Fiction in translation
Dedalus Ltd The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio: Shoot!
Book Synopsis
£9.99
Karolinum,Nakladatelstvi Univerzity Karlovy,Czech Republic Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life
Book SynopsisWritten between 1954 and 1957 and treating events from the Stalinist era of Czechoslovakia’s postwar Communist regime, Midway Upon the Journeyof Our Life flew in the face of the reigning aesthetic of socialist realism, an anti-heroic novel informed by the literary theory of Viktor Shklovsky and constructed from episodes and lyrical sketches of the author and his neighbors’ everyday life in industrial north Bohemia, set against a backdrop of historical and cultural upheaval. Meditative and speculative reflections here alternate and overlap with fragmentary accounts of Jedlicka’s own biography and slices of the lives of people around him, typically rendered as overheard conversations. The narrative passages range in chronology from May 1945 to the early 1950s, with sporadic leaps through time as the characters go about the business of “building a new society” and the mythology that goes with it. Due to its critical view of socialist society, Midway remained unpublished until 1966, amid the easing of cultural control, but a complete version of this darkly comic novel did not appear in Czech until 1994.
£18.05
Little, Brown Book Group The Seventh Cross Virago Modern Classics
Book SynopsisA rediscovered German classic novel from 1942, The Seventh Cross is both a gripping escape story and a powerful novel of resistance.Trade ReviewSimply put, a novel against dictatorship -- Marcel Reich-RanickiThe material that this book is made from is long-lasting and indestructible; very few things on earth can be compared to it. It is known as justice -- Christa WolfIt was [Seghers] who taught my generation and anyone who had an ear to listen after that not-to-be-forgotten war to distinguish right from wrong. The Seventh Cross shaped me; it sharpened my vision -- Gunter GrassAt once a suspenseful manhunt story and a knowing portrait of the perils of ordinary life in Hitler's Germany, The Seventh Cross is not only an important novel, but an important historical document. This new, unabridged translation is a genuine publishing event. -- Joseph Kanon, author of 'The Good German' and 'Leaving Berlin'A fascinating insight into life in pre-war Nazi Germany just as the horrors of the Nazi regime were beginning to unfold. This is an important novel, as much for its picture of German society as for its insight into the psyche of ordinary people confronting their personal fears and mixed loyalties while an escapee from an early concentration camp attempts to avoid recapture -- Simon Mawer, author of 'The Glass Room'A masterpiece. Written in the midst of terror, but with such clarity, such acuity; Seghers is a writer of rare insight -- Rachel Seiffert, author of 'A Boy in Winter'As a demonstration of what life under Nazism does to the mind and soul of many typical Germans, The Seventh Cross is a searching, brilliantly skilful job -- Orville Prescott * The New York Times *The Seventh Cross is multi-layered, compelling and so human, wise and compassionate. We are taken inside different characters' heads to see the human side of monstrous people and the monster within the most humane. We see the poignancy of ordinariness in times of crisis and horror. Through the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times we get to see how fascism can take hold and that is an important thing for us to grasp right now! -- Virginia Baily, author of 'Early One Morning'[The Seventh Cross] ranges over an array of characters and narrative strands to present a panoramic, yet fine-grained view of German society at a particular moment of the Nazi era . . . In the book's minor characters and subplots, Seghers shows the different ways Nazism ripples through people's lives. She powerfully conveys an atmosphere of paranoia and resignation, quiet resistance and flickering hope -- Jane Yager * TLS *
£9.74
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc Touch
Book Synopsis
£999.99
ACA Publishing Limited Shadow of the Hunter
Book SynopsisThe people of China tell of an ancient tale, where the mantis hunts the cicada, unaware of the yellow bird behind it. In a small corner of one of its many cities, a random act of violence sets off a spinning top, entwining the lives of three people.Baorun, the compulsive bondage expert, is forever aided and abetted by Liu Sheng, a brash troublemaker, to indulge in his obsessions; and the lady Fairy Princess, ever-youthful, becomes the target of the pair’s escalating antics.As the years pass, many things begin to change, but in the dysfunctional world of a mental hospital at the end of Red Toon Street, just who is prey, and who is predator?Often insightful and occasionally unsettling, Shadow of the Hunter is a memorable tale concerned with guilt, injustice, madness and the struggle not to lose one’s soul to history. It is one of Su Tong’s most acclaimed works, now available in English for the first time.
£15.29
Pushkin Press Petersburg
Book SynopsisAfter enlisting in a revolutionary terrorist organization, the university student Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov is entrusted with a highly dangerous mission: to plant a bomb and assassinate a major government figure. But the real central character of the novel is the city of Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century, caught in the grip of political agitation and social unrest. Intertwining the worlds of history and myth, and parading a cast of unforgettable characters, Petersburg is a story of apocalypse and redemption played out through family dysfunction, conspiracy and murder.Trade ReviewThe most important, most influential, and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the 20th century The New York Times Book Review This modernist novel, rightly regarded as one of the pinnacles of twentieth-century Russian literature, presents great challenges to the translator. With unswerving loyalty to the original, Elsworth has succeeded in capturing its idiosyncratic rhythms and elusive layers of meaning, producing a masterful translation that reads like a work of art in its own right 2012 Rossica Prize Judging Panel One of the four most important works of twentieth century literature -- Vladimir Nabokov
£12.34
Quercus Publishing Yalo
Book SynopsisYalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian civil war, before becoming a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love with his victim - who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern Thousand and One Nights, a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his guilt - and of the other crimes his interrogators have him confess to. Beirut and the legacy of the wars of the Middle East are the texture of Elias Khoury's extraordinary literary achievement.Trade Review'A compelling, relentlessly immediate tale' Daniel Hahn, Independent on Sunday. * Independent on Sunday *'A highly compelling performance, presented in beautifully crafted, often lilting prose... This novel is about a corrupted individual in a corrupting time, but it speaks of and to us all' Guy Mannes-Abbott, Independent. * Independent *'A curiously mesmerizing novel … an ambitious piece of work … It would be hard to think of a more worthwhile endeavour for fiction to embark on' James Lasdun, Guardian. * Guardian *'Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury' Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times. * Los Angeles Times *'A dizzying journey into the extremes of human experience - into intense sensuality and stomach-turning violence' Adam Lebor, New York Times. * New York Times *
£999.99
Quercus Publishing Bed of Nails
Book SynopsisIt's as if he's being mocked from beyond the grave...When John Nichols arrives to identify the body of an old friend, he is instantly caught up in the wreckage of Alan Mustgrave's life. This is the side of Paris the tourists don't see, where everyone has a past but very few count on a future. But what can he expect from a man who bled to death in his own S&M show? Now there's a maverick police lieutenant on the prowl who thinks that Mustgrave was murdered. As the horrific extent of police abuse is revealed, the race is on to find the link between a slew of apparent suicides - and the key to it is buried deep in Nichols' past.Trade Review'An intriguing read, with a bold and surprisingly moving ending' Guardian. * Guardian *'Imaginative and disturbing' The Times. * The Times *'Both the plot and the characters are strikingly original, and the story's pessimism is balanced by Varenne's inexhaustible human sympathy' Sunday Times. * Sunday Times *'Simply superb' Joan Smith. * Joan Smith *
£11.22
Quercus Publishing A Possibility of Violence: An Inspector Avraham
Book Synopsis*A Possibility of Violence has now been adapted for television in a new series called The Calling out in November 2022*The threat to the innocent. An explosive device is found outside a nursery in Tel Aviv. The children are taken to safety; a man is caught fleeing the scene. The fear of the father. Chaim Sara, taking care of his children alone, watches with anticipation as the police search for clues and his sons grow more unsettled. The suspicion of the guilty. Inspector Avraham is sure that off the street, and in the home, a darker possibility hides. If he is right, a child is in danger. If he is right.Trade Review'Compelling ... Morally complex and psychologically convincing, A Possibility of Violence is a terrifying and disturbing psychological drama' Sunday Herald. * Sunday Herald *'Definitely lives up to the promise of its excellent predecessor ... Strong on police procedure and quotidian detail, with a refreshingly average and self-doubting protagonist, A Possibility of Violence is both tense and touching' Laura Wilson, Guardian. * Guardian *
£9.99
Caffeine Nights Publishing Incisions - Cut Two: 2: Cut Two
Book Synopsis
£11.77
Pan Macmillan Before We Say Goodbye
Book SynopsisThe million-copy bestselling series.Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s poignant Before We Say Goodbye, translated from Japanese, explores the age-old question: what would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret time travel offering. Many patrons have reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family, and visited loved ones. But the journey is not without risks and there are rules to follow. Travellers must have visited the cafe previously and most importantly, must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to go cold.In the tradition of Kawaguchi’s sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, readers are introduced to a new set of visitors:- The husband with something important left to say- The woman who couldn&rs
£999.99
Faber & Faber My Heavenly Favourite
Book SynopsisThe electrifying new novel from the sensational bestselling winner of the International Booker Prize.'A novel of exquisite discomfort and delicious poetry. Rijneveld writes with peerless moral courage and a sheer delight in the abject that we must each face in ourselves. This book unsettled me even as it made me laugh and gasp. I'm in awe.' Brandon TaylorIn the tempestuous summer of 2005, a 14-year-old farmer's daughter makes friends with the local veterinarian who looks after her father's cows. He is trying to escape trauma, while she is trying to escape into a world of fantasy. Their obsessive reliance on each other's stories builds into a terrifying trap, with a confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small community apart.Indelible, audacious and impossible-to-put-down, My Heavenly Favourite confirms Rijneveld as one of the bravest and brilliant writers on the world stage.Translated by Michele Hutchison
£12.34
Social Club Books Schoolgirl
Book Synopsis
£16.14
Columbia University Press To the Stars and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThis book brings together remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia’s finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siècle avant-garde.Trade ReviewSologub's prose is beautiful: limpid, clear, balanced, poetical, but with a keen sense of measure. . . . -- Dmitri Svatopolk-Mirsky, author of A History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1900[Sologub’s] vivid, honed, stinging style . . . combines simplicity and elegance, coldness and fire, tenderness and austerity. . . . His anguishing conceptions more and more convincingly lift the cover of enchantment that all of reality turns out to be. He is the singer of death: but he sings of death with all the tenderness of a prayer, all the ardor of passion; he speaks of death the way a passionate lover speaks of his beloved. -- Andrei Bely, author of PetersburgAlternately funny and frightening, charming and chilling, Sologub's short fiction remains curiously undervalued. Fusso's excellently selected and masterfully translated collection, accompanied by an exemplary introduction and copious notes, finally allows readers of English to appreciate the full power of Sologub's relentlessly double vision and the depth of his literary craft. -- Stanley J. Rabinowitz, Amherst College[A] richly painted world . . . The stories collected in To the Stars contain echoes of Baudelaire, Huysmans and Wilde. . . [Fusso's] English versions capture not just the morbid corporeality of Sologub’s prose, but also its radiant poetry and extravagant wordplay. -- Philip Ross Bullock * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction by Susanne FussoSelected Works About Sologub in EnglishNote on Transliteration and Translation Issues1. To the Stars (1896)2. Beauty (1899)3. In Captivity (1905)4. The Two Gotiks (1906)5. The Youth Linus (1906)6. In the Crowd (1907)7. Death by Advertisement (1907)8. The White Dog (1908)9. The Saddened Fiancée (1908)10. The Sixty-Seventh Day. A Novella (1908)11. The Road to Damascus (1910) (written with Anastasia Chebotarevskaya)12. The Kiss of the Unborn Child (1911)13. The Lady in Shackles. A Legend of the White Nights (1912)14. Little Fairy Tales (selection, 1898–1906)NotesPublication History of the Stories
£14.24
Open Letter Post Exoticism In Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven
Book Synopsis
£12.34
Schocken Books The Trial
Book SynopsisA brilliant translation of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, revealing a tale that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written. From the author of The Metamorphosis.Written in 1914, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.
£11.39
Pushkin Press The Society of the Crossed Keys: Selections from
Book Synopsis'I had never heard of Zweig until six or seven years ago, as allthe books began to come back into print, and I more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I immediately lovedthis book, his one, big, great novel-and suddenly there weredozens more in front of me waiting to read.' Wes Anderson The Society of the Crossed Keys contains Wes Anderson's selections from the writings of the great Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel. A CONVERSATION WITH WES ANDERSON Wes Anderson discusses Zweig's life and work with Zweig biographer George Prochnik. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY Selected extracts from Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, an unrivalled evocation of bygone Europe. BEWARE OF PITY An extract from Zweig's only novel, a devastating depictionof the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN THE LIFE OF A WOMAN One of Stefan Zweig's best-loved stories in full-a passionate tale of gambling, love and death, played out against the stylish backdrop of the French Riviera in the 1920s. "I defy anyone to read these tasters of Zweig's work without being compelled to read on. Pushkin might as well do their readers all a favour and sell The Society of the Crossed Keys with a complete Zweig back catalogue." Independent 'The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed.' -- David Hare 'Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor 'One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories.'--Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and, between the wars was an international bestselling author. With the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath, New York and Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Wes Anderson's films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel.Trade ReviewThe World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed. -- David Hare Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel -- Antony Beevor One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories. -- Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes I defy anyone to read these tasters of Zweig's work without being compelled to read on. Pushkin might as well do their readers all a favour and sell The Society of the Crossed Keys with a complete Zweig back catalogue. Independent ...Anderson hasn't so much adapted Zweig's writings as channeled their spirit, reconstructed their atmospheres and taken up their major obsessions. Los Angeles Review of Books The Grand Budapest Hotel is distinctively and uniquely Zweigian. The Daily Beast Stefan Zweig refuses to go away and seems, in fact, poised for a major comeback... [Wes Anderson and George Prochnick's] spirited give-and-take serves as a lively introduction to the filmmaker's selection of texts TLS
£9.49
Princeton University Press The Island of Happiness
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brilliant drawings and a powerful translation make Madame d’Aulnoy’s seventeenth-century fairy tales feel just as immediate and necessary as when they were written. . . . Natalie Frank’s stylized drawings work with the text to bring its heartwrenching and gruesome scenes to life, heightening the emotional impact of crucial moments."---George Hajjar, Foreword Reviews"Madame d’Aulnoy’s 17th-century French fairy tales are interpreted by the feminist visual artist Natalie Frank in surreal, contemporary images." * New York Times *"The new illustrations by Natalie Frank are another triumph of this collection, and they heighten the potential for d’Aulnoy’s radical stances. Frank’s women are larger than life; they’re clearly defined in a realist style while surrounded by surreal splashes of color and figures that blend into one another."---Megan Otto, Chicago Review of Books
£29.75
Seven Stories Press,U.S. The Night
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£999.99
Dedalus Ltd The Relic
Book Synopsis
£9.99
Vintage Publishing The Low Voices
Book SynopsisManuel Rivas was born in Coruña in 1957, and writes in the Galician language of north-west Spain. He is well known for his journalism, as well as for his prizewinning short stories and novels, which include the internationally acclaimed The Carpenter's Pencil and Books Burn Badly. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.Trade ReviewBeautiful... It resonates with memory, love and palpable grief... Rivas is special – funny, benign, opinionated. He tells wonderful stories because he learned early in life how to listen, and he listened to the soft, wise voices around him. Rivas misses nothing, and it is fascinating to see how, in The Low Voices, he does not tell us how he became a writer but shows us the people, such as his quiet, unassuming, determined mother, who helped make him one -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times, Books of the Year *One of Spain's best-known novelists... Rivas's imagery sparkles like dew in the morning sun -- Michael Eaude * Literary Review *Rivas has an appealing lyrical style, an offbeat humour and a translator well attuned to both. * Times Literary Supplement *The nature of this book means it can be enjoyed as a single straight story or as individual chapters. It’s one to leave by the bedside, to dip into every now and then, and enjoy over and over. Something, I think, I’ll be doing a lot. -- Jim Dempsey * Bookmunch *An affecting, impressionistic novel-cum-memoir. Like all great autobiographical writing, it pulls the magic trick of making the specific and personal universally appealing. -- Juanita Coulson * Lady *
£11.67
Penguin Books Ltd Fortunata and Jacinta
Book SynopsisBenito Perez Galdos (1843-1920) Novelist and playwright, born in Las Palmas, Canary Is, Spain. Regarded as Spain's greatest novelist after Cervantes, his 46 short Episodios nacionales (National Episodes) give a vivid picture of 19th-c Spain from the viewpoint of the people. Some of his longer novels have been translated, including Doña Perfecta (1876, trans 1886). His plays, many of them based on his novels, have also been successful.
£15.29
Penguin Books Ltd Beautiful Antonio Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisHaving spent some time in Rome, Antonio - the handsomest young man in Catania - returns to his native town with the reputation of being a playboy and with a long list of amorous adventures behind him. To please his father, Antonio agrees to marry the beautiful Barbara. A year after their marriage however - scandal erupts. Barbara is still a virgin! The bride's family attempt to annul the marriage and Antonio's honour seems irrevocably lost.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers
Book Synopsis''It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered'' Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years. Ranging from the Romantics of the early nineteenth century to works of contemporary fiction, it includes Hoffmann''s hallucinatory portrait of terror and insanity ''The Sandman''; Chamisso''s influential black masterpiece ''Peter Schlemiel'', where a man barters his own shadow; Kafka''s chilling, disturbing satire ''In the Penal Colony''; the Dadaist surrealism of Kurt Schwitters'' ''The Onion''; and Bachmann''s modern fairy tale ''The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran''. Macabre, dreamlike and expressing deep unconscious fears, these stories are also spiked with unsettling humour, showing stylistic daring as well as giving insight into the darkest recesses of the human condition.Peter Wortsman''s powerful translations are accompanied by brief overviews of the lives of each author, and an introduction discussing the notion of ''angst'' and the stories'' place in the context of German history.Translated, selected and edited with an introduction by Peter WortsmanTrade ReviewAppealing -- The New YorkerAll twenty-five tales make absolutely riveting reading and are almost all suitable for reading to children as bedtime stories. As for the adults - within the pages of Tales of the German Imagination is a treasury of delicious, old fashioned story-telling -- The BayA solid collection of classic stories ... a labor of love -- Library Journal
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Nine Cloud Dream
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Man-Jung’s tale is a hypnotic journey, a scholarly, instructive Buddhist bildungsroman set across Tang dynasty China, and in Insu Fenkl’s skilled translation, a glimpse into the rich crossroads of religions and society therein.”—Publishers Weekly
£11.69
OUP Oxford Barcelona Tales
Book SynopsisBarcelona is one of the most visited cities in Europe, a multilingual capital of an autonomous region that longs to be independent of Spain. The city is famous for its painters, modernist architecture, style of football, and its history, but as Peter Bush reveals it has always been a major centre of literary talent and creativity. Barcelona Tales presents a selection of newly translated short stories by 14 writers, many of them Catalan. The stories explore the themes of migration and class conflict in a city renowned in world literature from the day rural innocents Don Quixote and Sancho Panza visited its streets at the beginning of the seventeenth-century, and witnessed the wonders of the printing press and the cruelties of slavery. Together, they open up the city in ironic, tragic, and lyrical ways, inviting readers to explore fictional lives and literary styles that reflect the dynamic, conflict-ridden character and history of this great European city.Trade ReviewA fascinating and varied collection, which captures the diversity and atmosphere of the city. * Karen Langley, Shiny New Books *One can always think of some omissions when reading an anthology ... There can be little complaint, though, about these fourteen tales, set in different areas of Barcelona ... They reveal how this industrial port city has been and is a magnet for migrants. They show the class divisions between areas. They trace, too, the development of modern Catalan literature in both Catalan and Spanish. * Michael Eaude, Catalonia Today *Peter Bush, the translator, does an excellent job translating both from Spanish and Catalan into English. He very well replicates the style and flow of the original author ... Helen Constantine and Peter Bush have produced a quite excellent, if slightly quirky, book. A great read for anyone heading to the Catalan capital. * TripFiction *Table of ContentsGeneral Introduction, Helen Constantine Introduction, Peter Bush 1. What happened to Don Quixote when he went to Barcelona?, Miguel de Cervantes 2. Transplanted, Narcís Oller 3. A Brief, Heart-warming Story of a Madame Bovary Born and Bred in Gràcia, Following our Best Principles and Traditions, Montserrat Roig 4. Ramon from Montjuic, Josep Pla 5. Blitz on Barcelona, C.A. Jordana 6. A Detective Story, Juan Marsé 7. Three Steps, Miquel Molina 8. Dead Time, Teresa Solana 9. The Shoe-shine and La Locomotora, Alfredo Bryce Echenique 10. Neighbours, Jordi Nopca 11. Which Country Do You Want?, Empar Moliner 12. The Sound of Keys, Najat El Hachmi 13. The Boy who was Sure to Die, Quim Monzó 14. Julio, the Parrot and the Taxi Driver, Jorge Carrión Notes on the Authors Further Reading and Viewing Publisher's Acknowledgements Map
£11.69
Oxford University Press The Song of Roland
Book SynopsisCharles the king, our emperor great,Has been a full seven years in Spain.As far as the sea he conquered this haughty land.Not a single castle remains standing in his pathCharlemagne (768-814) was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 and presided over a huge empire. He frequently appears in literature as a great warlord and pious crusading figure. In 778, the rearguard of Charlemagne''s retreating army was ambushed and defeated at the battle of Roncevaux. This became the inspiration for songs and poems celebrating deeds of valour in the face of overwhelming odds, through the character of Charlemagne''s nephew (the imaginary) Roland. The Song of Roland is the most stirring and moving epic poem of the European Middle Ages, offering a particularly heady mixture of history, legend, and poetry. Presented here in a lively and idiomatic new translation, the Song of Roland offers fascinating insights into medieval ideas about heroism, manhood, religion, race, and nationhood which were foundational for modern European culture. The Song of Roland is accompanied here by two other medieval French epics about Charlemagne, both of which show him to be a far more equivocal figure than that portrayed by the Roland: the Occitan Daurel and Beton, in which he is a corrupt and avaricious monarch; and the Journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople, which gives the heroes of the Roland a comic makeover.
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd A Moth to a Flame
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion -- Graham GreeneDagerman can evoke such emotion in a single sentence -- Colm ToibinThere are some writers (Kafka and Lorca immediately spring to mind) who come to enjoy the status of saint; their lives and deaths constitute statements about existence and its proper priorities. A saint of this type is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman. * Times Literary Supplement *A writer of uncommon urgency and power -- Siri HustvedtA literary giant in Sweden, Dagerman conjures a Strindbergian atmosphere of shadowy menace in his brief, intense novel, A Moth to a Flame... The novel absorbs the reader effortlessly... The landscape round Stockholm, with its fog-bound flatlands and grey winter seas, is vividly evoked. This moody, death-haunted novel is well worth reading * Evening Standard *This searing tale of bereavement and loathing feels all too relevant today * Guardian *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Everything Like Before Stories Penguin Modern
Book Synopsis''Askildsen''s dry, absurd humour is not unlike that of Beckett... His short stories are packed with irony, and the dialogue is sharp and expressive'' TLSSpare, taut and told with flashes of pitch-black humour, the short stories of Norwegian master Kjell Askildsen capture all the strangeness of modern existence. In this selection of tales, spanning the whole of his brilliant career, unnerving encounters occur, lonely individuals try to connect, families and relationships are fractured, and we are confronted by the fragility and absurdity of life.''Full of compelling strangeness. Lives surge through a few brittle pages, suppressed loves and resentments threaten to erupt'' IndependentTrade ReviewAskildsen's dry, absurd humour is not unlike that of Beckett... His short stories are packed with irony, and the dialogue is sharp and expressive * TLS *Offers stark portraits of male sexuality and familial dysfunction that are full of compelling strangeness. Lives surge through a few brittle pages, suppressed loves and resentments threaten to erupt. Characters are rarely isolated but their loneliness is palpable as they steal time in the shadows. Names recur throughout the book so the reader tries to connect people with events, but it's the loose ends which draw you back to these taut dramas * Independent *Kjell Askildsen has a completely unique ability to write low-key tension between people, razor-sharp and often chamber-like stories that hit you with relentless certainty. -- Sindre Hovdenakk * Verdens Gang, Norway *Askildsen, who has translated works by Brecht, similarly shines a spotlight on his characters, and that light is alienating and unforgiving, illuminating selfishness and stagnant relationships. -- LiterateurA master of the short story, Kjell Askildsen's unadorned style is not so much concerned with the manipulation of plotlines as with the manipulation of the reader's feelings and allegiances, with the presentation of characters as people, real people, people so like us that it's creepy, uncanny. -- Becky McMullan * Electric Literature *Reading Askildsen is like falling in love with someone you know will hurt you ... hypnotically alluring * Expressen, Sweden *One of the great storytellers of the human soul * ABC, Spain *Stark, minimalist stories, translated from Norwegian, about characters hungry for more than life has delivered * The New York Times *Relentlessly weird in the best possible way -- Zakia Uddin * The White Review *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Territory of Light
Book SynopsisIntroducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world''s greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979Trade ReviewTsushima evades any label, her fiction transcends gender to focus on the existential loneliness that is at the heart of humanity.—Kris Kosaka, Japan TimesWonderfully poetic ... extraordinary freshness ... a Virginia Woolf quality—Margaret Drabble, BBC Radio 3Spiky, atmospheric and intimate, filled with moments of strangeness that linger in the mind—The SpectatorIn this short, powerful novel lurk the joy and guilt of single parents everywhere—GuardianThis exquisite and poignant novel . . . will resonate with single mothers always and everywhere—Shami ChakrabartiAn extraordinary book . . . cool analytic intelligence propelled by sudden eruptions of passion—Lisa AppignanesiAn astonishing and exquisite masterpiece about love, motherhood, female independence, and the restoration of a damaged family. Yuko Tsushima is an unforgettable name alongside great masters like Virginia Woolf, Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout—J. M. Lee, author of The Investigation
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd Jealousy
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewRobbe-Grillet is a visual novelist for whom perception is intrinsically fascinating but fraught with uncertainty. * The Daily Telegraph *Robbe-Grillet's career was built on a sly and amusing paradox: of using fiction over and over again to undo the conventions of fiction. But how cleverly and engagingly he did it. * The Independent *The finest novel about love since Proust. -- Vladimir NabokovThe novel remains striking in its originality, and Richard Howard’s translation from 1959 has held up well. * TLS *
£8.54
Quercus Publishing The Enigma of the Return
Book SynopsisAn affecting meditation on loss and exile ANGEL GURRIA-QUINTANA, Financial TimesWindsor Laferrière left Haiti in fear of his life. He has lived in Montreal for thirty-three years, and when his father dies in New York, himself an exile for half a century, Windsor travels there to attend the funeral, and then back to Haiti to inform his mother of the death. In Haiti, Windsor is faced with the grim truth of life in his homeland - the endemic poverty, the thwarted ambitions and broken dreams. But only here can he become a writer again . . .The Enigma of the Return lives where fiction, poetry and autobiography meet. These creative tensions sustain a narrative of astonishing beauty, clarity and insight.Looks set to become one of the great poetic statements of homesickness and return . . . It should be read by all exiles everywhere Ian Thomson, IndependentA poetic, melancholic tour de force . . . a compelling, iTrade ReviewThis magnificent meditation on loss and political exile looks set to become one of the great poetic statements of homesickness and return . . . I have not read such an affecting or humane book in years; it should be read by all exiles everywhere. -- Ian Thomson * Independent *'This affecting novel investigates a man's relationship with the island he fled in his youth - Haiti - and the land in which he made a name for himself - Quebec. A meditation on loss and exile' Financial Times. * Financial Times *'Moves fluidly between free verse and prose' Guardian. * Guardian *'A poetic, melancholic tour de force ... a compelling, intense, stark and poignant exploration of living life as an outsider ... 'the great Haitian novel'' New Internationalist magazine. * New Internationalist magazine *'In an age of great post-colonial migrations, this is a magnificent book' Grégoire Leménager, Nouvel Observateur. * Nouvel Observateur *'A richly haunting novel, with prose melting into poetry' Quentin Mills-Fenn, Uptown. * Uptown *'A tour de force of partial autobiography' GQ magazine. * GQ magazine *
£9.49
Quercus Publishing Breaking Point
Book SynopsisOlivier Norek: Former police officer, writer on SPIRAL and a million-copy bestsellerExhilarating . . . This is not conventional crime Barry Forshaw, FTWhen a routine kidnapping case goes badly wrong, Capitaine Vincent Coste breaks his golden rule: he starts to take things personally.And with his career hanging by a thread - his resignation letter parked in his superior''s desk draw - he is plunged into his most testing ordeal yet.A raid on the vault at the Bobigny law courts. Five vital pieces of evidence swiped. Four men who can no longer be held: an armed robber, a foreign legionnaire, a kidnapper and a paedophile. But what is the connection between them?With Coste and his team at a loss, it''s the moral outrage of another criminal that will throw up a lead: one they''ll follow to their breaking point - and beyond.What readers are saying about Olivier NorekYouTrade ReviewThe greatest exponent of the policier at work today -- Mark Sanderson * The Times *
£9.99
Les Fugitives Now Now Louison
Book Synopsis'Louise Bourgeois talks, talks to herself, reviewing the scraps of her long life in all their disorder. This is the portrait, from memory, of a woman who devoted her life to her art, a life that was also the life of the century' writes J. Fremon.Trade Review'A truly wonderful book... The spider woman, the intellectuel, the rebel, the sly enchantress, and the good girl sing together in this exuberant, lithe text, beautifully translated by Cole Swensen.' - SIRI HUSTVEDT. `Now, Now Louison draws the reader in with all of the monstrous elegance of a spider, capturing us in the fine web of the creative process, and revealing, with biting wit and lyrical style, the ego, and sacrifices it takes to make monumental work.' - PRETI TANEJA, laureate of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2018 for 'We That Are Young'. `Jean Fremon is a wholly singular artist, a writer who lives in the radiant zone where poetry, philosophy and storytelling meet.' - PAUL AUSTER. 'Like all the most urgent poetry, it is "fragile and momentary, but momentarily invincible."' JOHN ASHBERY. 'As much a portrait of Bourgeois as it is of one who has outlasted another and is trying, in full knowledge of an impending failure, to reassemble a figure from the fragments. Perhaps life, this life, any life, is best preserved in its many bits, just as it was lived.' - FRIEZE. `Metamorphosing like Arachne, Bourgeois's imagined voice recounts how she wove the detritus of her memory (...) into an art of resistence (...) Now, Now, Louison (a reference to her childhood nickname) is a sensitive portrait of a woman whose struggle for self-definition came to drive her artistic practice.' Financial Times 'The life of Louise Bourgeois is rendered in ellipsis, quick brush strokes, and a mix of associations of ideas and of sensations waltzing with chronology. An original, sensitive text.' - ArtPress.Table of ContentsNow, Now, Louison, page 1. Jean Fremon, select bibliography, page 113
£10.80
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Gods Bits of Wood
Book SynopsisIt is 1947 and the workers on the Dakar-Niger Railway have come out on strike. Sembène Ousmane, in this vivid and moving novel, evokes all of the colour, passion and tragedy of those decisive years in history.''Ever since they left Thiès, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending.''God''s Bits of Wood is Sembène Ousmane''s internationally renowned novel, based on his own experiences of the landmark 1947 railroad strike that spread across French West Africa.''A classic.'' Guardian''Ousmane Sembène [was] a crucial figure in Africa''s postcolonial cultural awakening.'' New York Times''A powerful story.'' Trade ReviewA classic. * Guardian *Ousmane Sembène [was] a crucial figure in Africa's postcolonial cultural awakening. * New York Times *A powerful story. * Kirkus *
£999.99
St Martin's Press Grime
Book SynopsisThis is a novel so caustic it should be printed with hydrochloric acid. Berg, a Swiss writer and social activist, sprays her fury across the whole landscape of technological and economic manias that are rendering the 21st century intolerable. And Tim Mohr has done a remarkable job of translating Berg's hilarious, hectoring, hyperbolic prose, which isn't so much propulsive as relentless...No other book has so thoroughly rattled me about where we're headed. Ron Charles, the Washington PostThe first English translation of iconic Swiss-German novelist Sibylle Berga ruthless indictment of contemporary society and a strikingly creative manifesto for rebellion.Rochdale is a town in post-industrial Britain, but it could be anywhere on the digitalized, environmentally-decimated planet: a place devoid of hope, where poverty, violence, and squalor are the near-future consequences of decisions being made at this very moment. Grime is the dazzling multi-voice
£13.59
Pan Macmillan The Melting
Book Synopsis'Challenging and disturbing, The Melting is an incredibly cruel fable about friendship and adolescence . . . Spit knows no fear. It is we, the readers, that are left trembling.' - Leïla Slimani, author of LullabyEva can trace the route to Pim’s farm with her eyes closed, even though she has not been to Bovenmeer for many years. There she grew up among the rape fields and dairy farms. There lies also the root of all their grief.Eva was one of three children born in her small Flemish town in 1988. Growing up alongside the boys Laurens and Pim, Eva sought refuge from her loveless family life in the company of her two friends. But with adolescence came a growing awareness of their burgeoning sexuality. Driven by their newly found desires, the children begin a game that will have serious and violent consequences for them all. Thirteen years after the summer she’s tried for so long to forget, Eva is returning to her village. Everything fell apart that summer, but this time she’ll be prepared. She has a large block of ice in her car boot and she’s ready to settle the score . . . Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel, The Melting is an extraordinary and unsettling debut from Lize Spit, a reckoning with adolescent cruelty and the scars it leaves.Trade ReviewChallenging and disturbing, The Melting is an incredibly cruel fable about friendship and adolescence . . . Lize Spit raises the tension and accelerates the suspense until reaching a dark and majestic ending . . . She knows no fear. It is we, the readers, that are left trembling. -- Leïla Slimani * Le Monde *The Melting is like a long-range missile that at first only casts a dark shadow as it flies overhead, apparently without causing any damage, but then strikes its target with calculated precision. * De Standaard *So good you can hardly believe it's a first novel. * Information *Fascinating . . . Terrifying, dark, both foreign and familiar, this first novel leaves a taste of delicious unease. * L'Express *
£8.54
Quercus Publishing The Wrong Goodbye
Book SynopsisA classic slice of Japanese hard-boiled noir paying homage to the master of the genre: Raymond ChandlerThe Wrong Goodbye pits homicide detective Eiji Futamura against a shady Chinese business empire and U.S. military intelligence in the docklands of recession Japan. After the frozen corpse of immigrant barman Tran Binh Long washes up in midsummer near Yokosuka U.S. Navy Base, Futamura meets a strange customer from Tran's bar. Vietnam vet pilot Billy Lou Bonney talks Futamura into hauling three suitcases of "goods" to Yokota US Air Base late at night and flies off leaving a dead woman behind. Thereby implicated in a murder suspect's escape and relieved from active duty, Futamura takes on hack work for the beautiful concert violinist Aileen Hsu, a "boat people" orphan whose Japanese adoption mother has mysteriously gone missing. And now a phone call from a bestselling yakuza author, a one-time black marketeer in Saigon, hints at inside information on "former Vietcong mole" Tran and his "old sidekick" Billy Lou, both of whom crossed a triad tycoon who is buying up huge tracts of Mekong Delta marshland for a massive development scheme. As the loose strands flashback to Vietnam, the string of official lies and mysterious allegiances build into a dark picture of the U.S.-Japan postwar alliance. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred BirnbaumTrade ReviewYahagi offers a Japanese Philip Marlowe chasing deadly fallout from the Vietnam War. Proof Brits and Americans have no monopoly on great crime fiction. -- David Hewson * author of The Garden of Angels *Toshihiko Yahagi gives us Japan's answer to Philip Marlowe in the form of the heavy drinking lone wolf Eiji Futamura, who finds himself embroiled in a case that pits loyalty and personal friendship against power and political corruption. Shady things are going on in post-war Kanagawa, but nothing can stop Futamura getting to the bottom of it all, no matter the cost. A suspenseful, intriguing read. -- Nick Bradley * author of The Cat and the City *The Wrong Goodbye is a hard-boiled treasure, a Chandleresque elegy to a time of shady deals, femme fatales, and of course, murder. These are tropes with which mystery readers will undoubtedly be familiar. Yet this novel is also a beguiling peephole into a Japanese society that readers will perhaps not know so well; a world of US airbases, black markets, and corrupt ploys. While Toshihiko Yahagi may not be the heavyweight in the Anglophone world that he is in Japan, he very much deserves to be. Simply put, The Wrong Goodbye is a siren song of poetic noir. -- Nicolas Obregon * author of Blue Light Yokohama *
£9.49
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc The Bookseller's Notebooks
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc The Dispersal
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Cybirdy Publishing Limited The Porridge of the Countess Berthe
Book SynopsisFirst-ever translation in English of a unique goblin tale from Alexandre Dumas, the famous author of The Three Musketeers and The Comte of Monte Cristo. On the bank of the Old Medieval Rhine, there was a kind, compassionate, determinate and noble human being; the Countess Berthe. She founded a rather unusual tradition, an annual feast set on the first of May of each year, The Porridge of the Countess Berthe. To ensure the future of this newfound tradition and in spite of Nature's forces as well as greed of the living, the Countess Berthe resorted to unite with the Cobolds, the good spirits which were known to live, work and prosper in the foundation of the castle. "I must first tell you that in Germany there was once a race of good little spirits, who have unfortunately since disappeared, the tallest of them was barely six inches high. They were called Cobolds." A hidden gem from the past that has been uncovered with this translation for the interest, comfort and amusement of readers whatever their age and wherever they are.
£999.99
Pushkin Press Evening Descends Upon the Hills: Stories from
Book SynopsisA stunning classic set in Italy's most vibrant and turbulent metropolis - Naples - in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. These lively and superbly written stories helped inspire Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Ortese's work was also championed by Italo Calvino, who was her Italian editor. The stories and reportage collected in this volume form a powerful portrait of ordinary lives, both high and low, family dramas, love affairs, and struggles to pay the rent, set against the crumbling courtyards of the city itself, and the dramatic landscape of Naples Bay. This classic is exquisitely rendered in English by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee, two of the leading translators working from Italian today. Included in the collection is 'A Pair of Eyeglasses', one of the most widely praised Italian short stories of the last century.
£9.49
Quercus Publishing Three Minutes: Ewert Grens 6
Book SynopsisINFILTRATOROne-time Swedish government agent Piet Hoffmann is on the run from the life prison sentence he escaped: living under a false identity with his family in Calí, Colombia.INFORMANTWhen Hoffmann is offered employment by a Colombian drug mafia, and is simultaneously approached by the US DEA to infiltrate the same cartel, he says yes to both.IN TOO DEEPHowever, when America settles on an enemy for their next War on Terror, Colombia, the US government and the cartel are faced with the same problem. Piet Hoffmann.Hoffmann is marked. Yet help will come from unlikely quarters: DCI Ewert Grens - the enemy who Hoffmann once tricked - will now become the only ally he can trust.Trade ReviewRoslund / Hellström are among the very best crime novelists around. They write with courage and intensity about the important issues of our time. -- Maj SjöwallSuperb. * Guardian *
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Vintage Publishing Easy Reading: The new novel from the Spanish
Book SynopsisAn explosive and daring novel about bodies, sex, politics and disability by the prize-winning Spanish writer Cristina MoralesÁngela, Patricia, Marga and Nati are cousins living together in Barcelona. As women branded as disabled who share a state-subsidised flat, they must fight every day to retain their independence and find new and inventive ways - from dance to underground zines - to stop the state from managing every aspect of their lives.Funny and furious, Easy Reading is an indictment of the institutions that stigmatise individuals as disabled and of the language that marginalises them. It is also a portrait - visceral, vibrant, combative - of contemporary Barcelona. But, above all, Easy Reading is a feminist celebration of the body in all its forms, of female desire and queer sexuality, and of the transgressive and revolutionary power of language.Translated from the Spanish by Kevin Gerry DunnTrade ReviewA force of nature. * ABC *Punk rock has arrived in Spanish literature. * El Pais *Offensive, playful, transgressive, hilarious, visceral, combative, brutal, and yet somehow tender... A book that shook me to my core. * Esquire *The most brutal, provocative and hilarious voice in contemporary Spanish literature. Like an unexpected meeting between Kathy Acker and Camilo José Cela in a gynaecologist's waiting room. Extraordinary. -- Paul B. PreciadoA radical, radically original novel with no precedent in Spanish literature. Remarkable for its recreation of orality, its extraordinary characters and its reading of the current political climate. -- Jury for the Herralde Prize
£15.29
Seagull Books London Ltd 1970 – The Last Days
Book SynopsisA riveting novel that is both an indictment and an elegy, a second-person memoir of Nasser’s final months in the voice of his former prisoner. In 1959, at the age of twenty-two, Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim was imprisoned by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. Over the following five years in prison in Egypt’s Western Desert, Ibrahim kept diaries that he smuggled out on cigarette papers. In this novel, Ibrahim takes up Nasser as a fictional character tied tightly to real events, offering a window into his daily life in his final years. Ibrahim follows Nasser during the War of Attrition and the aftermath of the 1967 war with Israel and looks back on the events of the previous decades. He also chronicles Nasser at his most vulnerable, detailing a more private set of Nasser’s setbacks and defeats: the daily routines of a diabetic suffering from heart trouble in the months before his death. Political events as well as social and economic transformations are narrated through newspaper clippings and archival fragments, painting a portrait of the decline of a man who was once larger than life.
£18.99
Cinder House Jawbone
Book Synopsis"WAS DESIRE SOMETHING LIKE BEING POSSESSED BY A NIGHTMARE?" Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality. Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous "creepypastas," Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.
£9.49
Garnet Publishing Princess Bari
Book Synopsis
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Quercus Publishing Every Seventh Wave
Book SynopsisHave you ever just clicked with someone? - the sequel to the international bestseller Love Virtually about a relationship conducted by email.Love Virtually ends as Leo leaves Austria for America. He and Emmi have still not met, but the intensity of their e-mail correspondence has been threatening Emmi's marriage. Leo returns from Boston and gradually resumes his e-mail contact with Emmi. But he has plans to settle down with Pamela, the woman he met in America. In an attempt to draw a line under their relationship, Emmi and Leo at last agree to meet in person.Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch and Katharina BielenbergTrade Review'A brilliantly complex and sophisticated love story ... thought-provoking and engrossing' Metro . * Metro *Just what you need. -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *Perhaps the first great romantic novel of the internet age. * Sunday Express *A modern romance that feels both fresh and traditional -- Rebecca Wilson * Sunday Times *I couldn't put it down ... like a jilted lover, when I reached the end I wanted more. -- Danielle Goldstein * Time Out *
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