Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisGuillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was at the forefront of the aesthetic revolution that is the European Avant-Garde of the early twentieth century. In the accompanying memoir to his English translation of 'Seated Woman', Timothy Mathews gives a wide-ranging account of the ways Apollinaire interacted in his life and art with Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism and Orphism, and the subjective as well as social experiences involved in urban modernism. In its scattered but controlled composition and the multiplicity of its tones, Seated Woman, published posthumously in 1920, is a powerful counterpoint to the multi-faceted poetry for which Apollinaire is often better known. In playing the music of violence as well as the generosity that characterised the Great War, it is a story of its time, for our time and any time. Apollinaire's writing as a whole is a living testament to the extraordinary creative energy he both witnessed and produced, but also his understanding of its vulnerability to exploitation and decay. This book in turn seeks to honour that understanding, its persistent calls to the imagination, and the wit, vision and honesty that await readers of Apollinaire's unique voice. The book includes a memoir by Timothy Mathews in which he discusses 'Seated Woman' and his translation, as well as Apollinaire’s aesthetic generally and its crucial part in the development of European modernism. The book contains further texts in which Timothy Mathews responds to Apollinaire’s writing through translation, as well as critically and creatively. "A remarkable testimony to the ‘on-the-go-ness' of Apollinaire. Having plunged into his poems for years untold, I discovered this Seated Woman (My God, she is that and more) through Timothy Mathews’s rendering, I won’t just say 'translation' – this is a kind of miracle of wit, facetious wording, and over-the-top, beyond the pale Beingness. Think upon this, Picasso!" —Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

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Book SynopsisThe Cost of Sugar is the historical story of Jewish family planters and their slaves in Suriname. Now a major motion picture, The Cost of Sugar gives an engrossing account of eighteenth century Suriname at the time when the country was ruled by the Dutch. The hypocrisies behind the veneer of a respectable colonial life are revealed through the eyes of two Jewish step sisters, Elza and Sarith, descendants of the settlers of New Jerusalem of the River' known today as Jodensavanne. Their pampered existences become intertwined with the fate of the plantations as the slaves decide to fight against the violent repression they have endured for too long...Cynthia McLeod presents a frank expose of life in a Dutch colony when sugar was king and demanded the consummate allegiance of all - colonists and slaves - regardless of the tragic consequence.Trade Review"An invaluable history of Suriname, a best seller" (DE TELEGRAAF) "The most popular novel of the Dutch Suriname literature is still The Cost of Sugar" (NRC HANDELSBLAD)

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize A novel of philosophy and love, politics and waltzes, history and the here-and-now, Andrés Neuman's Traveller of the Century is a journey into the soul of Europe, penned by one of the most exciting South-American writers of our time. 'Every year hundreds of books are published but rarely comes a book that reminds us of why we loved reading in the first place, that innermost quest for words and dreams. Traveller of the Century is a literary gem' Elif Shafak A traveller stops off for the night in the mysterious city of Wandernburg. He intends to leave the following day, but the city begins to ensnare him with its strange, shifting geography. When Hans befriends an old organ grinder, and falls in love with Sophie, the daughter of a local merchant, he finds it impossible to leave. Through a series of memorable encounters with starkly different characters, Neuman takes the reader on a hypothetical journey back into post-Napoleonic Europe, subtly evoking its parallels with our modern era. At the heart of the novel lies the love story between Sophie and Hans. They are both translators, and between dictionaries and bed, bed and dictionaries,they gradually build up their own fragile common language. Through their relationship Neuman explores the idea that all love is an act of translation, and that all translation is an act of love. 'A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart' — Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian A big, utterly captivating murder mystery and love story, full of history and politics and the hottest sex in contemporary fiction — Daily Telegraph 'A thought-provoking historical romance, in which sex and philosophy mingle to delightful effect.' — Ángel Gurría Quintana, Financial Times, Best Books of 2012 Novel of the century — Lawrence Norfolk Andrés Neuman (b.1977) was born in Buenos Aires and later moved to Granada, Spain. Selected as one of Granta magazine's Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, Neuman was included in the Hay Festival's Bogotá 39 list. He has published numerous novels, short stories, essays and poetry collections. He received the Hiperión Prize for Poetry for El tobogán, and Traveller of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize in 2009.Trade ReviewA beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart The Guardian A big, utterly captivating murder mystery and love story, full of history and politics and the hottest sex in contemporary fiction The Telegraph A work of true beauty and scintillating intelligence by a writer of prodigious talents... books as stimulating, erudite and humane as this do not come along very often The Independent The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few other blood brothers of his -- Roberto Bolano Very few novels in world literature can build up an atmosphere as deftly and convincingly as the Traveller of the Century has done. This is a wonderful novel of ideas. It is a story of love, loneliness and journeys, spiritual and intellectual. Andres Neuman's story will envelop you like a morning fog and when you have finished reading, when the fog dissolves, you might see the world differently. Every year hundreds of books are published but rarely comes a book that reminds us of why we loved reading in the first place, that innermost quest for words and dreams. Traveller of the Century is a literary gem. -- Elif Shafak Rarely comes a novel that blends poetry, history, philosophy, semantics, politics, a murder mystery - and love, that too - with such skill... Neuman takes his readers on a literary pilgrimage, back to the essence, and reminds us why we loved stories so much even as little children: the ability and the freedom to be elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere -- Elif Shafak [Traveller of the Century] so delighted and captivated the jury that it deserved public recognition -- Boyd Tonkin Independent An all-encompassing reinvention of the 19th-century novel through the knowing eyes of the 21st... contains - jurors concurred with relish - some of the best sex in fiction of our own century -- Maya Jaggi, chair of IMPAC Award judging panel Guardian

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Book SynopsisA landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy – Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience, and Nocilla Lab – presents multiple narratives of people and places that reflect the world in the digital age. In this third, standalone volume, we find the author bedridden in Thailand after being knocked down by a motorbike, an accident which fortuitously gave him the time and space to begin writing the trilogy. Seven years later, when he travels with his girlfriend to Sardinia, they come across an old penitentiary that has been converted into an agritourism site. In a tour de force reminiscent of Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, a story of suspense and exploration unfolds in the uninhabited hotel. From autofiction to horror story to graphic novel, Nocilla Lab is a fitting conclusion to one of the most daring literary experiments of the twenty-first century.Trade Review‘With the tools of a scientist and the nose of a poet, Fernández Mallo dissects the materials he finds anywhere and everywhere (libraries and garbage dumps, real cities and virtual realities, audiovisual archives and personal memories) to construct, from these fragments, thoughts, and classifications, collages that could only be the fruit of illogic, dreams, accidents.’ — Jorge Carrión, 4Columns ‘Sometimes puzzling, even inexplicable, but rich. Just the thing for fans of Cortázar – and Borges, too.’ — Kirkus‘Reading Nocilla Lab is an enjoyable challenge, a mental exercise that moves between formats and genres in the most unpredictable ways. […] The different layers Agustín Fernández Mallo puts together make up a literary experience that will no doubt be an unforgettable one for whoever embarks on this journey.’ — Laila Obeidat, The London Magazine

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Book SynopsisYou only have yourself to blame, you might say, but that’s not true. Some decisions take you down one path, and others another … It’s all about power. Resi is a writer in her mid-forties, married to Sven, a painter. They live, with their four children, in an apartment building in Berlin, where their lease is controlled by some of their closest friends. Those same friends live communally nearby, in a house they co-own and have built together. As the years have passed, Resi has watched her once-dear friends become more and more ensconced in the comforts and compromises of money, success, and the nuclear family. After Resi’s latest book openly criticises stereotypical family life and values, she receives a letter of eviction. Incensed by the true natures and hard realities she now sees so clearly, Resi sets out to describe the world as it really is for her fourteen-year-old daughter, Bea. Written with dark humour and clarifying rage, Anke Stelling’s novel is a ferocious and funny account of motherhood, parenthood, family, and friendship thrust into battle. Lively, rude, and wise, it throws down the gauntlet to those who fail to interrogate who they have become.Trade Review‘Stelling is brilliant on the quantum universe of parenting, the sheer unpredictability of it … The novel moves effortlessly between time periods in recent German history and builds up the composite picture of a generation that has too often seen many of its ideals disappear into trust funds … compelling.’ -- Michael Cronin * The Irish Times *‘A bitterly funny and honest examination of what it means to look at oneself in the mirror and what happens to relationships in the midst of a transforming society.’ * Happy Magazine *‘German author Anke Stelling makes her English language debut with a swingeing screed against the privilege and hypocrisy of those who sell their souls to get ahead … A merciless tirade of a novel about class, so energised by rage and wit it’s impossible to tear your eyes from the page.’ -- Cameron Woodhead * The Age *‘Stelling makes a blistering English-language debut with this incendiary screed about hypocrisy and privilege among a group of friends in Berlin... This biting class critique is hard to turn away from.’ * Publishers Weekly *‘It’s a fantastic translation, capturing Stelling’s candid, often ironic tone, as well as the narrator’s propensity for rhyme and wordplay. The book is very much embedded in the social landscape it’s set in, and so Jones’ decision to keep a flavour of the original German works particularly well.’ -- Annie Rutherford * Goethe Institute *‘Stelling is down-to-earth and quick with her criticism of the liberal elite … There is a deep satisfaction in watching [main character] Resi defy expectation and norm, frustrating those who wish she would just be thankful.’ -- Connor Harrison * Necessary Fiction *‘[A]n apologia pro vita mea… this sad, angry, and occasionally funny book works as a portrait of modern Germany and its social mores.’ -- Bethane Patrick * LitHub *‘This is an extremely funny book. All credit to translator Lucy Jones here, for the humour is largely in the writing, with rhythms, bathos and the subversion of expectations all delivering laughs. Stelling is an expert on the ways human beings deceive themselves and how we often betray these lies unconsciously … Higher Ground is a deftly structured, ingenious piece of fiction … The result is a hugely entertaining, satisfying and thought-provoking novel. A really wonderful read.’ -- Ann Morgan * A Year of Reading the World *‘Higher Ground is an absorbing novel that kept me interested from start to finish. Laced with dark humour, it’s very contemporary, skewering complacency and hypocrisy among the moneyed classes in Berlin … It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s often wise as well, even when she’s sending herself up.’ -- Lisa Hill * ANZ LitLovers *

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Book SynopsisHow does one experience things from the viewpoint of the other sex? It is this question that has led to Vildot’s creation of Ruth, the genre-defining story of a sex change told by the protagonist through a series of letters to an anonymous friend. Far from the condemnatory gaze or noise of those who understand life as nothing but outward appearances, Ruth demonstrates the sentimental and intellectual intimacy of a man transitioning into a woman, and describes a profund, touching process in which frustrations, ideas of liberty and changes of identity are interwoven. Without descending into easy morbosity or exhibitions of sensationalist tendencies, Ruth represents Guillem Viladot’s indignation at both masculine and feminine sensibilities, while championing diversity of thought, love, liberty, and, most importantly, desire.Trade Review‘Guillem Viladot is a rebel: insatiable and untiring.’ -Àlex Susanna, editor at Columna ediciones ‘A writer not content with writing poems or prose simply to invoke beauty, but who ever looked to stretch the limits of literary creativity.’ -Pau Echauz, La Vanguàrdia

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Book SynopsisThis never-before-translated classic of Brazilian literature is a Faulknerian saga depicting the unraveling of a traditional patriarchal family.

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Book SynopsisA whirlwind tour of writers and muses, madness and genius, friendships, broken families, and alternate realities.

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Book SynopsisA tongue-in-cheek textbook for how to live in our modern age.

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Book SynopsisA miller's son, Johannes, falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy landowner, Victoria. The novel follows them through adolescence, as Johannes struggles with the social hierarchy and becomes a successful author, and Victoria is forced into marrying Otto, a lieutenant, to save the troubled family economy.A lyrical excursion into unconsummated love, love that is described memorably as 'Blood and Blossoms'.

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Book Synopsis''Enchanting. Reading Barreau is like having me-time with your best friend'' NINA GEORGE, author of The Little Paris Bookshop''Heart-breaking . . . touching and magical until the very last page'' ELLEJulien Azoulay is famous around the world for his beautiful romance novels. But last year, he stopped believing in love. When his beloved wife Hélène died, leaving him alone to raise his young son, Julien lost his faith in the happier side of life - and with it his ability to write. But Hélène was clever. Before she died, she made Julien promise to write her one letter for each year of her life . . . and now, in this moment, in the most famous cemetery in Paris, Julien stands with his painful first letter in his hand. Here, even though Julien wouldn''t believe it, something wonderful is going to happen . . . Come with us down the narrow streets, past the cosy red bistro on Rue Gabrielle, all t

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Book Synopsis The Devil in the Flesh, one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written, is set in Paris during the last year of the First World War. The narrator, a boy of 16, tells of his love affair with Martha Lacombe, a young woman whose soldier husband is away at the front. With an accuracy of insight that is almost ruthless, he describes his conflicting emotions?the pride of an adolescent on the verge of manhood and the pain of a child thrust too fast into maturity. The liaison soon becomes a scandal, and their friends, horrified and incredulous, refuse to accept what is happening?even when the affair reaches its tragic climax.

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Book SynopsisGhareeb Iskander is an Iraqi poet and translator living in London. He has published numerous collections of poems including Gilgamesh's Snake and Other Poems which won Arkansas University's Arabic Translation Award for 2015 (published by Syracuse University Press in 2016). He translated Derek Walcott's poems into Arabic. He received his PhD from SOAS, University of London, UK.Trade Review'This book is less a work of literary criticism than a dialogue between poets. Iskandar, himself a poet, is at his best when he is tracing the grain of multiple translations, phrase by phrase, illuminating subtle differences, between the aesthetic possibilities of English and Arabic, and between the visions of individual poets.' -- Michael Beard, Emeritus Professor of English, University of North Dakota, USAGhareeb Iskander’s English Poetry and Modern Arabic Verse is an erudite and insightful journey into the creative process, a methodic study of how translations of mainly Eliot and Whitman by major Arab poets guided their hands and led them to inaugurate a new poetics in Modern Arabic poetry. A valuable reference work for students of translation theory and Arabic poetry. -- Adnan Fuad Haydar, Professor of Arabic Literature, University of Arkansas, USATable of ContentsTable of contents Introduction 1. Modern Arabic Poetry and English Poetry 2. The Arabic Waste Lands 3. Translating Whitman’s Song of Myself into Arabic 4. Al-Sayyab’s Translational Contribution Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisFrom one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Trial: Three stories he published in his lifetime, including his best-known tale, “The Metamorphosis.”I have only one request, Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. ''The Stoker,'' ''The Metamorphosis,'' and ''The Judgment'' belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection among the three, and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forego the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons.

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Book SynopsisA searing novella about coming of age in a land of tyranny, by one of Germany's most brilliant young authors.Trade Review"Her restrained unvarnished prose is overwhelming." -- Nicole Krauss"Jenny Erpenbeck should be praised for asking us to learn from the marginalized what the majority apparently will not see." -- London Times Literary Supplement"Jenny Erpenbeck is a rising star of the German literary scene." -- Cosmopolitan

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Book SynopsisThe most unsettling and stunning of Aira's short novels published by New Directions.Trade Review"Wonderful... Ghosts is an incitement to the sensuality of thought, of wonder, of questioning, of anticipation." -- Thomas McGonigle - Los Angeles Times"A languorous, surreal atmosphere of baking heat and quietly menacing shadows... puts one in mind of a painting by de Chirico." -- The New Yorker"Once you’ve started reading Aira, you don’t want to stop." -- Roberto Bolaño"Utterly astonishing." -- San Francisco Chronicle"Aira's literary significance, like that of many other science fiction writers, comes from how he pushes us to question the porous line between fact and fantasy, to see it not only as malleable in history, but also blurred in the everyday. The engrossing power of his work, though, comes from how he carries out these feats: with the inexhaustible energy and pleasure of a child chasing after imaginary enemies in the park." -- Los Angeles Review of Books"Ghosts has some serious bite, for such a little book. Within it Aira likens literature to a building that has never been built, to an architect's dream. And though he never comes out and says it, I get the sense that for him the reader is always a ghost, haunting the unbuilt and the imagined, flying through time to attend to the party on the page." -- Emily Keeler - The Rumpus

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Book SynopsisFrom the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize A dark, haunting masterpiece by the author of The Melancholy of Resistance and Seiobo There BelowTrade Review"He offers us stories that are relentlessly generative and defiantly irresolvable. They are haunting, pleasantly weird, and, ultimately, bigger than the worlds they inhabit." -- The New York Times Book Review"The excitement of Krasznahorkai's writing is that he has come up with his own original forms - and one of the most haunting is his first, Satantango. There is nothing else like it in contemporary literature." -- Adam Thirwell - The New York Review of Books"Satantango is a monster of a novel: compact, cleverly constructed, often exhilarating, and possessed of a distinctive, compelling vision - but a monster nonetheless...The grandeur is clearly palpable." -- The Guardian"Krasznahorkai is alone among European novelists now in his intensity and originality. One of the most mysterious artists now at work." -- Colm Tóibín"Profoundly unsettling." -- James Wood - The New Yorker"His inexhaustible yet claustrophobic prose, with its long, tight, weaving sentences, each like a tantalising tightrope between banality and apocalypse, places the author in a European tradition of Beckett, Bernhard, and Kafka." -- James Hopkin - The Independent

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Book SynopsisAs concentrated as bullets, new stories by the inimitable Fleur JaeggyTrade Review"Finely distilled and evocative stories." -- BBC"Jaeggy is a master of the short form; her essays are charged with a nearly combustible vitality, her stories without fail are compact and devastating. Long after the pleasure of reading is over, their little hooks tug at — what is it, the heart or the mind? I Am the Brother of XX bears the thematic hallmarks of Jaeggy’s fiction...stony family relations and theology that is not merely unorthodox but downright perverse. Jaeggy’s prose is superb (and as superbly translated) as ever, her characteristic desolation as self-possessed as it is recherche´." -- Financial Times"Jaeggy's astute compression of narrative detail is at once serene and startling. Beneath a placid, opalescent surface lurks a threat or violence that may or may not be realized, but which contributes to the profound impression that people and their lives are unpredictable, coursing with icy, barren wildness." -- Los Angeles Review of Books"Swiss-Italian Jaeggy, a master of the short form, again creates something unforgettable with these otherworldly stories, translated by Gini Alhadeff. They frame haunting, dreamlike moments: a 13th-century woman senses the taste of “Christ’s foreskin … tender as egg skin and very sweet”; an orphan burns alive the aristocrat who took her in “for the blasted glory of it”; a family is cursed by a possessed mandrake root. Told in Jaeggy’s characteristically jagged prose, these dark stories of madness, loss and murder are urgent and evocative. Central to each are surreal images reminiscent of paintings by Leonora Carrington or Max Ernst: “her hands, like the claws of a crustacean, clutched at a little mound of dust”. This is an intensely beautiful and original collection that bristles with a strange and often disturbing magic." -- Claire Kohda Hazelton - The Guardian"The fictional stories [ofI Am the Brother of XX] deal with by now familiar motifs of arson, ill health, insomnia, suicide, isolation, hauntings, vendettas and murder: some are Gothic tales of the supernatural, featuring ghosts and saints and mandrakes....And death haunts: the death of Sissi, Empress of Austria, assassinated on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1898; the suicide of the Austrian poet and painter Adalbert Stifter, who cut his throat in Linz in 1868." -- Margaret Drabble - The New Statesman"Startling and original—so disturbing and so haunting." -- Cathleen Schine - The New York Review of Books"Stark, surprising prose. It’s hard to capture in a line or two the strange precision of Jaeggy’s prose. Darkness seems never far away." -- Martin Riker - The New York Times Book Review"This book is twisted and hypnotizing and, somehow, downright lovely. Reading it is not unlike diving naked and headlong into a bramble of black rosebushes, so intrigued you are by their beauty: it’s a swift, prickly undertaking, and you emerge the other end bloodied all over." -- Daniel Johnson - the Paris Review"Jaeggy's prose gleams like cut gems." -- Tess Lewis - The Riveter"A wonderful, brilliant, savage writer." -- Susan Sontag"Fleur Jaeggy’s pen is an engraver’s needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness—extraordinary." -- Joseph Brodsky"Nothing rivals its intensity." -- The Los Angeles Review of Books"How a novel could be so chilly and so passionate at the same time is a puzzle, but that icy-hot quality is only one of the distinctions of Sweet Days of Discipline." -- April Bernard - Newsday"Jaeggy seems to have crushed a glass in her palm and tweezed out a few shards for the page. Her prose is indeed extraordinary...it is also frightening." -- Sasha Archibald - The Rumpus

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Book SynopsisWhen Father Almida is summoned to an audience with the parish''s principal benefactor, a stand-in is found in Father Matamoros, a drunkard with an angel''s voice whose sung mass is mesmerizing to all. But Matamoros hides a darker side, and when the church''s residents throw a feast for him he encourages them to lose all their inhibitions and give free reign to their most Bacchanalian desires. A satire on the iniquities of the Catholic church in Colombia, Good Offices is at once comic, surreal and startling, a novel that will linger long in the mind. Trade Review'Moving from offbeat humour to soaring spiritual ecstasy, it has both pathos and punch' Maya Jaggi, Guardian. * Guardian *'A novella about hope and the possibility of realising it ... written with brio, and with vivid illuminating touches ... It reads beautifully' Allan Massie, Scotsman. * Scotsman *'The Catholic Church takes a real kicking in this slim yet invective-packed satire ... lays bare the hypocrisy of the Church in richly descriptive sentences' Sunday Business Post. * Sunday Business Post *'A fable of vice and desire as comic as it is disturbing' Lucy Scholes, Sunday Times. * Sunday Times *'An entertaining and engaging read, with arresting images that linger in the mind long after the book has been returned to the shelf' Wayne Gooderham, Time Out. * Time Out *'a ripe and atmospheric satire on ecclesiastical hypocrisy' Sunday Telegraph. * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisSet between Normandy and Arizona, In the Gold of Time is a seductive tale of silences and dark, half-revealed secrets, and a haunting elegy for innocence lost in a lost world. A young father holidays by the sea near Dieppe with his reproachfully perfect wife and their twin daughters. Returning from the local shop, he meets an eccentric old lady, Alice Berthier, who lives with he mute sister, Clémence. Their mysterious house is full of old photographs and strange objects - sacred ceremonial masks once belonging to the Hopi, a tribe of Native Americans from Arizona. Haunted by memories of a tragic past, Alice takes comfort in her new companion, and he, in turn, is drawn into her mysterious world. As his family recedes into the background, her stirring tales of the Hopi and the Arizona desert become the only salve to his despondent soul. Trade Review'Poetic and fascinating ... an uplifting book' Elle. * Elle *

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Book SynopsisWhen the mutilated body of Mayra Cabral de Melo is found in a dusty field, Detective Edgar Lefty Mendieta has personal reasons for bringing the culprit to justice. Mayra, a well-known stripper, had no shortage of ardent, deluded and downright dangerous admirers, and Lefty himself is haunted by the night he spent in her company.As Mexico''s drug war ramps up, Lefty''s pursuit of a gallery of jealous and powerful suspects, all with a murderous glint in their eye, leads him to Samantha Valdés, the godfather''s daughter, who is battling to retain her father''s empire. And as the mystery deepens, the bodycount rises.Trade ReviewOne of the biggest names in Mexican literature . . . A true novelist . . . No one has captured the exciting and passionate nature of the Mexican vernacular like him -- Arturo Pérez-ReverteIf you are fed up with formulaic noir novels and looking for something fresher, Élmer Mendoza . . . could be the answer * Sunday Times *Presents Mexico in a darkly surrealist light: corrupt politicos, a plague of narco-crime and only battered detective Edgar "Lefty" Mendieta on the side of the angels * Independent *Mendoza conveys a clear sense of life in Culiacan through the violence of the competing cartels and a simmering expectation and acceptance of corruption * Publishers Weekly *Essential reading. * Sunday Express. *A vivid glimpse into an ultraviolent world of macho posturing, unorthodox policing and ruthless criminality. * Guardian. *

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Book Synopsis Commandant Michel de Palma, known by his colleagues as ''the Baron'', has chosen early retirement and plans to travel the world. But he is dragged back into the force when a case that has haunted him for a decade erupts once more. Resurfacing from Le Guen''s Cave, a prehistoric grotto thirty-eight metres below sea level outside Marseilles, France, an experienced diver mysteriously gets into difficulties. Meanwhile, Thomas Autran, a serial killer with a peculiar interest in the supernatural, suffering from a dangerous form of schizophrenia, is once again on the run. Ancient cave paintings, savage murders committed according to a precise ritual: a return to the first ages of humanity, the era of the great Palaeolithic hunters. And despite the gory trail left at each crime scene, de Palma must first understand the child, the secrets of a family, a story of exploitation - and revenge - before he can track down the First Man. Trade ReviewKeeps up the pace, twisting and turning to ensure you don't stop flipping those pages - Buzz on The Voice of the SpiritsIntriguing and enjoyable - Eurocrime on Voice of the Spirits

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Book SynopsisThe girl with the dragon tattoo is back: Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return in the #1 bestselling continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series.Trade ReviewLagercrantz has constructed an elegant plot around different concepts of intelligence . . . his continuation, while never formulaic, is a cleaner and tighter read than the originals . . . Without ever becoming pastiche, the book is a respectful and affectionate homage to the originals. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian. *As I read Lagercrantz's The Girl in the Spider's Web, I found that I kept forgetting for several pages at a time that I wasn't reading genuine Larsson . . . One devours Larsson's books for the plots, the action, the anger, and most of all for Lisbeth Salander . . . Lagercrantz has caught her superbly, and expertly spun the sort of melodramatic yarn in which she can thrive. -- Jake Kerridge * Daily Telegraph. *Fans of Stieg Larsson's captivating odd couple of modern detective fiction - the genius punk hacker Lisbeth Salander and her sometime partner, the crusading investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist - will not be disappointed . . . Salander and Blomkvist have survived the authorship transition intact and are just as compelling as ever. -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times. *Elegantly paced, slickly executed, and properly thrilling. -- Alison Flood * Observer *First, the conclusion. David Lagercrantz has done well . . .The Girl in the Spider's Web conveys the essence and atmosphere of Larsson's Millennium novels. He has captured the spirit of their characters and devised inventive plots, most of them suitably exaggerated . . . On the evidence of Spider's Web, most Millennium fans will want to continue following their Lisbeth. -- Marcel Berlins * The Times. *Lagercrantz's real achievement here is the subtle development of Lisbeth's character; he allows us access to her complex, alienated world but is careful not to remove her mystery and unknowability. Lisbeth Salander remains, in Lagercrantz's hands, the most enigmatic and fascinating anti-heroine in fiction. -- Barry Forshaw * Financial Times. *Rest easy, Lisbeth Salander fans - our punk hacker heroine is in good hands . . . Swedish crime novelist David Lagercrantz takes the reins with prowess, not only mimicking Larsson's shamelessly pulpy prose, but admirably expanding the deliciously depraved world of the novels. -- Patrick Ryan * USA Today. *

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Book SynopsisSuspended from her job as a promising police officer for firing one bullet too many, Anne Capestan is expecting the worst when she is summoned to H.Q. to learn her fate. Instead, she is surprised to be told that she is to head up a new police squad, working on solving old cold cases.Though relieved to still have a job, Capestan is not overjoyed by the prospect of her new role. Even less so when she meets her new team: a crowd of misfits, troublemakers and problem cases, none of whom are fit for purpose and yet none of whom can be fired.But from this inauspicious start, investigating the cold cases throws up a number of strange mysteries for Capestan and her team: was the old lady murdered seven years ago really just the victim of a botched robbery? Who was behind the dead sailor discovered in the Seine with three gunshot wounds? And why does there seem to be a curious link with a ferry that was shipwrecked off the Florida coast many years previously?TranslTrade ReviewThis summer's crime read * Cosmopolitan *You will not want to tear yourself away ... Extremely original -- Jean-Louis Debré * Le Point *A scintillating read ... we are already hooked * Elle *From her first novel, Sophie Hénaff proves that she can really pull the trigger * Paris Match *Original and amusing, it's French noir with a sly smile. * The Times *A delightful creation, the members of her team amusing and the book lively. -- Marcel Berlins * The Times *Amusing and interesting ... this very enjoyable tale has deservingly won several French literary prizes -- Jessica Mann * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisAfter their successful solving of three cold cases and exposing corruption at the very highest level of the Paris police force, Anne Capestan''s squad of misfits and no-hopers should be in a celebratory mood. However, now despised by their colleagues at 36 quai des Orfèvres and worried for their future, morale has never been lower among the members of the Awkward Squad.Capestan does her best to motivate her troops, but even she cannot maintain a cheerful façade when she has to investigate the murder of Commissaire Serge Rufus, the father of her ex-husband. Worse, it soon appears that his murder is linked to two other victims, both of whom were warned by the killer before they struck . . .Trade ReviewA delightful creation, the members of her team amusing and the book lively -- Marcel Berlins * The Times *Amusing and interesting ... this very enjoyable tale has deservingly won several French literary prizes -- Jessica Mann * Literary Review *Original and amusing, it's French noir with a sly smile -- Karen Robinson * The Times Crime Club *You will not want to tear yourself away ... Extremely original -- Jean-Louis Debré * Le Point *From her first novel, Sophie Hénaff proves that she can really pull the trigger * Paris Match *A scintillating read ... we are already hooked * Elle *

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Book SynopsisA masterpiece of literary craft and concision; sparse, beautiful and hugely affecting - Daily MailSince the liberation of the Netherlands, Emma Verweij has been living in Rotterdam, in a street which became a stronghold of friendships for its inhabitants during the Second World War. She marries Bruno, they have two sons, and she determines to block out the years she spent in Nazi Berlin during the war, with her first husband Carl. But now, ninety-six years old and on the eve of her death, long- forgotten memories crowd again into her consciousness, flashbacks of happier years, and the tragedy of the war, of Carl, of her father, and of the friends she has lost. In The Longest Night, his impressive, reflective new novel after News from Berlin, Otto de Kat deftly distils momentous events of 20th-century history into the lives of his characters. In Emma, the past and the present coincide in limpid fragments of rare, melancholy beauty.<Trade ReviewA masterpiece of literary craft and concision; sparse, beautiful and hugely affecting. -- John Harding * Daily Mail *De Kat mixes great moral issues with historical events. This is his literary art. The Longest Night is melancholic and brilliantly written. -- Marianne Mielke * Radio Berlin. *Otto de Kat has created a small masterpiece. * Nürnberger Zeitung. *The De Kat Express takes you on a journey without borders. * NRC Handelsblad. *An exceedingly beautiful novel that you read breathless till the end. * E.O. Vision. *These are novels of subtle emotional distance . . . as physical as a blow to the heart -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *One of the Netherlands' most compelling literary voices * Irish Examiner *[A] powerful novel, exploring the impact of war through the lives of its memorable characters. * The Lady *

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Book SynopsisVenezuela 2012: The President''s illness casts a shadow over the lives of his citizens - he divides opinion, but life without him is almost unimaginable. Miguel Sanabria is a retired oncologist, ambivalent towards the President but caught between a virulently anti-Chávez wife and a equally vehement pro-Chávez brother. He is asked by his nephew to hide a mobile phone carrying secret footage that could shed new light on the President''s condition.His neighbour Fredy has found a fresh angle for a new book about Chávez, but to take advantage he must agree to a green-card marriage and leave his girlfriend and their son for two months, even as their landlady plots to repossess their home.In another apartment live nine-year-old María and her neurotic, near-agoraphobic mother. Taken out of school to be educated at home, María turns to internet chat rooms for company, while her mother''s fears about the city''s endemic violence are proved tragically prescient.Trade ReviewTyszka is a perceptive, original writer. -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times. *Enthralling . . . with its skilfully wrought atmosphere of suspense and energetic prose -- David Gallagher * Times Literary Supplement *The Venezuelan Ian McEwan. -- Booktrust.The best novel about charisma I've read in a long time. Everything it tells us rings true. * Babelia *His devilish ability to bring together distinct storylines that converge in the apotheosis of a brilliant finale is proof of Barrera's awareness of the finer points of deft and intelligent writing. * El Periódico. *Barrera's prose is clear, rousing, borne of authenticity when it comes to expressing the contradictions of human beings. * La Vanguardia. *Why is Alberto Barrera Tyzska's novel so good? Because, from the first phrase to the last, he keeps us interested, curious, and concerned for what will happen. Because this flair of his reveals a great deal of cultivation, study, and insight into the art of creating suspense. Because his ability to create a redoubtable literary space, which we inevitably associate with the International Sanatorium Berghof in The Magic Mountain, Leopold Bloom's Dublin, or mad Ahab's Pequod, is breathtaking. * El Nacional. *

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Book SynopsisHISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH - THE TIMESOne night in autumn 1944, a gunshot echoes through the alleyways of a small town in occupied Poland. An S.S. officer is shot dead by a young Polish Jew, Margarita Ejzenstain. In retaliation, his commander orders the execution of thirty-seven Poles - one for every year of the dead man''s life. First hidden by a German couple, Margarita must then flee the brutal advance of the Soviet army with her new-born baby. So begins a thrilling panorama of intermingled destinies and events that reverberate from that single act of defiance. KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT follows the lives of Jewish refugees and a German family resettled from Bukovina, as well as a former S.S. officer, chronicling the geographical and psychological dislocation generated by war. A quest for identity and truth takes them from Displaced Persons camps to Lübeck, Berlin, Tel Aviv and New York, as they try to make sense of a changed world, Trade ReviewA novel about the aftermath of the war, the tribulations of uneasy peace and the violent birth of Israel . . . KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT is powerful and original -- Antonia Senior * The Times *Uhly skilfully unrolls an epic canvas yet rarely loses sight of the individual details that bring his characters to life -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *A gripping, thoroughly researched novel . . . Steven Uhly's Kingdom of Twilight should be at the centre of literary debate * Süddeutsche Zeitung *One of the most important and powerful novels of recent German literature * Deutschlandradio Kultur *

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Book SynopsisThe man with the nuclear briefcase has gone rogue - Mission Impossible meets the Hunt for Red October in an explosive new thriller for fans of James Swallow and Tom ClancyTrade ReviewWhat should a thriller do to rise above the ranks of the clichéd? It does no harm to demonstrate some intelligence and (if possible) an engagement with serious issues - but no polemics. Thankfully, Mattias Berg's The Carrier hits those targets squarely. -- Barry Forshaw * Financial Times *An enjoyable, ingenious "nuclear noir" thriller, packed with fascinatingly arcane nuclear facts -- Myles McWeeney * Irish Independent *The Carrier is a devilishly thrilling and alarming story, a doomsday-prophetic symphony over our time here and now... I don't think I have read such a philosophical, knowledge-studded and realistic adventure novel since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose... the entertainment factor, which sometimes makes me think of Mission Impossible and other action movies, never dims its grave political substance . . . History itself is present in each and every page in Mattias Berg's brilliant novel, where the end is everything else than excepted. * Göteborgs-Posten *At the same time thriller and satire, nuclear physics and history of ideas . . . One of the most ambitious and spectacular debut novels I have read in Swedish. * Kulturnytt, Swedish Radio *A successful hybrid of a novel of ideas, historical depiction and the popular science thriller genre . . . an educative and in places very exciting story with a philosophical backdrop. Why have we created something so powerful, something that could destroy us all? * Expressen *There are special trained super humans, amazingly transformed by surgery, quick-witted brains, codes and numerology, deceptions... But whilst other agent stories may only have this - spiced with some love in the sunset - The Carrier has more. Much more... Mattias Berg's knowledge in the scientific field is impressive, his storytelling skilled and well-balanced. * Dagens Nyheter *

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Book Synopsis1871. Pete Ferguson is a wanted man. An army deserter, hunted for murder in Oregon, not to mention theft and arson in Nebraska.Taking the name of Billy Webb, he is hired by bison hunters, but leaves after a bloody dispute. He then takes the Comancheros Road, which he follows to Mexico, and then to Guatemala . . . Whatever he does, wherever he goes, Pete is a magnet for trouble and seems incapable of making the right choices. The violence that follows him keeps him away from those he loves: his brother Oliver, still on the Fitzpatrick ranch with Aileen, Alexandra and Arthur Bowman.It is a woman who will change his destiny, an Indigenous woman driven out of her lands. To save her, Ferguson will sabotage an attempted coup d''état and together, they will go to the Equator that has become Ferguson''s grail, and where the malevolent forces governing this world must finally be defeated.

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Book SynopsisA rich, deep and atmospheric story about what happens when you turn a blind eye once too often and how difficult it is to keep even the darkest secret.Trade Review'The thinking book groups' Book of the Year' Bookgroup.info. * Bookgroupinfo *'An extremely enjoyable book. Despite the seriousness of the subject, it is light in tone, refined in its humour' De Volkskrant. * De Volkskrant *

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Book SynopsisBook two of the Commissario Balistreri trilogy traces his youth in North Africa, and his first exposure to the horrors that grow from human hardship.Trade Review'A state-of-the-nation piece ... it bristles with the same effortless authority' Barry Forshaw, Good Book Guide. * Good Book Guide *'Gripping' The Sun. * Sun *

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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