Fiction in translation

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Book SynopsisA wonderful sui generis novel about a visiting cat who brings joy into a couple’s life in TokyoTrade Review"What initially reads like free association turns out to be a near-microscopic record of emotion and phenomena." -- Alan Gilbert - The Believer"The best novels are often the ones that change us. Over time, they stay with us- like small miracles. Takashi Hiraide, the Japanese poet and novelist, blindsided me- he shows himself to be a poet of the highest grade. A rare treasure, beautiful and profound; whether you're a cat lover or not, don't pass this one up. ultimately, it's about what it means to love and to lose. Even dog lovers will relate." -- Juan Vidal - NPR"A beautiful, ornate read, brimming with philosophical observation, humor and intelligence." -- Publishers Weekly"An unusually intimate, detailed and vivid picture of a place that is simultaneously private and open." -- V.V. Ganeshananthan - The New York Times Book Review"It’s clear there is a tradition of literary works centering on or featuring cats in modern Japanese, and we now have from New Directions a translation of a splendid addition to that list. (...) a work of subtleties revealed only with repeated readings. I recommend it unreservedly to the general reader." -- Paul McCarthy - The Japan Times"The little feline sets off a chain of disquisitions on nature, destiny, joy, pleasure, and sorrow" -- Nina Sankovitch - Huffington Post"A wonderful tale about the desire to possess and the pain of absence. And such writing! Precise, delicate, enchanting." -- Atmospheres"Hiraide's work really shines" -- Kenzaburo Oe

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Book SynopsisFor the first time—and in the best translation ever—the complete Book of Disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparisonTrade Review"Endlessly ponderable." -- Electric Literature"A triumph of scholarship and translation." -- Marcela Valdes - Publisher Weekly (Starred Review)"As searing as Rilke or Mandelstam." -- The New York Times Book Review"The ultimate futility of all accomplishment, the fascination of loneliness, the way sorrow colors our perception of the world: Pessoa’s insight into his favorite themes was purchased at a high price, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. A modern masterpiece." -- Adam Kirsch - The New Yorker"As addictive, and endearing, as Borges and Calvino." -- The Washington Post Book World"One of the central figures of European modernism." -- Max Nelson - The New York Review of Books"Pessoa’s work The Book of Disquiet is one of life’s great miracles. Pessoa invented numerous alter egos. Arguably, the four greatest poets in the Portuguese language were all Pessoa using different names." -- NPR"Nobody can render the the hollowed horror of a world wrung out quite as gorgeously as Pessoa." -- Bookforum"Lyrical, poetic—but to call these paragraphs prose poems would be misleading. There is something necessarily prosaic about them. The Book of Disquiet is caught up in the steady drumbeat of ordinary life and all its detritus: a favorite pair of boots, a type of pant that’s in fashion, the way people in Lisbon pronounce Trás-os-Montes, but most of all the ordinary noise of the self thinking about itself. Its pages, like Pessoa’s trunk, are thick with thoughts." -- Poetry Foundation"The Book of Disquiet, a literary vortex that, even in completeness, remains incomplete. A reading experience like no other. It is thrilling, confusing, upsetting, joyous, tedious and profound. You will never forget it, or stop wanting to return to it." -- Chris Power - The New Statesman"Complete edition of a haunted autobiographical novel—or is it a fictionalized autobiography?—that has emerged as an existentialist classic in the 80-plus years since its author's death. Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa might have taught J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon a thing or two about anonymity. He wrote prolifically in three languages but published relatively little, and he hid behind assumed names and identities, some 75 of them in all, which he called 'heteronyms.' The present volume is a case in point, written over the course of many years in the person of two such assumed names, Vicente Guedes and, later, Bernardo Soares. As for Guedes, Pessoa opens, 'This book is not by him, it is him': it is a catalog of Kierkegaard-ian moods, of fears and loathings and the constant presence of death in a fundamentally tragic world. 'I failed life even before I had lived it, because even as I dreamed it, I failed to see its appeal,' writes Pessoa, and he proceeds to make sun-splashed Lisbon a gray and gloomy place. Though often somber, Pessoa is rarely tiresome; he reflects interestingly on such things as the development of science and aesthetics, the pleasures of wasting time ('For those subtle connoisseurs of sensations, there is a kind of handbook on inertia, which includes recipes for every kind of lucidity'), and, always, mortality: 'We are born dead, we live dead, and we enter death already dead.' Readers with a liking for Walter Benjamin and Miguel de Unamuno, Pessoa's intellectual kin, will find much of interest in Pessoa's pages..." -- Kirkus Review"In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience, and noise, here is the perfect antidote." -- John Lancaster - Daily Telegraph"A favorite book: in its determined melancholy, its gentle audacity, and in its insistence on renunciation, frustration, and solitude as the nectars of life, it is almost scarily whole. *The Book of Disquiet* is a diary, but of a self that is several and precarious, and always more potential than actual. Its floating boundaries expand and contract, lazily animated by 'the horror of making our soul a fact.' It is in *The Book of Disquiet*—translated, beautifully, by Margaret Jull Costa—that Pessoa found himself most truly. The system of heteronyms allowed him to disown his words even as he wrote them. The heteronyms formed a small society of alter egos, 'a whole world of friends inside me.'" -- Benjamin Kunkel - The Believer"Readers with a particular interest in modernism will find this work indispensable." -- Publishers Weekly"Pessoa’s rapid prose, snatched in flight and restlessly suggestive, remains haunting, often startling. There is nobody like him." -- W. S. Merwin"Rich, thoughtful, fluid work by translator Margaret Jull Costa... [A] welcome and illuminating spotlight." -- Rick VanderKnyff - Poetry Northwest"A meandering, melancholic series of reveries and meditations. Pessoa's amazing personality is as beguiling and mysterious as his unique poetic output." -- William Boyd"Extraordinary—a haunting mosaic of dreams, autobiographical vignettes, shards of literary theory and criticisms and maxims." -- George Steiner"The very book to read when you wake up at 3 a.m and can't get back to sleep-mysteries, misgivings, fears, and dreams and wonderment. Like nothing else." -- Philip Pullman

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Book SynopsisOnly recently available for the first time in English, Panorama is the newly rediscovered first novel of H. G. Adler, a modernist master whose work has been compared to that of Kafka, Joyce, and Solzhenitsyn. A brilliant epic told in ten distinct vignettes, Panorama is a portrait of a place and people soon to be destroyed, as seen through the eyes of the young Josef Kramer. It moves from the pastoral World War I–era Bohemia of Josef’s youth, to a German boarding school full of creeping prejudice, through an infamous extermination camp, and finally to Josef’s self-imposed exile abroad, achieving veracity and power through a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of our greatest modern masters. The author of six novels as well as the monumental account of his experiences in a Nazi labor camp, Theresienstadt 1941–1945, H. G. Adler is an essential author with unique historical importance. Panorama is lasting evidence of both th

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Book SynopsisA collection of fifty-nine wry, satirical short stories loosely connected by a cast of rotating characters living at society’s margins. Evoking under-ripened and immature fruit, the collection’s title serves as a bittersweet metaphor for a world that possesses the seeds of change but is unprepared for the harvest.

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Book SynopsisThis extraordinary novel is part of Grigory Kanovich’s ‘Litvak saga’, his tribute to Jewish life before the Holocaust. Set in a small Lithuanian town in the late nineteenth century, the story begins with the arrival of a stranger who sets everyone on edge and seems to know their secrets.Trade ReviewKanovich saved us, ‘Jews of silence,’ from forgetting our very selves during the most difficult times of antisemitism and dictatorship. The Tears and Prayers of Fools became at once a biblical parable for our time and a Chagall painting restored to life in words—the eternal flight of a free human above a tragic age." - Vitaly Portnikov, Ukrainian journalist and writer"‘Shtetl noir’ meets Hasidic legend in this deeply philosophical work. In a word, this novel is the work of an exceptional writer with a unique voice." - Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, University Professor Emerita, New York University"When The Tears and Prayers of Fools came out in Russian in Vilnius in 1983, I was fortunate to be able to purchase a copy of this novel in Lithuania (back then, Kanovich’s books were not sold in Moscow) and was completely overwhelmed by its stylistic originality, richness of detail, and philosophical depth." - Mikhail Krutikov, University of MichiganTable of Contents Map of the Pale of Settlement A Note on History and Transliteration Acknowledgments, Dmitri Kanovich The Tears and Prayers of Fools Glossary List of Characters

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Book SynopsisBetween 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed approximately twenty million gallons of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on Vietnam and Laos. This collection of twelve short stories by Vietnamese writers reveals this tragic legacy and raises troubling moral questions about the physical, spiritual, and environmental consequences of war.Trade ReviewThis unique and remarkable book more than deserves the widest nationwide reading and strong recognition. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force extensively sprayed the enemy's jungle and rural countryside with a chemical defoliant known as Agent Orange to deprive the Vietcong of forest cover. However, Agent Orange was then well-known to be heavily contaminated with dioxin, the most potent known human carcinogen. The pain of agonizing diseases, cancers, and deaths in small towns and villages is told in their own words, by victims or their family members, in heart moving, yet non-accusatory detachment against the U.S. chemical warfare." — Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.“The editors have included some of the best-known contemporary authors in Vietnam in this intelligently selected and well-translated collection of essays concerning the inevitable suffering caused by Agent Orange. Their combined voices allow us to share some of the pain and human consequences that resulted from a war against the environment itself, and inexorably, agonizingly, remind us of our connection to, and responsibility for, that damage. It is only through the intimacy of imaginative literature that one can begin to experience the depth of that destruction and the wreckage of individual lives.” — Wayne Karlin, author of Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam.

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Book SynopsisA Richard and Judy Book Club pick.A mysterious whodunnit, Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus is the huge international bestseller and the first book in the Bodenstein & Kirchoff crime series.‘A must for mystery fans’ – The BooksellerOn a wet November day, Detectives Pia Kirchoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to the scene of a mysterious accident. A woman has fallen from a bridge onto the motorway below. It seems that she may have been pushed. The investigation leads them to a small town near Frankfurt, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer.On a September evening eleven years earlier, two seventeen-year-old girls, Laura and Stefanie vanished without trace from this same village. In a trial based entirely on circumstantial evidence, Stefanie’s boyfriend, handsome and talented, Tobias Sartorius, was sentenced to ten years in prison. He has now returned to his home in an attempt to clear his name. RTrade Review‘Snow White Must Die looks like being a must for mystery fans this summer, based on the great customer reviews it’s already getting across the Atlantic’ -- Emma Giacon * The Bookseller *‘The Nele Neuhaus thriller that’s captivated Germany (and been compared to Stieg Larsson) is finally getting published in the UK. The whodunit about two 17-year-old girls who go missing is filled with forensic detail and rattles along at a breakneck pace’ * Grazia *‘Nele Neuhaus has made quite a splash in her native Germany with her series of books about Hofheim regional crime unit’s oddly aristo detective Oliver von Bodenstein and his sidekick DI Pia Kirchoff * Metro *

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Book SynopsisBertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists of the 20th century whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and writing have had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera and, while exiled from Germany and living in the USA, such masterpieces as The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.Trade ReviewCasual wickedness, moral hypocrisy, determined self-interest - such are the familiar residents of Brecht's milieu . . .in this complete collection of his known finished stories . . . Chilling perfection. * Times Literary Supplement *Highly anecdotal, humourously accepting of the facts of life, like tales told by a clever seaman in a pub. * Guardian *These tales are the least known of Brecht's work, yet they underlie most of his major writings in other fields. Terse, mild-voiced, with piercing detail - a mine for short story addicts. * Observer *But whether Brecht is negotiating relationships, providing narrative attesting to a character’s humanity, or offering an anthropological approach to displacement or alienation, there is always a superior literary talent at work. His plots, characterizations, style, and language in these short stories prove Silberman’s point. Among other things, Brecht was a great and engaging storyteller. I’d even go so far as to say that many of the offerings in The Collected Short Stories of Bertolt Brecht are equal to his works for the stage. -- Nathaniel Nesmith * American Theatre *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Bavarian Stories (1920-1924) Barvan gives up Story on a Ship The Revelation The Foolish Wife The Blind Man A Helping Hand Java Meier The Lance-Sergeant Message in a Bottle A Mean Bastard The Death of Cesare Malatesta The Berlin Stories (1924-1933) The Answer Before the Flood Conversation about the South Seas Letter about a Mastiff Hook to the Chin Müller's Natural Attitude North Sea Shrimps Bad Water A Little Tale of Insurance Four Men and a Poker Game Barbara The Good Lord's Package The Monster The Job Stories Written in Exile (1934-1948) Safety First The Soldier of La Ciotat A Mistake Gaumer and Irk Socrates Wounded The Experiment The Heretic's Coat Lucullus's Trophies The Unseemly Old Lady A Question of Taste The Augsburg Chalk Circle Two Sons Appendix Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Körner Editorial Notes The Principle Collections of Brecht's Short Stories Notes on the Individual Stories Index of Titles in German

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Book Synopsis'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M.W. Craven _______________ Sometimes work can be murder... The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for… restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people. Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder... But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him? The electrifying first novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-Sun – now in English for the first time – combines the tension of the best crime fiction with searing social criticism to present a searing take-down of global corporate life. Trade ReviewThe Consultant is not only a hugely entertaining book, it’s a clever book. As the morally ambiguous consultant goes about his business of arranging natural deaths to streamline corporate restructuring, he offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous. It’s also damn funny -- M. W. Craven author of the Sunday Times bestselling Washington Poe seriesAn epic satire of society and power, The Consultant charms and shocks, luring you in to its sizzling plot with no mercy, until you're petrified of how it can possibly end. A blistering indictment of our modern world, this thriller will make you question everything. Brilliant -- Eve SmithAn intriguing premise, cleverly executed, makes for a brilliant read. For The Consultant, a killer who never meets his victims, it all starts to go wrong when he’s told to kill someone he knows. Darkly funny, with a fascinating protagonist, it’s excellent! -- Guy Morpuss, author of Five Minds and Black Lake ManorWow … Such a fresh take. Perfect murders in the imperfect world of business and power. Quietly and stylishly told. There’s an honesty in the simplicity and brutality that is enlightening and thought-provoking. I’ll be thinking about it for a while -- Will CarverA spicy and pacey Korean crime novel in translation… the reader is brought along on a thrilling journey that probes the cracks in capitalism by exploring what people would really do for money * Huffington Post, 23 Brilliant New Books for 2023 To Get Your Reading List Started *Consultant unfurls from the perspective of a first-person narrator who writes scenarios of perfect crimes. It examines ... the violence of modern anonymity and capitalism. * Readers News *The details and specifics of murder consulting are intriguing, and the plot propelled by its cerebral narrative and reasoning is refreshing ... it's a page turner, reminiscent of the American show, CSI. -- Segye Ilbo Literary Prize JudgesThese facts about Sung-soon Lim might astound you ... Every book of his boasts a drastically different sensibility, prose, and subject matter. His world building is unparalleled, his prose precise, and you can see the echo of extensive research that must have gone into the storytelling. * Channel Yes *This tale of an accidental accomplice to serial murder spellbindingly combines the eerily affectless, morally ambiguous tone of a Patricia Highsmith novel with John Dickson Carr’s fecundity in devising “impossible” crimes * Telegraph *[The Consultant] is toweringly the most interesting of the autumn bunch ... beautifully crafted, witty, slick novel has a profound meta-physical basis * Tablet *

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Book SynopsisIf the dead could speak, what would they say to the living? From their graves in the field, the oldest part of Paulstadt’s cemetery, the town’s late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall just a moment, perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one that they now realize shaped their life for ever. Some remember all the people they’ve been with, or the only person they ever loved. These voices together – young, old, rich, poor – build a picture of a community, as viewed from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned and died there. From the author of the Booker International-shortlisted A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler’s The Field is about what happens at the end. It is a book of human lives – each one different, yet connected to countless others – that ultimately shows how life, for all its fleetingness, still has meaning.Trade ReviewOne of those rare novels that can move you existentially, and change you. * SWR *This book about a village’s dead proves that subtle literary quality and bestseller success do not have to be mutually exclusive. * Die Zeit *The whole thing is so wonderfully crafted . . . that you literally don't want to stop reading, that you're sad to come to the end . . . What he has mastered like few other authors in German literary history is to give all his characters a profound dignity. * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *

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Book SynopsisPádraic Pearse, who played a prominent part in the 1916 rebellion, declared Ireland a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin. He was executed, along with the other leaders, for his part in the Rising. But he was a gentle warrior at heart. These five stories show us that Pearse was a man of deep understanding with immense human awareness of the way of life of the average person. He analyses the sorrows and joys of the Irish people of his time, and writes of the tragedies of life and death from which they could never escape.

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Book SynopsisIn the late 1930s, two men - Yaacov Markovitch, perennially unlucky in love, and Zeev Feinberg, virile owner of a lustrous moustache - are crossing the sea to marry women they have never met. They will rescue them from a Europe on the brink of catastrophe, bring them to the Jewish homeland and go their separate ways. But when Markovitch is paired with the beautiful Bella he vows to make her love him at any cost, setting in motion events that will change their lives in the most unexpected and capricious of ways. Ayelet Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982. She holds an MA in Clinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University, has been a news editor on Israel's leading newspaper and has worked for the Israeli civil rights movement. Her film scripts have won prizes at international festivals, including the Berlin Today Award and the New York City Short Film Festival Award. One Night, Markovitch, her first novel, won the Sapir Prize for best debut.Trade ReviewA marvellous novel... What won me over from the first page is the exuberant generosity of Gundar-Goshen's storytelling, the fine balance she sustains in her portrayal of the rich comedy of human experience... able to encompass both the small domestic details of men and women's lives and the large sweep of history Financial Times A lush debut... This is storytelling that feels instinctive, chasing characters into extreme situations... Gundar-Goshen exerts reassuring control over her narrative... both moving and satisfying' Guardian Utterly delightful... passionate, funny and very moving The Times Sensual, passionate... with a delicate balance of wit and woe... A remarkable achievement TLS Wry, ironically tinged and poignant... reminds us that the miraculous is only a step away from the mundane... this is a fable for the twenty-first century Sunday Telegraph A lively meditation on love and nationhood... this novel tackles some of the controversial subjects of our time and demonstrates that comedy is a powerful means of exploring serious themes -- Max Liu Independent Touching and often funny... infused with a rich and telling irony Sunday Times A narrative steeped in wit, beauty and drama... beautifully brocaded with humour and sensuality... Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel is an incredibly rich tale of history, love, obsession and new beginnings... A magnificent story, one that keeps you gripped from beginning to end Huffington Post A tragi-comic tale of origins and loneliness... Gundar-Goshen establishes a sprightly and original narrative voice and creates some wonderfully vivid Dickensian characters. She displays a fresh zesty imagination and balances the humour and sadness very skilfully Herald It's hard to believe One Night, Markovitch is a debut... It is genuinely funny and delightfully quirky... unpredictable, sensuous and vivid... The prose stays economical yet poetic, and the characters so pitifully human [that] it is, at times, immensely touching Big Issue A moving exploration of love, longing and belonging Daily Express Funny, poetic, yet heartbreaking... an excellent debut novel about the unfathomable mysteries of the human heart and the birth of Israel... It's set to rival Captain Corelli's Mandolin Lady Has eternal truths about humanity at its core, while telling a truly individual story. It is a wonderful book Writes of Woman (blog) A dazzlingly funny and tender story about love, betrayal and myth making Bookanista Vivid descriptions of landscape and irresistibly amusing dialogue... a dizzying assault on the senses, both intimate and epic... it has drama, sex, betrayal and humour - everything necessary Haaretz (Israel News) Gripping... beautifully evocative and there are perhaps half-a-dozen moments when your mouth will open in astonishment at some dramatic twist... There is something very simple, almost biblical, about the storytelling Jewish Chronicle One Night, Markovitch is a standout debut novel that is by turn mesmerising, elegant, funny and insightful. Gundar-Goshen is a storytelling voice to watch. Melissa Cox, Head of Books, Waterstones [A] dazzling debut novel... Her voice soars into magic realism with scenes evoking both Mel Brooks and Gabriel GarciaMarquez... [Gundar-Goshen] writeswith supreme confidence and a comic touch that ranges fromslapstick to sly humour. The honesty of her characters shows whycomedy can be the perfect vehicle for tragedy. Toronto Star

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Book SynopsisHarry Kvist walks out the gates of Langholmen jail into the biting Stockholm winter of 1935. He has nothing to his name but a fiercely burning hope: that he can leave behind his old existence of gutter brawls, bruised fists and broken bones. But the city has other ideas. Nazis are spreading their poison on the freezing streets, and one of Kvist's oldest friends has been murdered. Before he can leave Stockholm's underworld for good, he must track down the killer. As Kvist uncovers a trail of blood leading to the highest echelons of Swedish society, the former boxer finds himself in a fight to the death with his most dangerous opponent yet.Trade ReviewHolmen has Raymond Chandler's rare ability to evoke a character in a few deft strokes Mail on Sunday, best crime reads of 2016 Ferociously noir... If Chandler and Hammett had truly walked on the wild side, it would read like Clinch Val McDermid Atmospheric Scandi retro, but Chandleresque to its core The Sunday Times Crime Club If you're looking for a new addiction, try [Clinch]... it's a tough thriller that packs a punch Daily Star on Sunday A dark, atmospheric, powerful thriller, the best debut novel I've read in years Lynda La Plante A real tour de force... a fascinating race through 1930s Stockholm -- Kate Rhodes Clinch is a gritty, stylish debut from a Swedish history teacher and in Kvist he has created a brutal anti-hero quite unlike any seen in crime fiction before Express A clever plot woven into prose that depicts 1930s Stockholm in a detailed manner... it punches you in the face like one of Kvist's knockout blows. Definitely not for the faint-hearted Crime Scene Martin Holmen has created a remarkable novel that works well at many levels, ticking all the right boxes for the Scandi crime category Thriller Books Journal Gritty, stylish Scandinavian noir from one of Sweden's hottest emerging authors Booklover A ferociously noir revelation of Stockholm between the wars... the sort of novel Chandler and Hammett would have written if they'd been permitted to include sex! -- Val McDermid Sunday Times Crime Club Clinch is a fabulously classy twist on pulp fiction: it'll be a top-notch summer book for readers looking for something diverting but smart, as long as they don't mind a little blood and bonking Elle Thinks This is noir writing at its best and you won't want to give this book a miss if you are a fan of this genre The Bookbinder's Daughter (blog) A debut that rings of Chandler... Holmen has created a unique, equally idiosyncratic as remarkable, debut crime novel Boras Tidning Scandinavian Crime meets Film Noir, the crime novel of the year -- Alexander Bard A great read Expressen Brutally entertaining M-Magasin Praise for Clinch: -- _ _

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Book SynopsisLucie was brought up by bourgeois parents as a passionate young fascist. At the age of eighteen, she decides to volunteer in the Nazi labour camps in Germany. Wishing to disprove what she sees as the lies that are being told about Nazi-Fascism, she instead encounters the horrors of life there - and is changed completely. Shedding her identity, she joins a group of deportees being sent to Dachau concentration camp. She escapes the camp in October 1944, and wanders around a Germany devastated by allied bombardments. Then, in February 1945, while helping dig in rubble seeking to rescue survivors, a wall falls on her and she is left paralysed from the waist down. Translated into English for the first time, Deviation is an autobiographical novel about the repression of memory, and one woman's attempt to make sense of the hell she has lived through.

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Book SynopsisLONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE At the end of the eighteenth century, a giant strides the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains against the Boers and British; the fierce patriarch of a sprawling mixed-race family with a veritable tribe of followers; a savage enemy and a loyal ally. Like the wild dogs who are always at his heels, he roams the shifting landscape of southern Africa, hungry and spoiling for a fight. This is his story; the story of his country, and of our blood-soaked history.Trade ReviewLonglisted for the 2020 International Booker PrizeThe Booker judges call Red Dog 'a novel of serpentine, swashbuckling sentences that capture the mounting cruelty of the colonial project.''Sensational... Anker writes like a talented demon' Antonia Senior, The Times, Historical Fiction Book of the Month'One of the best antiheroes you will read this year leaps from the pages' The Times Best Summer Books'Ambitious... brings South Africa's bloody birth to life' Spectator'A powerful and stark historical novel... A twenty-first century story in the vein of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness... This staggeringly original blend of fact and fiction is savage but totally gripping' NB Magazine'The hottest piece of writing out here... a highly readable and relentless tale ... passionately nihilistic with inserts of great noir humour and even sometimes truly moving tenderness' Marlene van Niekerk 'The Afrikaans equivalent of the postmodern cowboys-and-Indians tales of Cormac McCarthy.' Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart'Extremely wild, dramatic, original, dangerous and riveting. It is a literary experience that I will not forget.'Sissi Reads

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Book Synopsis'Minor's acute, elliptical observations and silky prose are a delight to read, as the misunderstandings, machinations and mysteries of past and present knit together, fall apart, and re-establish themselves in an uneven, bright weave in Caroline Wright's distinctive, unforced translation' - Irish Times From a rising star on the European literary scene: a sharp-eyed, witty novel of budding desires, persistent ghosts and frayed family ties Over the decades since their parents died, siblings Sidsel, Ea and Niels have drifted apart, retreating in order to protect their most vulnerable parts. But single mother Sidsel's last-minute work trip to London, site of past transgressions, and Ea's chance visit to a San Francisco clairvoyant - seeking contact with their late mother - force the trio to reckon with their shared history and complicated inheritance.Trade ReviewMinor's acute, elliptical observations and silky prose are a delight to read, as the misunderstandings, machinations and mysteries of past and present knit together, fall apart, and re-establish themselves in an uneven, bright weave in Caroline Wright's distinctive, unforced translation * The Irish TImes *

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Book SynopsisGood dad or good assassin? Can he be both? From the internationally bestselling author of BULLET TRAIN: A seemingly ordinary family man tries to juggle his home life with his job as a hitman.Picture a mantis raising up its blades. It looks fearsome, but it's still just a tiny insect. The mantis actually thinks it can win. Even though it's tiny, it's still ready to fight to the death.Kabuto is an ordinary guy; stressed with work, hassled by his wife and disrespected by his son. No wonder he visits his doctor so often. Except 'the Doctor' is actually his handler, and Kabuto is a hired assassin. The 'prescriptions' the Doctor hands over are his unlucky targets. Because although Kabuto may seem like a small man at home, he's really good at killing people.Kabuto is worn out with the business of murder. He's trying to pay his way out of the Doctor's employment with a few last jobs. But the most lucrative contracts involve taking out other professional assassins and his final assignment puts both him and his family in danger.'Unlike anything you're likely to have read before...white-hot with double-crosses' Financial Times, on Bullet TrainTrade ReviewAn offbeat but touching thriller, with a wonderful final twist * Mail on Sunday *Unlike anything you're likely to have read before...white-hot with double-crosses * Financial Times, on Bullet Train *Entertaining...high-speed...with lots of twists and turns...it has a Tarantino-meets-the-Coen-Brothers feel to it. * The Times, on Bullet Train *Thoroughly enjoyable * Guardian, on Bullet Train *Showcases Kotaro Isaka's Tarantinoesque blend of offbeat wit and stylised violence * The Times, on Three Assassins *

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Book Synopsis'Destined to become a classic of its kind' Maggie Nelson 'One of the most compulsive voices I've read in years' Olivia Laing, Observer When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him. She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance's approach is monastic and military - she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night. A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.Trade ReviewCommitted to truth-telling, no matter how rough, but also intriguingly suspended in a cloud of unknowing and pain, Love Me Tender is a wry, original, agonizing book destined to become a classic of its kind -- Maggie NelsonA deadpan, tensile thread of a voice: calm, Camusian, comic, stark, relentless, and totally hypnotic -- Rachel KushnerExhilarating -- Eileen Myles, author of AfterglowLove Me Tender will break your heart and repair it and break it again, but not because it's trying to. Debré writes matter of factly, fluidly, scabrously, laying bare the hypocrisies of society, of institutions, of families. It is a brutal manifesto of how to live an honest life, direct the way a laser is direct -- Lauren Elkin, author of FlâneuseIn cruel, brilliant sentences that tighten around the truth like teeth, a fierce character emerges; a new kind of rebel in a queer masterpiece -- Holly Pester, author of Comic TimingLove Me Tender is a spitting, snarling tour de force of fuck-you feminist defiance. Pulling us straight from the tender moments of a mother meeting her estranged child, right into a whirlwind of lesbian pick-ups, Parisian apartment-hopping and chain smoking, Debré's novel is a stark reminder of society's suspicion towards women - particularly mothers -who resist easy definition. Wry, bold and confronting, Love Me Tender insists on a woman's right to define herself, to choose her own life -- Imogen Crimp, author of A Very Nice GirlA story that's quietly heartbreaking and fiercely defiant * Spectator *Love Me Tender is written with edge and urgency in a voice that is both vulnerable and in full command. I read it in one sitting and was taken over by its narrative energy and shocked by the story it tells -- Colm TóibínIntense... a character striving mightily for authenticity and honesty, questioning and rending the veil of social norms, acknowledging the Absurd, in hopes of finding some more solid, albeit subjective, truth -- Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl * Harper's *I am obsessed with Debré's spare account of a, both chosen and necessarily, pared-down life, that smashes the conventions of style as it smashes the conventions of family, without ever losing its tender touch -- Joanna Walsh, author of Break.upOne of the most compulsive voices I've read in years ... there's undeniable pleasure to be had from the way in which she reacts, her powerful evacuation of feeling, her sense of taking an automatic rifle to her past... a vision of queer life that has nothing to do with identity or marriage or any of the new homonormative rites -- Olivia Laing * Observer *This book knocked my block off. One of a kind -- Ana Kinsella, author of Look HereA compulsive read, this is for fans of Virginie Despentes, Hervé Guibert and Guillaume Dustan * AnOther magazine best books feature *Written in clear and direct prose. Fearless and honest. Hard and soft. Resolute and tough and yes very tender -- Michael ImperioliDebré's writing aims to eradicate all origins and backstories, and with them the social roles they enforce, replacing them with an ethos of radical self-fashioning ... Debré's sprezzatura writing is the literary equivalent of a shrug: a swashbuckling 'Et alors? -- Alice Blackhurst * New Left Review *Constance's voice is extremely strong - sharp, assertive, acerbic, and wholly convincing * Buzz Magazine *Love Me Tender is, without a trace of coyness, a love letter, both to a child and to a queer woman's own becoming. As for Constance - both the author and her fictional counterpart - you root for her all the way. * Guardian *Ferocious emotional honesty ... A bracing read and a timely reminder that attitudes are often far slower to change than legislation * Irish Times *Tight, present-tense prose (in a crisp translation by Holly James) ... genuinely inspiring * Financial Times *Painfully beautiful -- Christiana Spens * London Magazine *it is easy to see why comparisons have been drawn between her work and that of Camus. Yet, there is something absolutely unique and uniquely compulsive to Debré's story ... daring and unputdownable, this is fiction at its most transgressive and transcendent * Foyles, Top 10 Translated Fiction 2023 *Love Me Tender, a bold and beautiful book, is precise and pared back. Debré's is a process of reducing and reducing -- Chloë Ashby * PORT Magazine *

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Book SynopsisFrom the best-selling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop 'Charming... Beguiling and beautiful' The Times Over the course of his life, Mr Nishino falls hopelessly in love again and again. One woman is a colleague, another a chance encounter; one is the girlfriend of a classmate, another the best friend of Nishino's latest conquest. Some are entranced by Nishino, others care more for their freedom, their children (or their cats). As we come to learn of the torments, desires and delights of each woman, a portrait emerges of a complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the cause of his downfall. 'Quirky and delicate... Timeless... I fell totally under the spell of this beautiful book' Daily MailTrade ReviewCharming... beguiling and beautiful * Times *Quirky and delicate...timeless...I fell totally under the spell of this beautiful book * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisWith his birth itself a monumental exploit in itself, it is clear that the giant Pantagruel is destined to great things, and the novel that bears his name chronicles his the remarkable life of the exuberant youth: from his voracious reading habits to his escapades with the knave Panurge and his prowess in battle. The second work in this volume deals with the history of his father Gargantua, whose biography is equally if not more outlandish and larger than life. But these bawdy and boisterous tales, with their fixation on food and faeces, are not just entertaining yarns, as François Rabelais, one of the foremost humanists of the sixteenth century, parodies medieval learning, lambasts the established church authority and develops his own ideal visions for the ordering of society.Trade ReviewAndrew Brown... creates a wholly credible, modern, reinvigorated Rabelais who still jumps off the page after more than 450 years. * TLS *Long before there was James Joyce, there was the experimental literary chaos of Rabelais. * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisHappily engaged to the poet Amandus, Fräulein Anna is horrified to discover that a beautiful ring, mysteriously deposited upon her finger whilst tending her kitchen garden, forces her into marriage with the gnome Corduanspitz. Can Anna find any way of removing the ring? Will her poet lover shake off his passive demeanour and come to her aid? And has Corduanspitz truly relinquished all ties to his gnome heritage?Around a love story very much of its time, Hoffman arranges a narrative that brings to mind the most successful elements of contemporary magical realism and surreal comedy. Always entertaining, yet capable of a focused though subtle morality, The King's Bride brings disparate elements into a masterful harmony.

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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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