translated by Dorothy Odartey-Wellington What the Cat Passed On 39 Kyung-Sook Shin Translated by Anton Hur This Side of the Wall 53 Juan Pablo Villalobos Translated by Rosalind Harvey The Fence 65 Krisztina Tóth Translated by Peter Sherwood Reunited 77 Muyesser Abdul’ehed Translated by Munawwar Abdulla Brandy Sour 89 Constantia Soteriou Translated by Lina Protopapa Between Two Infernos 107 Rezuwan Khan Translated by Hla Hla Win Mother’s MacGuffin 115 Larissa Boehning Translated by Lyn Marven

Read more less

Book SynopsisCovering US foreign policy from 1945 to the present day, an anthology of specially commissioned stories by authors from across the globe addressing America's history of intervention.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs part of a unique collaboration, this book pairs a team of award-winning authors with CERN physicists to explore some of the consequences of what the LHC is learning, through fiction.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThere is no doubt that this is, to a considerable extent, an autobiographical novel. It is also clear that parts of it are fictional, but it is not possible to define with any clarity the boundary between autobiography and fiction. The author did serve in the US Army in the Korean War as an underage soldier, though he was probably not quite so young as the narrator claims to have been. The author’s second name “Toteras” is his chosen nom-de-plume, formed from two Greek words “to” and “teras”, meaning “the monster”. The novel begins with the narrator’s return from Korea suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic distress syndrome, and finding himself unable to face his family again. He falls in with a young woman who looks after him. This narrative breaks off to be resumed only in the final chapter of the book, and there follow several chapters in which his early life in San Francisco's Greektown is recounted. Conflicting demands — of their families to be Greek and of their school to become Americans — drive him and his best friend to obtain fake birth certificates, enabling them to enlist, at the age of fourteen, in the US army. Between basic training and embarkation for the Far East they take a bizarre trip to Mexico, where they become involved with a rich American couple who need to involve others in their sex-life. The two teenage soldiers are sent to the Mariana Islands where they are occupied in dismantling a World-War-Two ammunition dump. After an explosion which kills some of their colleagues, they are granted leave, and go to Japan to meet up with a sergeant (also of Greek origin) whom they had made friends with in the training camp. Through a series of mishaps they end up being sent to Korea with the first scratch-force of US troops, following the news that the North Koreans had crossed the 38th Parallel, and they are involved in the first US battles of the Korean War, battles in which the US army was repeatedly defeated with immense loss of life. The battles of Osan, the Pyongtaek Bridge and Taejon are described in graphic and horrific detail, and several subsequent battles are referred to. The novel was completed in the early 1990s, but clearly not to the satisfaction of the author, who died in 2009, leaving it unpublished. The surviving typescripts were problematic, almost unpunctuated and full of errors. They have been painstakingly edited over a number of years and some of the material in the early (Greektown) chapters has had to be rearranged to create a coherent narrative and to remove repetition. The style undoubtedly owes something to Kerouac but the content is far beyond his scope, as it brings us face to face with the insanity and the horror of war and the nature of fear; but it is not without humour, and much of the humour has to do with sex. In this the narrator and his buddy are opposites: the narrator a romantic innocent, his buddy precocious and sex-mad. Although, as noted, the narrative of the weeks after his return alone from Korea is resumed in the concluding chapter, there is no conclusion, for we are left with a final moment of dramatic suspension, not knowing what exactly has just happened and with no clue as to what the narrator’s future will be.Table of ContentsEditorial Note vii Prologue 3 PART I : COMING HOME Epigraph 10 Chapter One The bus station 11 Chapter Two The Sierra Hotel 21 Chapter Three Yet it was only last summer 35 PART II : LEAVING GREEKTOWN Chapter Four The people in Greektown 43 Chapter Five The Greek says No! 55 Chapter Six The Drunken King 65 Chapter Seven Blasphemy 75 Chapter Eight Enlistment 95 PART III : ON THE WAY TO KOREA Chapter Nine Fort Ord 105 Chapter Ten Katherine 123 Chapter Eleven The gambler 143 Chapter Twelve Mr Gregory 157 Chapter Thirteen Camp Stoneman 179 Chapter Fourteen The troopship M.A.T.S. Patrick 197 Chapter Fifteen Saipan and the Philippines 209 Chapter Sixteen The Golden Days of Occupation 221 PART IV : KOREA A note on gaps in the narrative 232 Chapter Seventeen Pusan 233 Chapter Eighteen Taejon and Pyongtaek 243 Chapter Nineteen The hills of Osan 265 Chapter Twenty The Battle of Osan 283 Chapter Twenty-one The Battle of the Pyongtaek Bridge 301 Chapter Twenty-two Retreat 311 Chapter Twenty-three Captured 321 Chapter Twenty-four Friends in a foreign land 337 Chapter Twenty-five The burning of Taejon 347 PART V : NOT HOME YET Chapter Twenty-six Kill 363

Read more less

Book Synopsis'One of the most unforgettable books I have read in the last few years... What a writer! What a thinker! What a woman!' Fiammetta Rocco From the award-winning author of Dust comes a magical, sea-saturated, coming-of-age novel that transports readers from Kenya to China and Turkey. On an island in the Lamu Archipelago lives a solitary, stubborn child called Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor, Muhidin, enters their lives, the child finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life, leading her to distant countries and fraught choices. Selected as a descendant of long-ago Chinese shipwrecked sailors Ayaana is sent to study in China. Leaving her resourceful single mother, she is forced to grow up fast. Whether it's the scarred captain of the Chinese shipping container that transports Ayaana or the son of Turkish shipping magnate who trades in refugees, Owuor never loses a profound sense of empathy for her characters. She evokes a fascinating kind of beauty in this dangerous, chaotic world and its ever-shifting oceans and trade. Told with a glorious lyricism, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of love and adventure, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world. 'One of Africa's most exciting voices ... The Dragonfly Sea is a continent-hopping novel of epic proportions.' Refinery29 'In its omnivorous interest in the world, The Dragonfly Sea is a paean to both cultural diffusion and difference . . . as much as [the novel] traces the globe, it also depicts an internal pilgrimage, its heroine in rose attar a broken saint.' New York Times 'Owuor continues to break ground among contemporary African writers.' Vanity FairTrade Review'The Dragonfly Sea transported me at a time I really wanted to be transported. Lyrical, compassionate, and deeply original, it has stayed with me, and is the novel I have most enjoyed this year.' - Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland 'Moving, epic and transcendent, The Dragonfly Sea is a glorious tale that spans two continents, multiple cultures and the lives of endearing characters.' - Bad Form Review 'One of the most unforgettable books I have read in the last few years ... What a writer! What a thinker! What a woman!' - Fiammetta Rocco 'Owuor's rich prose makes a pointed commentary in this novel about interconnectedness, however unlikely it may seem.' - C.A. Davids, Guardian 'One of Africa's most exciting voices . . . The Dragonfly Sea is a continent-hopping novel of epic proportions.' - Refinery29

Read more less

Book SynopsisA sly and playful novel about the many faces we all have. Fifteen-year-old Berta says that beautiful things aren’t made for her, she isn’t destined to have them, the only things she deserves are ugly. It’s why her main activity, when she’s not at school, is playing the ‘prosopagnosia game’ — standing in front of the mirror and holding her breath until she can no longer recognise her own face. Berta’s mother is in her forties. By her own estimation, she is at least twenty kilos overweight, and her husband has just left her. Her whole life, she has felt a keen sense of being very near to the end of things. She used to be a cultural critic for a regional newspaper. Now she feels it is her responsibility to make her and her daughter’s lives as happy as possible. A man who claims to be the famous Mexican artist Vicente Rojo becomes entangled in their lives when he sees Berta faint at school and offers her the gift of a painting. This sets in motion an uncanny game of assumed and ignored identities, where the limits of what one wants and what one can achieve become blurred.Trade Review‘Fascinating.’ -- Siobhan Murphy * The Times *‘With [Prosopagnosia], Sònia Hernández cements her place as one of the most individual voices of her generation.’ * La Vanguardia *‘In this warm, lively, and intellectual novel, Hernández’s greatest achievement is allowing the protagonist to release her trauma in a way that is both simple and true.’ -- Santos Sanz Villanueva * El Cultural *‘One of the best writers of her generation.’ -- Inés Martín Rodrigo * ABC *‘A novel of our times that explores the difficulty of constructing oneself as a person and the chaos of how things seem to happen to us.’ -- Lluís Satorras * Babelia *‘A tale of the conflict between reality and deception, and how the many forms of exile and solitude come together. A beautiful, enigmatic novel.’ -- Enrique Vila-Matas * El País *‘A reflection on false appearances, assumed identities, the need to invent other lives for ourselves, and the need for art itself.’ -- Ángel Ortín Pascual * Heraldo de Aragón *‘As structured and well-articulated as the paintings that inspired it.’ -- Isabel Gómez Melenchón * La Vanguardia *‘[D]elivers a serious reflection on the purpose and meaning of literary fiction.’ -- Domingo Ródenas * El Periódico *‘For Hernández, plot is just an excuse to articulate her own original ideas about beauty, identity, and exile, and this makes each of her books a declaration of ethical and aesthetic principles. This novel is not a means but an end in itself: the materialisation of her most important themes from life and literature.’ -- Liliana Muñoz * Criticismo *‘Sònia Hernández’ writing is unsettling and unconventional, marked by a complete independence from the dominant trends of contemporary novels in Spanish.’ -- Santos Sanz Villanueva * El Mundo *‘Hernández offers many insights into the value of experience, of travel as personal discovery, and the difficulty of explaining ourselves in our own words. A novel of reflection.’ -- Suárez Lafuente * La Nueva España *‘A narratively ambitious reflection on art, beauty, motherhood, and identity … A conceptually fascinating book.’ * Kirkus Reviews *‘Bewitching and intelligent.’ * Happy Magazine *‘This quirky coming-of-age novel by a celebrated young Spanish writer centres on a tender mother-daughter relationship.’ * New York Times ‘New & Noteworthy’ *‘[B]eguiling … the various characters’ deceptions are unveiled skillfully by Hernández as she distorts the reader’s sense of reality. This novel is more than it seems.’ * Publishers Weekly *‘Hernández leads us on a reflection about truth and reality, about perception and beauty. The book is best read slowly, with time to absorb and contemplate our own reality and how we might be deceiving ourselves.’ * Asymptote ‘New in Translation’ *‘[A]n intellectual and unflinching novel that is not afraid to ask the big questions. What is art? What is beauty? What is truth? Does any of it matter? … Hernández’s economy of language is masterful as she delves into questions that define a culture. Prosopagnosia is an uncanny portrait of what it means to be a human in the world today grappling with beauty, and confronting the way the internet has changed our relationship to art.’ * Write or Die Tribe *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA thrilling, domestic noir from Wales Book of the Year winning and Booker Prize longlisted author.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe 1906 classic is finally back in print!

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhen six year old Mary''s father dies unexpectedly, her mother struggles to feed her five children and has no choice but to leave Mary and her sisters in a Dublin orphanage while she trains as a nurse. When, a long time later, she finally goes home, Mary vows never to think about that place again. But the years of cruelty and neglect have left deep emotional scars, and Mary realises she must face her trauma in order to be able to move on with her life. Lace is the standalone sequel to Salt (Wales Book the Year 2021).

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisShort stories and poems by Rudolf Dobias ("the Slovak Solzhenitsyn") based on his experience of persecution in communist Czechoslovakia.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less