Contemporary fiction titles are those which focus on the present or near past. Stories rooted in the current cultural, social, and political landscape which feature characters we can all recognise.
Contemporary Fiction Books
Text Publishing The Death Of Noah Glass
Book SynopsisHaving just returned from a trip to Sicily, the art historian, Noah Glass is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His grieving grown up children Martin and Evie must deal with the shock of their father''s death but also with his involvement in a sculpture missing from a museum in Palermo.
£10.44
And Other Stories Many People Die Like You
Book SynopsisAn underemployed chef is pulled into the escalating violence of his neighbour's makeshift porn channel. An elderly piano student is forced to flee her home village when word gets out that she's had sex with her thirty-something teacher. A hose pumping cava through the maquette of a giant penis becomes a murder weapon in the hands of a disaffected housewife. In this collection from the winner of Sweden's August Prize, Lina Wolff gleefully wrenches unpredictability from the suffocations of day-to-day life, shatters balances of power without warning, and strips her characters down to their strangest and most unstable selves. Wicked, discomfiting, delightful and wry, delivered with the deadly wit for which Wolff is known, Many People Die Like You presents the uneasy spectacle of people in solitude, and probes, with savage honesty, the choices we make when we believe no one is watching ... or when we no longer care.Trade Review'Spirited . . . darkly funny.' Eithne Farry, Daily Mail----‘Witty, acerbic short stories . . . wickedly thrilling . . . brilliantly unsettling.’ Baya Simons, FT----‘Wolff revels in turning the tables on expectation and convention. Each story [starts] without preamble, ostensibly casual, but always with authority.’ Catherine Taylor, Irish Times----‘[Wolff] explores the choices we make when we think no one is watching.’ Dazed----‘Nothing thwarts quite as excruciatingly as thwarted desire. Wanting what they can’t have is a speciality of many of these characters.’ Stuart Walton, Hong Kong Review of Books----‘Dark, wicked and funny.’ Francesca Brown, The Stylist----‘Wolff excels with the disaffected and the weird.’ Kirkus Reviews----‘Wolff shows us that while conventionality is, indeed, death, the opposite isn’t true: unconventionality isn’t life, and it won’t automatically make you happy.’ Marta Balcewicz, Ploughshares----‘A good short story collection feeds our desire for interesting characters and good storytelling without demanding a large time commitment. Lina Wolff’s Many People Die Like You certainly meets those criteria. Her characters traverse compelling plots that often take them and us to unexpected and often uncomfortable places. Each of her well-crafted stories ends with enough left unexplained to keep us thinking beyond that last page and with the lingering pleasure of a story well-told. I do not often re-read, but these stories have enough complexity to bring me back to them again.’ The Raven Bookstore, Kansas----'An immediate success for Lina Wolff ... Many People Die Like You is a more than promising debut. Lina Wolff is a skilled stylist and a good storyteller.' Arbetarbladet ----'Several of the stories are so funny that you'd probably bring joy to your neighbours if you read them aloud.' Skanska Dagbladet ---- 'Many People Die Like You is full of life in motion. Depicted with such certainty that even the narrator's voice must at times give way to the swelling language. And so, Lina Wolff has arrived as one of the important voices in Swedish literature. Not least because of the freedom the texts create for themselves. A freedom full of pleasure and humor alongside ever-present earnestness.' Helsingborgs Dagblad ----'Lina Wolff either quickly visits people who are happening to have a good, perhaps heightened conversation. Or, she tells a story with a beginning and end. Two approaches to the short story, here both are equally exciting to read. ' Kultureytt, Radio SR P1----'It's a matter of course of Lina Wolff's way of writing, as though each formulation and twist has been there all along, just waiting to be written down by her. Perhaps it is a matter of self-esteem, combined with a drive that draws you instantly and relentlessly into her stories. / ... / Wolff creates a hypnotic pull around her characters, making the reader wish they could remain in the story, how crass and chewy the lives portrayed can seem. The main characters are as often men as they are women, and Wolff writes with equal ease from a female and a male perspective. Human as humans are: sad and comical, petty and grand. ' Svenska Dagbladet ----'Wolff's brilliant language, twisted intrigue and black humor makes this debut the best I've read this year.' Femina magazine (5 of 5 stars) ----Many People Die Like You is a fantastic short story collection. It's quiet, thoughtful and, in spite of all the suffering, very funny. ' Vi magazine
£9.50
And Other Stories Slash and Burn
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2022 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize Shortlisted for the Premio Valle-Inclan prize for its translation Through war and its aftermaths, a woman fights to keep her daughters safe. Like peasants through the ages, she desperately slashes and burns in order to make a place for her children to return to. A country girl sees her village sacked and her beloved father disappeared. She is taken to the mountains to join the guerrillas, who force her to give up the baby she conceives. Surviving the rebellion, and now a woman, she sets out to find her daughter, travelling across the Atlantic with meagre resources. She returns to a community in which civilians, the militia and the ex-guerrilla fighters have to live together in a society riddled with distrust, fear and hypocrisy. Hernandez's narrators have the level gaze of ordinary women reckoning with extraordinary hardship. Denouncing the ruthless machismo of combat with quiet intelligence, Slash and Burn creates a suspenseful, slow-burning revelation of rural life in the aftermath of political trauma.Trade Review'An intensive reading experience . . . What Slash and Burn - named after a method of agriculture both destructive and regenerative - shows is the difficulty of creating a new life after war or other trauma.' John Self, The Guardian----'A brilliant evocation of civil war and its bitter legacy.' Lucy Popescu, The Observer----'Slash and Burn investigates with brilliance and compassion the depth of desolation, violence and loss the civil conflict inflicted on a scarred society.' Morning Star----'This is a book that uses indirect narration to create accounts that are both detailed and expansive, putting the personal first but speaking for the collective and from a more vulnerable part of society, really demonstrating the multi-layered meaning of being a survivor.' Sounds and Colours----'An indictment of the inherent misogyny of war and an homage to the women who tirelessly fight for justice and survival on all fronts. But hers is not simply a literature of denunciation, for in the same pages she shows, with fierce heart, the ways women refuse to be crushed, the sometimes broken ways they manage to take care of each other and struggle to survive.' John Gibler----'Extraordinary and utterly gripping, a work of brutally profound beauty and universal significance.' Philippe Sands----'What does it truly mean to be at peace following a war? Slash and Burn is a deeply thoughtful and empathetic examination of how a civil war is inherited, and how it affects subsequent generations of women. Stylistically brave and thematically bold, it is essential, necessary reading for understanding the transition from combatant to civilian, and what historical and national trauma look like on a personal level.' Julianne Pachico----'After reading far too many books about the Central American guerrilla told by and about men, I welcome this terrific novel that delves into the stories of women who come of age during and after war. In Slash and Burn, the aspirations, labour and education of women, as well as motherhood, love, reconciliation and exile, are tied together in sharp, profound prose you can't stop reading.' Lina Meruane----'It is astonishing that someone can write in such a clean and transparent way about a turbulent past. Claudia Hernandez's prose is the controlled breathing of someone who knows that memory is another battlefield. Claudia Hernandez, like her protagonists, lucid and tough women, knows how to cross these battlefields. Slash and Burn confirms that she is one of the best writers in our language.' Yuri Herrera----'Claudia Hernandez is one of the most groundbreaking short story writers from Central America, with a way of approaching the story that is closer to Virgilio Pinera o Felisberto Hernandez than to the realist tradition. Her five story collections prove this. Now, with her first novel, Claudia Hernandez takes on a new challenge: telling the recent history of El Salvador through three generations of women scarred by civil war, poverty and emigration. A pulsating feminine universe, full of energy and courage, despite the permanent threat of violence that surrounds it. An intense and moving novel, and a very intriguing way of storytelling that will captivate the reader.' Horacio Castellanos Moya----'Slash and Burn is an incisive look into the lasting wounds of El Salvador's Civil War. It is a tale of generational healing and resilience centred on its women. Hernandez is a calm, cutting voice on how what is broken must be put back together.' Ryan Gattis----'Slash and Burn reimagines the country through the voices of mothers, daughters and wives. The female gaze cuts sharp in this retelling.' Gabriela Aleman----'Claudia Hernandez's extraordinary novel Slash and Burn has an embattled, unsentimental narrative style, with swift shifts of point of view to voices that are often telling her characters what isn't possible, and a future tense that dramatizes the (im)possibilities for her and her family. Slash and Burn is destined to become a classic.' Mauro Javier Cardenas----'There is a surreal, dreamlike quality to this challenging story. . . it abounds with memories of violence told in a third person bordering on the first, both because of the randomness of events depicted and the naivety and warmth of the language that recounts the almost childlike aspects of the war, always through eyes and a voice that are, above all, feminine.' The Spanish Bookstage, "Weekly Choice"
£10.79
Stormbird Press Paradise Earth
Book Synopsis
£11.60
And Other Stories Barn 8
Book SynopsisOne disaffected administrator, one disenchanted teenager, four hundred and twenty-one vegan extremists, sixty trucks, and nine hundred thousand grumpy layer hens awaiting liberation. In barns. Six barns. No, wait, seven. No, wait ... Two auditors for the US egg industry conceive a plot to liberate an entire egg farm's worth of animals, with catastrophic results. This wildly inventive but utterly plausible novel about a heist of a very unusual kind swirls with a rich array of voices: a farmer's daughter, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger who stumbles upon forty thousand hens, and a security guard abandoned for years on a farm. We glimpse the evolution of chickens twenty thousand years from now. We hear what hens think happens when they die. And at the heart of this more-than-plucky novel lies the question: what constitutes meaningful action in a world so in need of change? With towering ingenuity, eviscerating wit, and unflappable passion, Barn 8 is a true rare breed, a comic-political drama, and a tour de force for our time.Trade Review'Barn 8 is a novel like no other: An urgent moral fantasia, a post-human parable, a tender portrait of animal dignity and genius.' Dana Spiotta ---- 'Deb Olin Unferth's hilarious genius is on dazzling display in this novel. Come for the brilliant insights about our faltering civilization. Stay for the revolutionaries and the chickens. You are really really going to love these chickens . . .' Jenny Offill ----'Full of grit, humour and tenderness.' Baya Simons, Financial Times ----'Aesthetically perfect and philosophically profound . . . the chicken-related writing is a force unto itself.' Sandra Newman, The Guardian Book of the Day ----'Written with vim and wit, Barn 8 is a highly enjoyable treatment of a worthwhile social issue.' Anthony Cummins, The Observer----'Non-chronological and ornithological, it leaps forwards to a charred and toxic future when chickens have outlived mankind, and back to the first fowls who shared the planet with dinosaurs.' Jakob Hofmann, The TLS----'[Unferth's] prose is intricate and vibrant . . . Characters are brightly drawn, dialogue is snappy. [Barn 8] reads like a comi-tragic manifesto of our age.' Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times ----'Barn 8 is a slyly effective absurdist comment on a country that consumes a staggering 75 billion eggs a year.' Claire Allfree, Daily Mail ----'A wild and pacey novel [that] also contains complex depths. Unferth is a playful and digressive writer with a keen psychological insight.'Nick Major, Herald Scotland ----'Utterly absorbing . . . brilliantly executed. A contender for book of the year.' New Internationalist ----'Unferth deftly balances [the horrors of the American egg industry] with a playful tone and a rich lattice of viewpoints and insights . . . she sets out to capture everything, from the life of the individual hen to the churn of the natural world.' Rebecca Cook, Literary Review ----'A daring writer of wit, imagination, and conscience, Unferth has transformed her foray into hen hell into an adroitly narrated, fast-paced, yet complexly dimensional novel about emotional and environmental devastation . . . Unferth sharply illuminates the contrariness of human nature, celebrates the evolutionary marvels of chickens, and exposes the horrors of the egg industry . . . [A] vividly provoking and revelatory work of ecofiction spiked with mordant humor and powered by love.' Booklist, starred review----'Ignited by her fiery wit and distinctive voice, Unferth's novel uses one of America's most valuable and overlooked institutions as fertile ground to raise questions around the truths people are fed and the ones they turn a blind eye to. . . Unferth's writing never feels patronizing-more than anything, it's galvanizing. . . If this novel isn't a movement, it has enough heart to start one.' Kirkus Reviews, starred review----'In this outrageous piece of rural noir and pitch-perfect characterization, Unferth recalls Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang with a dose of vegan-minded quirk. This entertaining, satisfying genre turn shows off Unferth's range, and readers will be delighted by the characters' earnest crusade.' Publishers Weekly, starred review---- 'Like Flannery O'Connor, Deb Olin Unferth does things entirely her own way, and that way is impossible to describe. . . . This very funny and absurd novel is also as serious as the world.' Zachary Lazar ---- 'I leap to read anything Deb Olin Unferth writes, and her latest book, Barn 8, is further proof of her singular talent, her gigantic heart. While Unferth's characters try to save hens, her miracle of a novel might, in turn, save you.' R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries ----Praise for Wait Till you See me Dance ----'This assemblage of down-and-out moments is delivered with a wit and concision reminiscent of Lydia Davis and Diane Williams, a wry intelligence and keen irony that don't prevent Unferth's prose from offering deep emotional intimacy. . . . Unferth's book is rich with surprises, small and large. . . . Again and again in these pages, Unferth swerves from the mundane to the extraordinary, from biting to soaringly celebratory, often in a single sentence.' The New York Times Book Review ----'One of the most important voices in fiction's long-awaited collection of short fiction is a fascinating must-read.' Newsweek---- '[Unferth's] absurd and tender story collection is full of sentences like clear glass doors, and you, reader, are the bird. . . . The way she writes [her characters] is reminiscent of the unsentimental, often absurd, compassion of George Saunders. . . . The multiplicity of feeling is wonderful; it's like she's swirling all these different colors of paint together but stops while it's all still just thinly marbled together.' NPR ---- 'No one can resist Unferth's masterful distortion of the American dream with a set of unforgettable mistake-makers who aren't quite past redemption.' Courtney Maum, CNN Travel
£9.49
Cinnamon Press Child of the Black Sun
Book SynopsisHonza Pernath’s life is barren. The person he loves is gone and his friends, even his dreams, say she will not return. When a chance meeting sets him on a search for his lost love, the path is neither straight nor easy and Honza comes to doubt everything, including the one he searches for. A single image—a star rising over the sea—calls him on, but that image is more than it seems and as Honza nears its source, his search reveals more than he could have imagined. A sequel to the mysterious and beautiful short story, ‘Marietta Merz’ (now an illustrated chapbook), Child of the Black Sun is an exploration of the living symbols at the core of everyday life; a visionary evocation of the internal journey.
£10.44
Open Letter The Golden Calf
Book SynopsisFunniest novel of Soviet era.
£14.39
Cinder House Cat Step
Book SynopsisOne mistake can unravel everything... She only left her daughter in the car for a minute; just a quick minute whilst she ran into the shop. She barely thought twice about making the decision, but it soon began to consume her every thought. And not just her thoughts, but those of every neighbour, police officer and social security worker in a fifteen mile radius. But this is her child. Surely she knows best? After she'd made the move to a small town in Scotland, the rolling hills and blustery beaches seemed to be the perfect backdrop for her and her four year-old daughter, Emily, to start again. It wasn't always easy just the two of them, but Liz was sure that she could manage this time. And now this? Sometimes, one mistake is all it takes to unravel everything.
£9.49
Cinder House Along the Journey River: A Mystery
Book SynopsisSacred artifacts have gone missing from the Minnesota Red Earth Reservation and the suspect list is growing. While it could be the racists from the bordering town, or a young man struggling with problems, or the county coroner and his cronies, the need for answers and apprehending the culprit is amplified when the Tribal Chairman, is murdered.
£9.49
Open Letter Maidenhair
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Pushkin Press Number One Chinese Restaurant
Book SynopsisLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION Mixing business and family is a recipe for disaster 'A warm, moving multi-generational family saga, with a blackly comic streak that will make you snort your tea' Sam Baker, The Pool Bedtime Book Club The popular Beijing Duck House has been serving devoted regulars for decades. Yet behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from years of bustling restaurant life. When disaster strikes, two of the younger generation find themselves in a dangerous game that means tragedy for the Duck House. And soon, their families are forced to finally confront the conflicts and loyalties playing out beneath the red and gold lanterns.
£8.54
Pushkin Press Machine
Book SynopsisShe's one of the stars of the shore this summer; one of the girls who doesn't care what she's drinking or what pill she's taking; who ties perfectly knotted cherry stems with her tongue; her family is rich and she's untouchable. Except her parents' marriage is in brutal collapse and her brother is violently lashing out, the community around her wracked with suspicion and guilt. As her identity unravels, she circles back to the night that a local girl drowned, and no one tried to save her. Daringly experimental, Machine is a kaleidoscopic interrogation of gender, class and privilege, an unforgettable rendering of youth spinning out of control.Trade Review'Steinberg shifts backwards and forward in time, just as her prose shifts into a kind of poetry. The result is a glittering, knifelike reflection of despair through the eyes of a young woman, made richer by the fact that it's told in hindsight' - New Yorker'Otherworldly, and every-other-line sublime, Machine reads like the text messages Laura Palmer might send back from the Black Lodge. It's a timely reminder of why our culture remains haunted by dead girls, and of the different ways we find to drown them' - Bennett Sims'Her slim narrative of adolescent crisis is as propulsive as it is disorienting, subverting expectations at every turn' - The Atlantic
£8.54
Unnamed Press The Border of Paradise: A Novel
Book SynopsisA remarkable multigenerational novel, The Border of Paradise transports readers into the world of an iconoclastic midcentury family. In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak's only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David's life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame -- beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California's Polk Valley. As David's mental health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter. When Marianne appears at their doorstep, the couple's fateful decision to take the child as their own determines a tragic course of events for the entire family. Told from multiple perspectives, The Border of Paradise culminates in heartrending fashion, as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune must confront their past and the tragic reality of their future.Trade Review"The Border of Paradise is shaped by darkness and the kind of delicious story that makes for missed train stops and bedtimes, keeping a reader up late for just one more page of dynamic character-bouncing perspective (an idea which came to Wang in dreams). It is the author's stunning introduction to the literary world." -Alli Maloney, The New York Times "Wang's prose is beautiful and restrained, and her generous, precise characterization makes every perspective feel organic and utterly real in the face of increasingly theatrical circumstances. The result -- the story of an American family stretched and manipulated into impossible shapes -- is an extraordinary literary and gothic novel of the highest order." -Carmen Maria Machado, NPR "Gothic in tone, epic in ambition, and creepy in spades." --Kirkus Reviews One of Library Journal's picks for Top Spring Indie Fiction: "A well-wrought multigenerational novel that also appeals for its honest look at mental illness." --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal One of the Lit Hub's Books to Read in April: "Wang takes Ahab's rant of... 'madness maddened' and infuses it through all of the characters in this book, not just the ones who are identified as crazy. A terrifying look at dysfunction, manipulation, and psychological torture and love, yes love. A very deftly written first novel." --The Lit Hub One of the Chicago Review of Books Best Books from Independent Presses in April "Esme Weijun Wang's new novel focuses on the complex relationships among a family with a prosperous business in the post-war United States, and the conflicts and questions of family that occur over time." --Vol. 1 Brooklyn "The Border of Paradise is a magnificent achievement -- an exhortation for human tenderness and individual dignity in the most difficult of circumstances. Wang explores identity and family with a sense of drama that borders on gothic, without ever sacrificing the psychological texture that connects us to her characters." --Adrienne Celt, author of The Daughters "Esme Weijun Wang's relentlessly moving debut The Border of Paradise is a profound epic of potent darkness with all sorts of unexpected light. The story of the Nowak family contains notes of Lidia Yuknavitch, Christine Schutt, and Kevin Wilson, and yet remains unlike anything I've ever read. Trauma is rendered gorgeously, from every angle, within every possibility. Whether tackling New York, California, or Taiwan, Wang performs this novel with glorious courage, ambition, passion, and style." --Porochista Khakpour, author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion "A stunning meditation on the meaning of marriage, the limits of language, and the inescapable solitude of the mind. Esme Weijun Wang's writing is spellbinding; her characters are hauntingly alive." --Jennifer DuBois, author of Cartwheel
£10.44
Pushkin Press The Family Chao
Book SynopsisFor years, the residents of Lake Haven, Wisconsin ignored the whispered troubles about the Chao family, if only to keep eating at the best restaurant in town. But when tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family's meat freezer, scandalous events force the community to turn its attention to the three Chao sons. DAGOU, presupposed heir to the business. MING, successful banker, determined to sever ties with Haven's Asian community once and for all. JAMES, naive college student, who is only just learning of his family's past. As the family's dog mysteriously disappears, and Dagou "Dog Eater" Chao is held on trial for his father's murder, the Chaos' turbulent history spills into the public eye while a small town looks on in disbelief...Trade Review'Chang's prose moves with the unfussy ease of a shark through water - for the longest time you are just enjoying your swim, soaking up the story. Only midway through the book does it occur to you that a master hunter is at work: a writer cutting through the darker depths of what it means to be treated as an outsider in America' - The Guardian'Scathing and hilarious, the rollicking tale considers the thorny themes of assimilation, identity, pride, filial piety, transracial adoption, and interracial relationships... you'll never look at Chinese restaurant families the same' - Vogue'[An] entertaining portrait of a clusterf**k Chinese-American family... a memorable expose of the dark undercurrents of small-town morality' - The Independent'An insightful comedy of the American immigrant experience, and of a small town's inner workings' - John Irving'A very smart novel about family, immigration, delicious food, and brutal Midwestern winters AND a modern retelling of The Brothers Karamazov (!)' - Curtis Sittenfeld (via Twitter)
£9.49
The Indigo Press Yes Yes More More
Book SynopsisTwo schoolgirls in Bolton take acid just before their English class. A film journalist shares tea and a Kitkat with Marcel Proust, more or less, during a long train journey. An afterparty turns into a crime scene. Colleagues, maybe in love, have lunch and don’t quite talk about their relationship. A woman flees to New Orleans and finds unexpected treasures there. In her electric debut, Anna Wood skips through the decades of a woman’s life, meeting friends, lovers, shapeshifters and doppelgängers along the way. Delights and regrets pile up, time becomes non-linear, characters stumble and shimmy through moments of rupture, horror and joy. Written with warmth, wit and swagger, these stories glide from acutely observed comic dialogue to giddy surrealism and quiet heartbreak, and always there is music – pop songs as tiny portals into another world. Yes Yes More More is packed with friendship, memory, pleasure and love.Trade ReviewThoughts, connected, on Mayday https://www.thesocial.com/thoughts-connected-on-mayday-by-anna-wood/ -- Anna WoodBumper Christmas Issue Featured in ‘New Year’s Read-olutions: What we’re looking forward to in 2021’ * The Indie Insider Newsletter *‘This!! Book!! It makes me ache. I ache for nights out and hangovers and weddings and holidays, I ache for pubs and New Orleans and swimming in the pond.’ https://twitter.com/alicemjslater/status/1348756457932660739 -- Alice Slater * Twitter *‘An ode to being alive & the sometimes painful beauty of the world, immerses you in a stream of brilliant shining moments, carries you effortlessly on its flow. I’m in awe.’ https://twitter.com/Catrionaward/status/1349328073213308928 -- Catriona Ward * Twitter *‘The writing is sharp and funny and the dialogue is relatable and genuine. I just couldn’t stop reading and ended up finishing the last story in a stone cold bath! I can’t recommend this collection enough.’ https://www.instagram.com/p/CKG4_YZgRb5/ -- @bookishchat * Instagram *‘Amazing and brilliant’ https://twitter.com/TedKessler1/status/1352577170967822337/photo/1 -- Ted Kessler * Twitter *‘Really really brilliant’, ‘filled with vitality’, ‘we love it’ Stay Indoors and Read: Episode 4 https://edmcdonaldwriting.com/stay-indoors-and-read/ -- Ed Mcdonald and Catriona Ward * Stay Indoors and Read (vlog) *Rough Trade Book Club with Leone Ross and Anna Wood https://www.mixcloud.com/sohoradio/rough-trade-book-club-04052021/ * Soho Radio *Review: Yes Yes More More by Anna Wood (2021) ‘The writing is dazzling – so sharp and fresh and vivid – every sentence zings with truth.’ https://elspells.home.blog/2021/05/06/review-yes-yes-more-more-by-anna-wood-2021/ * Elspells *Review: Yes Yes More More ‘Days of glory, joy and happiness is a fair description of most of Yes Yes More More.’ https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/102954-2/ -- Alex Diggins * 3AM Magazine *Review: Yes Yes More More by Anna Wood ‘This is a book about what it takes to be alive, a field guide to living life as well as we possibly can, while we can.’ https://lunate.co.uk/reviews/yes-yes-more-more-by-anna-wood -- Gary Kaill * Lunate *Anna Wood’s Yes Yes More More: Stories of Pleasure and Friendship ‘Published by The Indigo Press, Wood’s debut is a comical, heart-warming and introspective example of masterful short fiction’ https://nrthlass.com/2021/05/31/anna-woods-yes-yes-more-more-stories-of-pleasure-and-friendship/ -- Beth Barker * NRTH LASS *10 reasons to love Yes Yes More More https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2021/06/10-reasons-to-love-yes-yes-more-more/ -- Wndy erskine * Caught By The River *Review | Yes Yes More More by Anna Wood ‘After being deprived of these things for so long, many of us are realising just how precious they are as we creep back to normality. Yes Yes More More, already a trove of joy and feeling, therefore comes to us at a time when we are even more capable of appreciating it.’ https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/review-yes-yes-more-more-by-anna-wood/ -- Alys Key * The London Magazine *The best books of 2021 so far: Novels, memoirs, short stories and more https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-best-books-of-2021-so-far-novels-memoirs-short-stories-and-more-1.4596346 -- Wendy Erskine * The Irish Times *The good life: Delight, indulgence and grit in Anna Wood’s Yes Yes More More ‘Fifteen immensely nourishing stories that shimmer with thrills, fun and pleasure, each one a chomping bite of everything good about life.’ https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/yes-yes-more-more-anna-wood-book-review-alice-ash/ -- Alice Ash * The Times Literary Supplement *
£10.44
Wakefield Press The Creator
Book SynopsisA philosophical fable from a great forgotten German fabulist Billed by its author--the pseudonymous Mynona (German for “anonymous” backward)--as “the most profound magical experiment since Nostradamus,” The Creator tells the tale of Gumprecht Weiss, an intellectual who has withdrawn from a life of libertinage to pursue his solitary philosophical ruminations. At first dreaming and then actually encountering an enticing young woman named Elvira, Weiss discovers that she has escaped the clutches of her uncle, the Baron, who has been using her as a guinea pig in his metaphysical experiments. But the Baron catches up with them and persuades Gumprecht and Elvira to come to his laboratory, to engage in an experiment to bridge the divide between waking consciousness and dream by entering a mirror engineered to bend and blend realities. Mynona’s philosophical fable was described by the legendary German publisher Kurt Wolff as “a station farther on the imaginative train of thought of Hoffmann, Villiers, Poe, etc.,” when it appeared in 1920, with illustrations by Alfred Kubin (included here). With this first English-language edition, Wakefield Press introduces the work of a great forgotten German fabulist. Mentioned in his day in the same breath as Kafka, Mynona, aka Salomo Friedlaender (1871–1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality: a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biography and Kant for Children) and a literary absurdist by night, who composed black humored tales he called Grostesken. His friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin and Karl Kraus.
£11.88
The Indigo Press Arrival
Book SynopsisArrival is an exploration of the ripple effects of domestic abuse. The story follows a young woman fleeing her home country and trying to rebuild her life abroad, after she has suffered violence at the hands of an alcoholic father. Prompted by her therapist, the unnamed protagonist starts processing the abuse experienced in her childhood while also pondering what it means to be a mother when consumed by trauma. The novel bends form to accommodate the narrator’s scattered mind and her attempt to assemble a version of herself through fragments and stitches of memories, borrowed conversations and minutiae that linger and haunt. Despite grappling with heavy themes – trauma, rejection, cultural identity – the narrative is infused with love and determination and interwoven with folk tales and rituals. It depicts the ways in which we are resilient, capable of carving our own paths and reimagining our lives.Trade ReviewWhat to read in 2022: 10 Books from Eastern Europe to embrace the world more closely ‘Deleva’s story is not told in neatly packaged chapters, but shards of flashbacks, memories, and observations, in prose that is languid and inquiring.’ https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/13383/memoirs-novels-and-poetry-from-eastern-europe-to-look-forward-to-in-2022 -- Matt Janney * The Calvert Journal *The new book releases you need in your life in 2022 https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/g38664811/best-books-2022/?slide=12 -- Alice Snape * Cosmopolitan *For the Record by Nataliya Deleva https://www.lunate.co.uk/fiction/for-the-record-by-nataliya-deleva * Lunate *How Nataliya Deleva Became An Internationally Acclaimed Writer https://www.writerscollegeblog.com/how-nataliya-deleva-became-an-internationally-acclaimed-writer/ -- Veselina Yaneva * Writers College *‘Deleva has struck again, this novel had me entirely captivated me from start to finish! Its vulnerable, honest yet meditative & optimistic. Just breathtaking!’ https://www.instagram.com/p/CaSgsPzr8zG/?hl=en -- @gabrielas_goodreads * Instagram *‘l took my breath away. From the moment I read the first page, I was mesmorised by Deleva’s prose.’ https://www.instagram.com/p/CfQa6-fLVoZ/?hl=en -- @currentlysammy * Instagram *‘Arrival is remarkable. The prose is lush and beautifully written.’ https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce53iuCLhDE/?hl=en -- @booksolace * Instagram *‘A heartbreaking but beautiful story about domestic violence and its effects.’ https://www.instagram.com/p/CdL6rGrL-pk/?hl=en -- @mcmreads * Instagram *‘Beautiful characters, a love letter to youth, optimism and of living in London, vulnerable and honest, and containing such raw hope for the future, an incredibly affecting read! 5 stars’ https://www.instagram.com/p/CaW8cDyL9k_/?hl=en -- @bristolianbooks * Instagram *
£10.79
The Indigo Press Between Dog and Wolf
Book SynopsisMoscow, 1985. Four teenagers – Anya, Milka, Petya and Aleksey, whose lives, like those of their Western counterparts, are fuelled by sex, alcohol and cigarettes – yearn for a world of Levi’s, Queen, foreign travel and the freedom to choose their fates. Instead, they encounter heartbreak and tragedy, while all around them Soviet policies, cruel but familiar, are giving way to untested concepts such as glasnost and perestroika and a brief flourishing of hope before the next repressive regime take root. This is the hour between dog and wolf, twilight, when one state has ended and another has not quite begun. Although it depicts a chaotic and desperate era, this exceptional debut novel pulsates with life. It is radiant with friendship and love, the power of international literature, values and politics, as its characters struggle to survive, to save their country and one another.Trade Reviewhttp://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/mar_22.htm#markzvonkovic -- Mark Zvonkovic * Midwest Book Review *https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-593-35601-2 * Publishers Weekly *https://chireviewofbooks.com/2022/03/21/the-orchard/amp/ -- Caitlin Stout * Chicago Review of Books *https://www.startribune.com/review-the-orchard-by-kristina-gorcheva-newberry/600155081/ -- Cory Ildweller * Minneapolis Star Tribune *https://www.bookpage.com/reviews/the-orchard-kristina-gorcheva-newberry/ -- Thane Tierney * Bookpage *https://www.christinesneed.com/post/interview-with-debut-novelist-kristina-gorcheva-newberry -- Christine Sneedhttps://swvatoday.com/community/bland_county/article_5b4553c4-c7fa-11ec-8dec-2f6076c9405b.html#tracking-source=home-top-story -- Millie Rothrock * Bland Country Messenger *https://www.pbs.org/show/write-around-corner/ -- Rose Martin * Write Around the Corner, Blue Ridge PBS *https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/an-interview-with-kristina-gorcheva-newberry?fbclid=IwAR3N8AWAzlt4DR-TVlIbsM5qddq7c-zqcDWRxlsnkKoIlHyaahaIpK18-6M&fs=e&s=cl -- Cathy Alter * Washing Independent Review of Books *https://harvardreview.org/book-review/the-orchard/ -- Olive Fellows * The Harvard Review *https://nypost.com/2022/10/13/priyanka-chopra-jonas-favorite-jewels-and-beauty-finds/ -- Priyanka Chopra * The New York Post *Best books of 2022: Top 30 must-read titles of the year (nypost.com) -- Mackenzie Dawson * The New York Post *
£12.34
Wakefield Press Vercoquin and the Plankton
Book SynopsisA nonconformist satire of both bureaucracy and nonconformism from the French polymath and author of Foam of the Days Written at the age of 23 for his friends in the winter of 1943–44, Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Vian’s novels to be published under his own name. Published in 1947, the book came out two months after his succès de scandale I Spit on Your Graves and two months before the publication of his beloved classic The Foam of the Days. At once social documentary, scathing satire and jazz manifesto, Vercoquin and the Plankton describes the collision of two worlds under the Vichy regime: that of the youthful dandyism of the ever-partying Zazous and the murderously maniacal bureaucracy of a governmental office for standardization. In this roman à clef drawn from Vian’s own contradictory lives as a jazz musician on the Left Bank and an engineer at the French National Organization for Standardization, the reader is introduced to a handful of characters inhabiting a world lying somewhere between Occupied Paris and Looney Tunes. Boris Vian (1920–59) was a French polymath who in his short life managed to inhabit the roles of writer, poet, playwright, musician, singer/songwriter, translator, music critic, actor, inventor and engineer, before dying of a heart attack at the age of 39, after authoring ten novels, several volumes of short stories, plays, operas, articles and nearly 500 songs. Vian is remembered as one of the reigning spirits of the postwar Parisian Latin Quarter, a friend to everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre to Raymond Queneau and Miles Davis, playing trumpet with Claude Abadie and Claude Luter, and an influence on such future kindred spirits as Serge Gainsbourg.
£12.34
Saraband Goblin
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY FIRST BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2017 "A profoundly affecting, intellectually challenging and beautifully written fable ... a marvellous piece of work." - Stuart Kelly, Scotsman. Goblin is an oddball and an outcast. But she's also a dreamer, a bewitching raconteur, a tomboy adventurer whose spirit can never be crushed. Running feral in World War II London, Goblin witnesses the carnage of the Blitz and sees things that can never be unseen...but can be suppressed. She finds comfort in her beloved animal companions and lives on her wits with friends real and imagined, exploring her own fantastical world of Lizard Kings and Martians and joining the circus. In 2011, London is burning once again, and an elderly Goblin reluctantly returns to the city. Amidst the chaos of the riots, she must dig up the events of her childhood in search of a harrowing truth. But where lies truth after a lifetime of finding solace in an extraordinary imagination, where the distinction between illusion and reality has possibly been lost forever?Trade Review"Terrific ... moving. It is a celebration of freakery... a meditation on trauma and loss and abandonment ... which, somehow, is never bleak. Goblin brims throughout with a kind of reckless joy." Peter Ross, Guardian; "A standout debut...sophisticated." Nick Barley, Herald, Books of the Year 2017; "In my opinion the best debut fiction by a Scottish author since 2012... A profoundly affecting, intellectually challenging and beautifully written fable ... a marvellous piece of work." Stuart Kelly, Scotsman. "Enthralling... a captivating debut... Dundas presents us with an iconic protagonist: a powerful imaginative force who looks beyond the facade of 20th Century Britain and sees a fairy tale of lizard kings and dolls with shrews' heads." Alastair Mabbott, Herald. "A captivating and capricious debut that explores with a deft hand the `creature world' we all carry somewhere inside." Mary Paulson Ellis; "Confounds your expectations and enchants your sensibilities... an indelible and haunting novel." Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae; "Ever Dundas has a consummate skill with language and her words can so readily conjure feelings of both joy and sadness. It is astonishing that a novel this accomplished should be a debut." Mary Pickens, Kindle Delight blog; "A love letter to the outcasts, rebels and underdogs ... a dazzling narrative ... Unflinching, raw and diamond bright." Megan Kenny, Disclaimer Magazine
£8.54
Saraband The Amber Seeker
Book SynopsisThe follow-up to The Walrus Mutterer, longlisted for the Highland Book Prize, 2018. Northern Britain, Iron Age. Pytheas of Massalia, the famed Greek explorer, roves the icy northern lands of Celtic Britain and beyond, in search of amber and other precious goods. He also craves another encounter with Rian, the slave he fell in love with during a previous voyage and who still haunts him. But Rian has other ideas. She has no desire to see Pytheas, and she won't give up her freedom without a fight. As Pytheas navigates a world of plundered riches, feuding warlords and ancient curses, will he succeed in finding what he set out for? In the second volume of this extraordinary, imaginative trilogy, Mandy Haggith takes us back to prehistoric times for an epic saga ranging from the subarctic to the Mediterranean. The Amber Seeker revisits the unforgettable cast of characters we met in The Walrus Mutterer, weaving another visceral tale of loss, longing and revenge in 320 BC.Trade Review"Beautifully written, this novel is a moving and at times, shocking confession of a man tormented by love, loss, guilt and regret.the author's meticulous research shines from every page." Editor's choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2019; "Haggith writes fluently and, with the light of her research into this period leading her imagination, there is a whole new experience for the reader ... There is much to enjoy and learn in this novel [which] has a universal resonance and draws parallels with modern life." Tony Michaels, The Wee Review; "A compelling tale of endeavour, bravery and human frailty ... The story is visceral and visual, crafted with a lyrical prose." Dundee Courier, Scottish Book of the Week; "Brave and fascinating ... asks questions about the nature of truth, perspective, and the power of the narrator to influence where readers' sympathies lie." Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae; "An epic tale of adventure, The Amber Seeker is a gem of historical fiction, written with elegant language and telling an emotional story of seeking knowledge in the name of glory." Cultured Vultures; "Exquisite ... The Iron Age landscape comes to life with a colourful brilliance and the long sea voyages are by turns magical and terrifying." Undiscovered Scotland; "Marries great storytelling and convincing research ... Haggith invites the reader to explore a strange world and far-distant time, and the voyage on which she takes the reader is always interesting, sometimes enthralling." Allan Massie, The Scotsman; Praise for The Stone Stories trilogy and Mandy Haggith: "Haggith's woman's eye view of the Iron Age feels fresh and distinctive." Sunday Herald; "An ambitious and imaginative novel ... believable and compelling." Jane Bradley, Scotsman; "Vivid, memorable and utterly compelling." Helen Sedgwick; "A gripping, haunting, visceral novel... Lyrical and poetic prose, the author has created a convincing and entirely believable world... One of the best books I have read so far this year." Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice); "An immersive evocation of ancient folklore and ritual, this novel's characterisation and fast pace make it a real page-turner which will keep you hooked." Scottish Field; "Utterly compelling...beautifully crafted...paints an exquisite pen picture." Undiscovered Scotland; "We see what the world was like...for the Iron Age peoples, particularly the women. ... Rian is a compelling heroine. Life for her is often harsh, uncompromising and dangerous, and yet she has insights and wisdom that we moderns may well envy." Margaret Elphinstone; "Compelling." Lucinda Byatt, Historical Novels Review; "Moving and quietly passionate." AL Kennedy; "Compelling and terrifying." Observer; "Passionate and subversive ... written with a poet's touch." Jason Donald; "Lyrical and vivid, written with a poet's eye for detail." Linda Gillard
£8.54
Wakefield Press The Voyage of Horace Pirouelle
Book SynopsisA Rimbaudesque novella of wayward wanderlust and liberty from the cofounder of Surrealism Conceived in a hospital bed in 1917 and written a few months later after his fateful encounter with Lautréamont’s Maldoror, Philippe Soupault’s novella The Voyage of Horace Pirouelle preceded the author’s involvement with Parisian Dada and the Surrealist movement he would later launch with his friends. Inspired by a schoolmate’s sudden departure for Greenland on a whim and his subsequent disappearance, Soupault imagines his alter ego’s adventures as entries in a journal both personal and fictional. Adopted by an Inuit tribe, Pirouelle drifts from one encounter to another, from one casual murder to another, until his life of liberty and spontaneity leads him to stasis at the edge of existence. After taking an active part in French Dada, Philippe Soupault (1897–1990) cofounded the Surrealist movement with André Breton and Louis Aragon, and authored with Breton The Magnetic Fields, the first official Surrealist work. After being expelled from the movement for the crime of being “too literary,” he devoted his life to writing, travel, journalism and political activity (for which he was put in prison by the collaborationist Vichy government).
£10.44
Saraband Shocked Earth
Book SynopsisFemke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by drilling for gas at a site close to their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the state-owned gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help. In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart.Trade Review'Shocked Earth shows us the impact of natural disasters on people's lives. This is what literature can do.' Nieuwsweekend; 'Goldschmidt manages to portray the lives of farmers in great literary style, and with authentic vocabulary.' Het Parool; 'Goldschmidt writes eloquently... showing the way the North of the Netherlands is held captive by the gas sourcing business.' NRC; 'In order to be able to write Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt moved to a rural region ... worked on a dairy farm and spoke to its inhabitants. This effort pays off in this thorough novel with a lot of empathy, showing how the earthquakes ... forever change the lives of the people trying to keep this business going.' Dagblad van het Noorden; "Shocked Earth exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action - I was both heartbroken and inspired." Helen Sedgwick; "A novel with great ambitions, which remains credible." Faithful; "Last weekend I read the book in one breath. How little did I know about the problems and life in the Groningen countryside ... I will definitely recommend this beautiful novel!" Ria van Halem, bookseller Boekaa Verkaaik
£9.49
Bitter Lemon Press Grab a Snake by the Tail
Book SynopsisHavana's Chinatown is not his usual beat, but when Conde is asked to take a murder case by the sultry, perfectly proportioned Police Lieutenant Patricia Chion, a frequent object of his nightly fantasies, he can’t resist. Pedro Cuang is found hanging naked from a beam in the ceiling of his dingy room. One of his fingers has been cut off, and the outline of two arrows was carved with a knife on his chest. Was this a ritual Santería killing or a just a sordid settling of accounts in a world of drug trafficking beginning to infiltrate Cuba in the 1980s? Soon Conde discovers unexpected connections, secret businesses and a history of misfortune, uprooting and loneliness that affected many immigrant families from China. The Barrio Chino was once one of the largest Chinatowns in the West. Now it feels like a ghetto of uprooted families, with its derelict cemetery and boarded-up shops. The story is soaked in atmosphere: African spells cast by babalao sorcerers, deliciously smoke-filled bars, deep friendships, and beautiful women. Especially the exotic Afro-Chinese Patricia Chion.Trade Review“Few contemporary writers understand noir as well as Padura, and far fewer convey Cuba with such grit and sensuality”. Playboy; “A textured treat for those who like detective fiction served long and lazy, with a double shot of rum.” Financial Times
£8.54
Wakefield Press Vulturnus
Book SynopsisNearly 100 years later, a landmark post-Symbolist poem receives its first English translationWhen published in 1928, Vulturnus represented a new direction in Léon-Paul Fargue's writing: a shift from the lyrical post-Symbolist melancholy of his early poetry to something more grandiose, dynamic and cosmic. This long prose poem weaves together philosophical dialogue, metaphysical meditation and mournful reminiscence delivered in a language that spirals into scientific terminology and Rabelaisian neologism. Jolted into a nightmare aboard a long-distance train journey, the author finds himself on a voyage that takes him from his hometown to other existences, accompanied by the fanfare of the planets and two companionsPierre Pellegrin and Joseph Ausudrewho guide him to a terrestrial paradise in quest of a moment of eternity. This first English translation finally introduces an essential yet underrecognized 20th-century voice and includes an essay on the text
£12.34
Bitter Lemon Press The Night of Shooting Stars
Book SynopsisIt is just the beginning of a convulsed week, where danger lurks behind army headquarters, down sordid streets, and in the frightening Presidium of the Criminal Police. Bora is unexpectedly ordered by SS General Arthur Nebe, head of Kripo, to investigate the murder of a dazzling showman and clairvoyant, a major star since the days of the Weimar Republic. Bora’s inquiry, supported by police inspector and former S.A member Florian Grimm, resurrects memories of the excessive and brilliant world of Jazz Age cabarets and locales. Around them, in the oppressive summer heat, constant allied bombing, war-weary Berlin teems with refugees and nearly a million foreign labourers. Soon enough the perceptive Bora realizes to his dismay that there is much more at stake than murder in a paranoid city where everyone suspects everyone, and where insistent rumours whisper about a conspiracy aimed at the very heart of the Nazi hierarchy. And then there is charming Emmy Pletsch, who works for Stauffenberg: could she be a key to understanding? Trying to solve the murder of the Weimar Prophet takes Martin Bora into the deadly whirlwind of an anguishing moral dilemma, as a German soldier and as a man. The 20 July plot and its dramatic implications as never told before.
£8.54
Myriad Editions It's Gone Dark Over Bill's Mother's
Book Synopsis
£9.49
Wakefield Press Vacated Landscape
Book SynopsisA truly mind-bending novel from an author prized for his experimental fusions of nouveau roman techniques and Oulipian constraintsAn editor at a Parisian publishing house receives a manuscript by someone calling himself Desiderioa manuscript that bears an eerie resemblance to his own life and to a book he was planning to write on a Renaissance painter of the same name. He decides to use his vacation time to visit the place from which it was sentthe quaint, historical seaside town of V.and believes he has identified the author: one Jean Morelle, himself a tourist, who disappeared the very day the manuscript was mailed. The narrator decides to play amateur detective and track down Morelle, unaware that as he becomes more deeply enmeshed in the mystery, the streets of V. will bend around him like a Möbius strip to form a loop that seems to offer no escape.A portrait of obsession, Vacated Landscape is both ingeniously fractal and exuberantly byzantine. It is the first novel of Jean Lahougue's to be translated into English.Jean Lahougue (born 1945) is a French novelist. A lifelong Agatha Christie fan, he won (and refused) the Prix Médicis in 1980 for Comptine des Height, a puzzle-novel patterned on Ten Little Indians.
£14.24
Myriad Editions The Bead Collector
Book SynopsisNew novel from Wole Soyinka Prize-winning author of Everything Good Will Come.
£8.54
Myriad Editions Pondweed
Book SynopsisA journey of self-discovery for an odd couple of 60-somethings: childhood sweethearts reunited in later life.
£8.54
Wakefield Press The Messengers
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£12.34
Valley Press Siphonophore
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£10.44
Valley Press Marco?
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£10.80
Three Rooms Press Loudmouth: A Novel
Book Synopsis“Read this book immediately if you like truth, drugs, generation gaps, guitars, and lifelong quests for freedom and kicks.” --Craig Finn, The Hold Steady Thomas Ransom, born to a severely dysfunctional southern family transplanted to New York City, is left to his own devices by neglectful parents, and spends his childhood shadowing his criminally-inclined half-brother and roaming the city with hard-drinking teenage pals. He eventually finds an outlet as the flamboyant singer of a downtown rock band, and later as the young editor of the Detroit-based magazine that invented punk, only to return to New York, at the height of the 1970s bacchanal, and crash. But it isn’t music that saves him. It’s a soft-spoken painter, who turns out to be the most outrageous character of all. With echoes of Almost Famous and Just Kids, LOUDMOUTH tracks an impassioned musician and writer out among the punks, hippies, and wild geniuses of rock when music was the center of the world. Author Robert Duncan was barely out of his teens when he started writing for the influential music magazine Creem, becoming its managing editor at 22. He went on to write for Rolling Stone, Circus, Life, and dozens of other publications, interviewing hundreds of rock stars at the top of their game. In the process, Duncan became a rock Zelig: he shares tales of his time with a young, scrawny Bruce Springsteen while driving him around Detroit; he introduces The Clash‘s Mick Jones and Joe Strummer to a broken-down piano player of dubious ability, leading to a hilariously disastrous recording session with the band; he works alongside legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, witnesses his tragic spiral, and finally discovers him dead of an OD in the apartment next door. These experiences, and many others, provide the fuel for his debut novel, LOUDMOUTH, making it what Brian Jonestown Massacre's Joel Gion calls, “A sonic wail of a tale about the youthful beginnings of one of the Mount Rushmore ‘heads’ of rock ’n’ roll journalism.”Trade Review“Loudmouth follows Thomas Ransom, whose Southern family’s relocation to Manhattan results in strange, street-centric childhood. As a teenager Ransom—an almost-exact avatar of his creator Duncan—discovers rock and punk, and becomes a very young editor of a music magazine. (Duncan became managing editor of Creem at age 22.) … Examines an era that saved him from the torpor of his parents’ dysfunction and gave him an appreciation for different paths.” —Lit Hub “Holy hell, the 1970s...If you’re too young to have experienced that decade but find yourself curious about its bombed-out cities, the rise of punk rock and the national “malaise,” you could do much worse than to start with Robert Duncan’s debut novel, Loudmouth.... If the book reads like hyperrealism (and we do mean hyper), that’s because it hews pretty close to the truths of the era, from the freewheeling boorishness to the stop-sign face-plants of so many drug casualties.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A fictionalized version of [Duncan's] own tumultuous life story that both pulls on the heart strings and provides a belly full of laughs.” —Rocklife “A sonic wail of a tale about the youthful beginnings of one of the Mount Rushmore ‘heads’ of rock ‘n‘ roll journalism. I loved it.” —Joel Gion, musician, Brian Jonestown Massacre “LOUDMOUTH is, as advertised, a loud and brash trip that takes you through the hellish halls of childhood and adolescence before delivering you to the sweet salvation of rock and roll music and all that rides alongside it. The story is majorly compelling--funny, tender, and very very honest. Read this book immediately if you like truth, drugs, generation gaps, guitars, and lifelong quests for freedom and kicks.” —Craig Finn, singer/songwriter, The Hold Steady “Wow. What a great time for me. I could listen to Robert Duncan’s stories all day.” —Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller Option podcast, ex-Saturday Night Live “Very engaging, fantastic stories and perspectives.” —Ron Keel, rock musician “This picaresque, coming-of-age novel, about a boy who looks for answers in rock ‘n’ roll, but finds them in the love of an extraordinary woman, is sad, serious, funny and, in the end, ridiculously moving.” —Sylvie Simmons, New York Times bestselling author of Face It: Debbie Harry; Too Weird For Ziggy; and Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes “Duncan’s prose is amazing, the story entertaining and addictive. If you’re a fan of stories with the Almost Famous vibe, be sure to check this one out!” —All Dragons Read “A fantastic novel! This book explores the true essence and excitement of '70s rock and 'roll with some outlandish yet lovable characters. A truly memorable work of art! —Bob Nalbandian, Director, Inside Metal Documentaries “Great stories—you will be hooked.” —Charles Shute, The Chuck Shute Podcast “Intelligence and grace . . . entertainingly larger-than-life.” —Publishers Weekly “In prose that’s beautiful, when it’s not hilarious, this noisy, nostalgic novel tells how an excitable boy from a darkly conservative family survived childhood and then rock ’n’ roll. It’s a wild ride with some amazing characters—including a few you might recognize—and I’m in awe.” —Jaan Uhelszki, former Creem editor; writer, producer of Creem: America‘s Only Rock ‘n‘ Roll Magazine
£9.89
Valley Press Precious Matter
Book Synopsis
£8.09
404 Ink HWFG
Book SynopsisHere We F**king Go (HWFG) is the much-anticipated follow up to Chris McQueer s hilarious, award-winning debut short story collection Hings. In HWFG... Your fave Sammy gets a job and Angie goes to Craig Tara. Plans are made to kick the f*ck out of Kim Jong-Un. You ll find answers to the big questions in life: What happens when we die? What does Brexit actually mean? Why are moths terrifying? What are ghosts like to live with? It s just a load more short stories n that. hwfg x
£8.54
Deep Vellum Publishing Vaseline Buddha
Book Synopsis"If someone in the future asks in frustration, 'What has Korean literature been up to?' we can quietly hand them Vaseline Buddha." -- Pak Mingyu A tragicomic odyssey told through free association scrubs the depths of the human psyche to achieve a higher level of consciousness equal to Zen meditation. The story opens when our sleepless narrator thwarts a would-be thief outside his moonlit window, then delves into his subconscious imagination to explore a variety of geographical and mental locations--real, unreal, surreal--to explore the very nature of reality. Jung Young Moon, 2005 alum of Iowa's International Writing Program, is one of South Korea's most award-winning, eccentric, and handsome authors, often compared to Kafka and Beckett.Trade Review"Reading "Vaseline Buddha" feels like watching a magician who explains his trick as he performs it and yet still mesmerizes you with his sleight of hand. You simultaneously enter the dream and wake from it...This resistance underpinning the entire exercise makes Jung an heir to Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, who understood that writing is the documentation of a dance the writer does between form and chaos." -- Tyler Malone, Los Angeles Time "The novel raises questions about story, and how stories are created. It muses on where thoughts come from, how they act on us, and how to live a life that doesn't take itself too seriously, while still earnestly engaging with the world. Jung's work is as a hybrid of fiction, journal, and philosophical aphorisms. It begins in a place where meaning is of little concern, and ends by asking the reader to build up her own meaning while enjoying Jung's fragments for the small, precious pleasures they provide." -- John W. W. Zeiser, Los Angeles Review of Books "We wade into these... streams of consciousness and are swept away in a current of fluid thought, as sensation and ideation merge into a movement of molecules, a tide in perpetual flux." -- Tyler Malone, Literary Hub "A remarkable work for its eccentric modes of thought and how it looks beyond the basic novel form and asks important secondary questions of where fiction is left to go." -- Jason DeYoung, Review31 (a "Best Novels of 2016" selection) "By continuing to reject the instinct for the order of things, the novel seeks to shed darkness on glimpses of the void. In those intense moments of deconstruction, the nothing that the language cannot express can be felt briefly in a moment of silent understanding amid cascade of words." -- Jack Saebyok Jung, Quarterly Conversation "The book echoes the hectic nature of life itself, how chaotic and challenging it can be at times... certainly not a conventional novel, but it is one that challenges and enriches any reader who takes the time to follow Jung Young Moon as he contemplates the world around him." -- Louisa Lee, Inspire Me Korea "Jung Young Moon's work is remarkable for its eccentric modes of thought and how it tests the limits of the novel and our notions of what fiction can do. It looks beyond the basic form and asks important secondary questions of where fiction is left to go. It also reveals crisply the cryptic nature of everyday life, which if examined with deep seriousness, will inevitably lead to deep absurdity--and that makes its futility somewhat pleasing." -- Jason De Young, Numero Cinq Magazine "The book plays directly to the central questions of the act of writing: Should writing be driven by order or chaos? Should it structure the universe or reflect its seeming randomness? Is the imposition of form a virtue of a vice? On that front, it feels akin to writers like Gombrowicz and Beckett." -- Tyler Malone, contributing editor for Lit Hub and founding editor of The Scofield (Literary Hub's 21 Books to Read in July 2016) "Surreal landscapes, automatic writing, and Kafka comparisons? Our interest is piqued by this book, yes indeed." -- Vol. 1 Brooklyn (July 2016 Books Preview) "A strange and wonderful novel. First and foremost, it is a page-turner, but in a way entirely different from what the phrase 'page-turner' usually evokes...page after page, you'll find yourself smiling, if not laughing out loud, at the comic absurdity that occupies the narrator's mind and writing." -- Kalau Almony, Reading in Translation "The circularity of his writing, and his repeated efforts to create a story, are, we begin to realise, themselves a form of therapy--an attempt to work through unexpressed suffering.?" -- Tony Malone, Asymptote "Jung... offers an audacious discourse on creativity, presenting readers with a labyrinth of ideas, images, suggestions, and observations all waiting and available to individual interpretation." -- Library Journal "I have no...idea what this book is going to be like but I know it has piqued my curiosity. Jung Young Moon has been compared to Kafka and Beckett and I'm into that. Jason DeYoung described the book as "meditative, challenging, narratively haywire and comic", and I'm into that, too. Modern Korean literature? Sure, into that, too. And I kind of want to know what a Vaseline Buddha is, so I'm gonna pick it up ASAP." -- Susie Rodarme, BookRiot, "8 Small Press Books to Read in July" Included inWords Without Borders'"July 2016 Watchlist" "One of South Korea's more eccentric contemporary writers, Jung could almost be described as a cross between Beckett and Brautigan -- his earlier writing was often extremely dark, but recently the balance has tipped towards lightness, of touch as much as of mood. It's all part of an aesthetic which prizes vagueness, randomness, digression rather than progression." -- Deborah Smith, Verso Books (Recommended as part of Verso's Five-Book Plan) "A quite nicely wending stream, of consciousness and more..." -- Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review "If you want something vastly different to anything else currently out there, I strongly recommend Vaseline Buddha ... Vaseline Buddha may be a weird novel, but it leaves you thinking in ways you might not have considered before." -- The Sleepless Editor "One achieves a kind of serenity when we delve into this book. I find that eccentrics like Jung are needed in literature." -- Achim Stanislawski "Truly meaningful literature. What makes this novel so fascinating is its permanent liminality and ambiguity: it is exactly the completely obvious which remains ultimately cryptic; it is exactly the linguistic hyper-precision which leads to confusion; it is exactly the "boring" stuff which becomes thrilling at another level; and it is exactly the humorous, ironic attitude of the author-narrator which proves his deep seriousness." -- Jan Dirks
£12.35
404 Ink The Goldblum Variations: Adventures of Jeff
Book SynopsisWe like Jeff Goldblum. You like Jeff Goldblum. Helen McClory really likes Jeff Goldblum. The Goldblum Variations is a collection of flash fiction, stories and games on the one and only Jeff Goldblum as he, and alternate versions of himself, travels through the known (and unknown) universe in a mighty celebration of weird and wonderful Goldbluminess. Maybe he's cooking, maybe he's wearing a nice jumper, maybe he's reading this very book. The possibilities are endless. Treat yourself, because all that glitters is Goldblum.Trade ReviewMcClory turns in a crushingly excellent display of metatextual prowess that also manages to be uplifting and fun. The Goldblum Variations is the sweetest kind of adventure. - Pop Matters; Seriously, take a gamble on this book. It is a befitting celebration of a remarkable actor via a thought-provoking odyssey of make-believe from one of the most remarkable emerging literary talents the UK has to offer. - The Quietus
£7.12
Istros Books Dogs and Others
Book SynopsisThe protagonist in Dogs and Others is the first openly lesbian character in modern Serbian literature, but she is also so much more than that, as she encapsulates the zeitgeist of her generation. Coming of age in 1970s Belgrade, then the capital city of thriving, socialist Yugoslavia, we follow Lida and the bohemian life she leads, made more complicated by the trials and tribulations of her eccentric family. The whole novel breathes with a raw sensibility so aptly captured in the voice of the heroine - a striking, rebellious, overtly feminist and somewhat neurotic young woman.Trade ReviewBiljana Jovanovic came into the Serbian literary scene as a new phenomenon. . Such girls in literature bring with them spite, devastating erotica, a new language, and new rules, especially when the old rules break down painfully..." Svetlana Slapsak, ; ". . . a rich amalgam of unvarnished bohemian life in socialist Belgrade, narrative experimentation, a sensitive but provocative depiction of family life in the shadow of old age, disability, and `madness'. . . " WORDS without BORDERS; "In her novel Dogs & Others, Biljana Jovanovic went a step further in breaking down all taboos regarding women's sexuality in Serbian literature." LOM (Serbian publisher)
£9.49
Deep Vellum Publishing Geography of Rebels Trilogy: The Book of
Book Synopsis“If anyone might be profitably compared to Clarice Lispector, it might well be Maria Gabriela Llansol. This is because of the fundamentally mystical impulse that animates them both, their conception of writing as a sacred act, a prayer: their idea that it was through writing that a person can reach 'the core of being.'” — Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector"Llansol's text . . . creates spaces where conjecture and counterfactual accounts operate freelygranting a glimpse of an alternative reality." Claire Williams, The GuardianGeography of Rebels presents the English debut of three linked novellas from influential Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol. With echoes of Clarice Lispector, Llansol's novellas evoke her vision of writing as life, conjuring historical figures and weaving together history, poetry, and philosophy in a transcendent journey through one of Portugal's greatest creative minds.Maria Gabriela Llansol (1931-2008) is one of the preeminent Portuguese writers of the 20th century, twice awarded the prize for best novel from the Portuguese Writers' Association.Trade Review“Imagine Clarice Lispector speaking with specters. Imagine Emily Dickinson seeking and finding a community. Imagine Hilda Hilst rebelling further into the madding crowd. Imagine Virginia Woolf as a Lisbon-born medium channeling displaced waves of consciousness. Imagine Fernando Pessoa as a woman building edenic spaces outside of our time-space continuum. If you can imagine some amalgamation of these descriptors, you may come close to conjuring up the writings of Maria Gabriela Llansol, but you can never quite know their protean beauty until you have entered these textual landscapes for yourself, and discovered the alternate realities they open up, where time feels simultaneously historical and ahistorical, and space simultaneously geographical and ageographical. We are fortunate that Audrey Young has translated Llansol’s Geography of Rebels Trilogy into English for the first time. Now we no longer have an excuse to overlook Llansol’s idiosyncratic genius.” — Tyler Malone, Literary Hub "This is an astonishing, otherworldly and utterly original book, and it reveals Llansol as one of the most fascinating Portuguese writers of the twentieth century." — Annie McDermott, Times Literary Supplement “I am intrigued and mesmerized by Llansol’s prose, her mysterious and beautiful sentences that push the novel beyond its usual constraints, and, at times, approach prose poetry. Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Llansol’s method is a radical one and, for those readers who like to be challenged, worth checking out.” — Gary Michael Perry, Foyles Charing Cross Staff Pick (London, UK) "Reading Geography of Rebels is an unforgettable experience. Llansol’s hallucinatory prose is genuinely transfixing." — Joshua Tait, The Carolina Quarterly "Her idiosyncratic, highly creative texts reached beyond conventional "figurative" writing. . . . In particular, her narrators function almost as a medium, or channel, for a series of fluctuating identities and voices or visitors (figures) who inhabit her consciousness and engage in discussion among themselves. Llansol's text also creates spaces where conjecture and counterfactual accounts operate freely - granting a glimpse of an alternative reality. She created iconoclastic, anti-nationalist texts that deflated mythical figures and representations of the past. She stressed Europe's evolution through the growth of free will, free thought and flourishing artistic and scientific developments." — Claire Williams, The Guardian "A commotion of a novel. With abrupt sentences and a narrative that darts, swerves, and veers, it is a perplexing read, but in a way that innervates, rather than discourages.” — Benjamin, Librarie Drawn & Quarterly (Montreal, QC) "Intense and sublime." — José Manuel Barroso, former president of the European Commission “Abstract, speculative thought, difficult in its way, but Maria Gabriela Llansol makes it sing.” — Anthony Brown, Times Flow Stemmed “Her figures are subjected to deformations and subject to a series of precise sensations. It is the precision of thought that gives her story clarity and makes it a container for speculative questions about the nature of writing and close reading. I found reading The Book of Communities an intensely felt experience, nervous as much as cerebral. It is a lived experience of Merleau-Ponty’s essay on language not residing purely in the brain, but being something we do with our bodies, words are “a certain use made of my phonatory equipment, a certain modulation of my body as a being in the world.” In that sense, like poetry, it is a book that benefits by being read aloud, playing with the elisions and sound structures. Its translator, Audrey Young, from what I can tell from comparing its original online, has done an outstanding job of retaining its rich tone and rhythm.”—Times Flow Stemmed “Imagine if Don Mclean’s song American Pie was written about Christian mysticism instead of rock-n-roll. Llansol immerses her readers in a shared hallucinatory vision, seemingly fueled by religious hysteria and open to multiple interpretations. . . . There is magic in how Llansol puts words together—and more of the poet in her than the prose writer. . . . Llansol is a writer’s writer, unrestrained and reckless in her use of language. And wholly uninterested in catering to the general reading public. Which brings us to what many would say is the major challenge in Llansol’s work. The trilogy has more in common with a medieval Book of Hours than modern fiction. . . There is a phosphorescent brilliance here. And for those who can stay the course, rewards to be had.” —Tara Cheesman-Olmsted, The Quarterly Conversation
£13.30
Istros Books Wild Woman
Book SynopsisWild Woman is an anti-love story, set against a background of economic hardship. Told through the undiluted language of thought and mania, the twists and turns of internal dialogue are brought alive by a narrator determined to find her true voice. It is a warning against letting life slip through one’s fingers and a call for personal liberation and authenticity.Wild Woman is set in 1970s Croatia, interchanging between the capital, Zagreb, and the seaside towns of Rijeka and Pula on the Adriatic coast. This is a story about an everywoman from a poor family, with a retied invalid father and a mother who always protects the interests of men. The story begins with a love affair between two students of literature, who bond through shared experiences and rush into the romantic dream of marriage. However, what at first seems idyllic to a young woman in love soon becomes a nightmare as she finds herself the victim of an unscrupulous, lazy womanizer whom she must support financially and who often disappears without explanation, leaving her alone in unfamiliar surroundings. To free herself from him, she must free herself from the “prisons” imposed on her by her family, her community and tradition. She must go wild.
£10.44
Istros Books The Fig Tree
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
£12.59
Deep Vellum Publishing Muslim : A Novel
Book Synopsis"Muslim" A Novel is a genre-bending, poetic reflection on what it means to be Muslim from one of France’s leading writers. In this novel, the second in a trilogy, Rahmani’s narrator contemplates the loss of her native language and her imprisonment and exile for being Muslim, woven together in an exploration of the political and personal relationship of language within the fraught history of Islam. Drawing inspiration from the oral histories of her native Berber language, the Koran, and French children’s tales, Rahmani combines fiction and lyric essay in to tell an important story, both powerful and visionary, of identity, persecution, and violence.Trade ReviewWinner of the Albertine Prize 2020 One of Words Without Borders’ most anticipated books of 2019 Part of the New York Times Globetrotting feature on upcoming 2019 Translations Included in Translated Lit’s Most Anticipated Books of February 2019 Librairie Drawn & Quarterly’s New & Notable books Included in Electric Literature's "20 Small Press Books You Might Have Missed" Finalist for Big Other's Book Award for Translation “A love letter to us: the outcasts, the hyphenated “others,” those who have lost tongues and gained dialects. Zahia Rahmani speaks to the religious fairy tales of my girlhood, the Muslim lore we listened to while learning the Arabic alphabet. “Muslim” challenges the borders of genre, much like Rahmani pushes up against the boundaries of multiple, overlapping identities, investigating imposed definitions and complicating what it means to be colonized, woman, Muslim.” - Dr. Seema Yasmin “‘I was born into a minor language and escaped from a distant nowhere that didn’t want me,’ Zahia Rahmani writes in this chronicle of the numerous forms isolation can take—and the numerous ways that identity can be both claimed and projected onto someone. This novel is brief in length, but Rahmani’s approach to it allows for a constant mutability of its form and a series of limitless stylistic renewals.” - Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders "This is the ethical and political terrain at stake for Rahmani, whose literary fiction is an instrument for truths that as yet have nowhere else to be heard. That the very nature of our political regimes requires intervention by way of fiction suggests that literature has an indispensable role to play in the ongoing work of justice."- Jill Jarvis, Public Books "Absolutely essential reading." —Lyric Hunter, Brazos Bookstore “The role of myth and archetypes, identitarian persecution, faith, movement through borderlands, naming, and the limitations and potential of particular languages all figure into this autobiographical novel.”—Aaron Robertson, Lit Hub
£10.45
Istros Books The End. And Again
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
£9.49
Istros Books Home
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.
£12.59
Forest Avenue Press Chicano Frankenstein
Book SynopsisA modern retelling of the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley classic that addresses issues of belonging and assimilation An unnamed paralegal, brought back to life through a controversial process, maneuvers through a near-future world that both needs and resents him. As the United States president spouts anti-reanimation rhetoric and giant pharmaceutical companies rake in profits, the man falls in love with lawyer Faustina Godínez. His world expands as he meets her network of family and friends, setting him on a course to discover his first-life history, which the reanimation process erased. With elements of science fiction, horror, political satire and romance, Chicano Frankenstein confronts our nation’s bigotries and the question of what it truly means to be human.
£12.34
Istros Books Grandma NonOui
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.
£11.69
Halban Publishers The Tunnel
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.
£11.69
