Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisThe significance of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book to our musical canon is well known; the remarkable story of its copyist and compiler, Francis Tregian, less so. Born into Cornish Catholic nobility and plumb into the choppy waters of the Elizabethan Age, he must rely on his surpassing skill as a musician to survive.In this Prix des Libraires (Booksellers Prize) winning novel, Anne Cuneo deftly recreates the musician’s journey across Renaissance Europe, which sees him befriending Shakespeare, swapping scores with William Byrd and Monteverdi, and playing in the court of Henri IV of France.The result is as gripping as it is authentic: an epic, transcontinental choreography in which Europe’s monarchs tussle with pretenders to their thrones, and ordinary people steer between allegiances to God, nation and family. Trade Review‘Francis Tregian’s extraordinary journeys through war-torn Europe keep readers riveted to the page and on the edge of their seats.’ -- Jean-Marie Volet * World Literature Today *‘Anne Cuneo’s magnificent book offers a humanist investigation of the most discerning kind.’ -- Philippe-Jean Catinchi * Le Monde *‘His adventures transport us, with a jangle of spurs, from one conspiracy to another, from Shakespeare in his playhouse, to the battle camp of Henri IV. At the invitation of Tregian's novelist biographer, no reader could fail to be swept up in the excitement.’ -- Laurence Liban * L’Express *‘Tregian’s Ground certainly has many cinematic qualities – of the best kind . . . The vivid, free-flowing translation here is by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Roland Glasser. This more than does justice to what is a marvelously rich and multi-layered piece of work . . . Serious students of either history or music are not going to be disappointed here.’ -- Andrew Green * Classical Music Magazine *‘This novel is based on a historical figure and, as is the typical benchmark for works in the genre, Cuneo’s empathetic and informed immersion into Tregian’s world gives the novel its claim to prestige. Cuneo handles the historical detail with a deft touch — it is sufficient but not excessive — and intersperses it well with vivacious dialogue and an authoritative, carefully researched knowledge of old London.’ -- Ben Paynter * LA Review of Books *‘It's not always that a writer with an interesting life writes interesting fiction. In this case Anne and her equally talented translators have it sussed – this is totally engrossing . . . by the time we take our leave of Francis as he awaits my Lady Death we are breathless and amazed, not to mention chuffed, to have made his acquaintance. And the really good bit? Tregian's Ground is another novel from & Other Stories, the publishing house that proves once again crowd funding knows a good thing when it sees it.’ * Bookbag *‘Francis is a worthy main character and I wanted the best for him, even when I felt he made the wrong choices.’ * Historic Novel Review *‘[A] big, fat, absorbing historical novel that is by turns swashbuckling and tender . . . that sweeps us along excitingly and paints a series of vivid pictures . . . strongly cinematic . . . The English translation of Tregian’s Ground does full justice to this long book with its finely calibrated tone and many historical, literary and musical allusions, and it reads beautifully throughout. It’s a lovely, engaging novel that really is a song for tolerance and culture, especially music, and for talented, creative individuals thriving even in the most brutal of times.’ -- Jean Morris * Shiny New Books *‘an unparalleled contribution to the Bildungsroman genre.’ * Glasgow Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisIn the vast Kazakh steppes of the crumbling Soviet Empire, Alyosha has finished his army service and is promised a gift from his deaf commander: an everlasting steel tooth. As he waits for it in the infirmary, he agrees to help out a medical officer, and they set out on a journey that takes them all the way to the kingdom of the dead.Oleg Pavlov’s kaleidoscope of a tale is peopled with soldiers and prisoners, hoboes and refugees and mice that steal medicines. Their surreal inner world is vividly reflected in Pavlov’s expressive prose, reminiscent of Platonov. Poetic, tragic and darkly comic, the novel is at once a grotesque portrayal of late Soviet reality and an apocalyptic allegory that has drawn comparisons with Faulkner and Kafka.Trade Review‘Oleg Pavlov is a powerful writer, and Requiem for a Soldier is his finest work.’ -- Alla Latynina * Vremya MN *‘Russian Booker Prize-winner Pavlov writes with the confident eccentricity of a man who knows what to do with words.’ -- Jane Andrews * Big Issue *‘Requiem for a Soldier . . . is the standalone third volume in the Russian’s Booker Prize-winning trilogy Tales from the Last Days. Set at the end of the Soviet Empire it’s a slim, dark and poetic volume following Alyosha, a soldier who has finished his service, as he journeys to the kingdom of the dead. It’s both a grotesque portrayal of Soviet reality and an apocalyptic allegory.’ * Big Issue in the North *‘Pavlov’s reputation and style sets him among the ranks of authors such as Genet and Burroughs with comparison also drawn to Faulkner and Kafka. Lovers of the haunting, poetic, literary grotesque of these authors combined with a healthy level of surrealist humour will find great satisfaction in the pages.’ * Booktrust *Chekhov would approve . . . Pavlov [is] a witness with a flair for spectacular images of surreal beauty – a mouse “quivered like a little heart” – which simply ease into a narrative, blending heightened prose descriptions with political satire and punchy dialogue, often expressing exasperation, which is well rendered into colloquial English by Anna Gunin.’ * The Irish Times *‘A triumph of Russian farce . . . At a time when the bodies of soldiers are being returned to their families from a war that the authorities assure us . . . the country is not fighting, we can only marvel at the author’s prescience.’ -- George Walden * Times Literary Supplement *‘A meditation on death and the downfall of the Soviet Union suffused with all the bleak absurdity of a Samuel Beckett play . . . The final novel of the Tales From The Last Days trilogy, this is a memorable absurdist satire with great relevance today.’ -- Thom Cuell * Workshy Fop *‘A brutal and thought-provoking book.’ * The Lady *

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Book Synopsis‘Neither the old man nor Boga ever said more than was needed. And yet they understood each other perfectly.’Over the course of a season, Boga and the old man work side by side on the sandbanks of the Paraná Delta, cutting reeds to sell to local basketweavers. But when the old man falls sick and dies, Boga abandons himself entirely to the river and the life of solitary drifting he has long yearned for.Echoes of John Berger sound throughout the evocative prose of this great Argentinian writer. A twentieth-century classic, Southeaster is a central work in Haroldo Conti’s oeuvre.Trade Review‘Southeaster is a meandering, estuarine version of a road novel, a watery Hemingway-meets-Camus tale of a loner exposed to the elements and in wordless search for some kind of purpose ... sensuous and meticulously observed ... a luminous and troubling South American classic.’ * Financial Times *‘Haroldo Conti was one of the great Argentinian writers.’ -- Gabriel García Márquez‘Haroldo is a river, a delta with many streams that embrace the islands as they pass. His literature is directed at the solitude of others, and it brings a warm embrace, in the same way the river does.’ -- Eduardo Galeano‘The economy of his writing, impregnated with poetry and tenderness, is remarkable . . . Don’t be fooled by the story’s initial, quasi-bucolic, calm. A dramatic crescendo leads to the final roar.’ -- María Esther de Miguel * La Nación *‘Haroldo Conti was one of Argentina's finest prose writers at the time he was “disappeared” by the military junta in the mid 1970s. He was fifty-one years old. This first publication of his work in English introduces us not only to one of South America's finest twentieth-century writers but to a world view, a landscape and a unique literary vision that is essential to our time.’ -- John Burnside‘What a surprise and a treat. I was swept up in the great murky flow of it. Conti is a writer for whom place is character, not backdrop, and what a place, what a character. He’s a revelation.’ -- Tim Winton'Readers in English can at last immerse themselves in the subtle, beautifully wrought journey of the voyager . . . Southeaster is one of the most original contributions to what Conti himself would term, in an interview in 1974, “a stylistically and imaginatively Argentine literature”.’ -- University of Professor John King (School of Comparative American Studies Warwick)‘Conti’s work occurs at the point where landscape and human psychology meet and there’s a soulfulness to his writing that I find deeply touching and nourishing. One of the best books published this year.’ -- Foyle's Staff PicksSoutheaster is a meandering, estuarine version of a road novel, a watery Hemingway-meets-Camus tale of a loner exposed to the elements and in wordless search for some kind of purpose . . . sensuous and meticulously observed . . . a luminous and troubling South American classic.’ -- Melissa Harrison * Financial Times *‘With his plain but indefatigably inventive descriptions, Conti conveys how “the river always changes” . . . In long winding sentences full of alternately subordinating clauses, Conti slackens the narrative to match the river’s pace . . . but Conti also knows how to make time buckle, and the last fifty pages . . . are exhilarating.’ -- Sophie Hughes * Times Literary Supplement *‘Southeaster is a particularly rich evocation of interiority . . . organising a chaos of memories, observations, thoughts, and feelings into meaningfulness.’ -- Jessica Sequeira * Boston Review *‘Despite the obvious romance of the delta, of Conti’s strange, distorting setting, this is not a novel which romanticises the lives of those who live in it. It leaves the reader with a savage beauty to contemplate, something contradictory, tense, and ultimately self-destructive in a way that seems to correspond with so much of Argentina’s recent history.’ * 3am Magazine *‘Conti’s frequent change of tense and the rhythm of his translated prose echo the ever-changing nature of the water itself . . . a beautifully written story.’ * We Love This Book *‘In this novel . . . man and nature coexist on every page, but the relationship is fathoms-deep and the indifference of the natural world strikes the loudest chord. There is no heavy-handed philosophising here, just gentle meditations and some wonderful writing . . . Special praise goes to Jon Lindsay Miles for his splendid translation.’ * Geographical Magazine *‘The description of the waters and their changing moods elevate the river to a character in its own right.’ * Workshy Fop *

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Book SynopsisThis brilliant translation by Frank Perry won the 2017 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the 2019 Bernard Shaw prize At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat. To the east, in Barcelona, an unflappable teenage girl is endeavouring to trace the peculiarities of her life back to one woman: Alba Cambo, writer of violent short stories, who left Caudal as a girl and never went back. Mordantly funny, dryly sensual, written with a staggering lightness of touch, the debut novel in English by Swedish sensation Lina Wolff is a black and Bolano-esque take on the limitations of love in a dog-eat-dog world.Trade Review'Wolff's prose has a quality of "otherness" entirely in keeping with the surreal atmosphere of the novel. This strange, provocative debut sits well alongside the work of Roxane Gay, Katherine Angel, Maggie Nelson, Zoe Pilger and Miranda July ... a cool, clever and fierce addition to the canon of modern feminist literature.' Sarah Perry, The Guardian ------- '[A] filmic offering ... channelling the spirit of Pedro Almodovar. A thoroughly invigorating novel.' Lucy Scholes, The Independent ------- 'Oddly compelling ... a European postmodern novel steeped in alienation and ennui.' Library Journal ------- 'The author demonstrates a marvelous command of language and creates characters with real depth, lending the book a sensual vibe and an acerbic wit that force its emotional truths to rise above the grunge of its hard-boiled setting. A poetic, unsentimental drama that offers a meditation on love in all its disparate forms.' Kirkus Reviews ------- 'Wolff has had enough of the big swinging dicks of masculine literature. [Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs is] clever and challenging and distinctive.' Galen O'Hanlon, The Skinny ------- 'Wolff manoeuvres with great skill through her breathtaking multitude of worlds and an equally impressive cast of characters. Bret Easton Ellis ... takes the reader on a roller-coaster from the tragic to the comical, with hints of the mysterious and magical scattered in between - it is a testimonial of a dead person remarkably full of life.' The Bookbag, 5 Stars, January Book of the Month ------- 'A book that you just want to give people and say: take a look at this, read it, experience it. I would have liked to devote the entire review to quoting sentences and paragraphs from the novel - it is almost as if that were the only way of adequately conveying the gravity, depth and lightness of Lina Wolff's prose, her tender yet pitiless character descriptions, her distinctive but also natural way of piecing together the novel's disparate parts into a shimmering whole.' Eva Johansson, Svenska Dagbladet

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Book SynopsisIt’s the 1980s in Lagos de Moreno – a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows – and a poor family is struggling to get by. The father, a school teacher, insists on practising and teaching the art of the insult, while the mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas to serve to their numerous progeny: Aristotle, Orestes, Archilochus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor and Pollux. The family witnesses a revolt against the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its umpteenth electoral fraud. This political upheaval is only the beginning of Orestes’ adventures and his uproarious crusade against the boredom of rustic life and the tyranny of his older brother. In Quesadillas Juan Pablo Villalobos serves up a wild banquet. Chock-full of inseminated cows, Polish immigrants, parading pilgrims, alien spacecraft and psychedelic watermelons, almost anything goes in this madcap Mexican satire of politics and class.Trade Review'Piles absurdity upon improbability with gleeful abandon. Yet the book is as much a coruscating parody of Mexican culture as Villalobos's debut, Down the Rabbit Hole, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian first book award . . . Quesadillas, translated by Rosalind Harvey, does for magic realism what Down the Rabbit Hole did for "narco-literature" . . . The high-keyed domestic comedy is enjoyable for its own sake, but provides cover for a satirical assault on the mendacity of Mexican politics.' -- Alfred Hickling * The Guardian *‘Off the beaten track, Juan Pablo Villalobos followed up his Guardian first book award-shortlisted Down the Rabbit Hole with a satire of Mexican politics and dysfunctional families, Quesadillas (And Other Stories): black comedy done with a light touch, it's stylish, scabrous, and hugely enjoyable.' -- Justine Jordan * The Guardian * ‘A raucous picaresque . . . structured like a memory, elliptical and episodic . . . The novel’s irreverent tone and brevity bring to mind the satires of Villalobos’s countryman, Jorge Ibargüengoitia; and in its extreme situations and fantastical occurrences we see a concerted attack on literary realism.’ -- Matt Lewis * Times Literary Supplement * ‘Short, dark, comic, ribald and surreal . . . manic-impressive.' -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *‘Villalobos mines Mexico for its everyday surrealism, even as he mocks how outsiders exoticize his country.’ -- Rachel Nolan * New York Times *'Villalobos . . . fuses personal mythologies and political margins in his new novel, a riotous tall tale . . . Calling it magical realism would be lazy, given the undertone of socially conscious indignation that underlies often-fantastical imagery . . . With tidy, uncompromised prose, Villalobos has inaugurated a new kind of avant-garde novel, one whose grasp of certain dehumanizing political realities never erodes the power to dream something better.' * Publishers Weekly * ‘Guaranteed to entertain, from its attention-grabbing opening line to its gloriously bizarre climax.’ -- Ángel Gurría-Quintana * Financial Times *‘Villalobos’s latest book, Quesadillas, is surreal, and not without laughs – the stoner uncle is called Pink Floyd.’ -- Sinead Gleeson * Irish Times *'Quesadillas is gloriously absurd, celebrates the fantastical, and plays with notions of magic realism. But it is Villalobos’s quirky, laconic style that most impresses and marks him out as a writer of distinction.' -- Lucy Popescu * Independent *‘Quesadillas is bursting with Villalobos’ comic invention.’ * El País * ‘The modern novel’s three commands are that it should be “Funny, Brutalist and short”, in our hero B.S. Johnson’s words. Villalobos’ Quesadillas fulfils this perfectly.’ -- Kiko Amat‘Pure fantastical rapture, a kaleidoscopic story about anger and adolescence.’ -- Julie Morse * The Rumpus * ‘An entertaining satire on political corruption in 1980’s Mexico . . . this picaresque coming-of-age story goes from the absurdist to the totally surreal, engaging the reader without sentimentality.’ -- Anne Horton-Smith * Whichbook *‘Villalobos has come to stay – and to say loud and clear that in Mexico almost anything is possible.’ * El Periódico de Catalunya *'Fascinating, thought-provoking and involving' * Empty the Bookshelf *‘Quesadillas marks Juan Pablo Villalobos out as a talent to watch . . . hopefully [he] grows into an important voice coming out of Central America.' -- Matt Tod * A Novel Approach *‘[a] vibrant, comic novel’ -- Leigh Newman * Oprah.com *‘A rambunctious, energetic piece of writing. Madcap and effervescent, this story of a teenager’s desire to escape his dull, supposedly middle class family home is an education and entertainment. An education because it gives us insights into another country’s way of life . . . Entertainment, because you’ll laugh out loud from page one till you catch your breath at the end . . . Rosalind Harvey’s translation captures the exuberance of the original, and this short novel is accompanied by author’s notes, a glossary, and an introduction by Neel Mukherjee which sets the context for this magic realist / absurd / riotous satire of economic and political aspiration.’ * Booktrust *

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Book SynopsisA plague has brought death to the city. Two feuding crime families with blood on their hands need our hard-boiled hero, The Redeemer, to broker peace. Both his instincts and the vacant streets warn him to stay indoors, but The Redeemer ventures out into the city's underbelly to arrange for the exchange of the bodies they hold hostage.Yuri Herrera's novel is a response to the violence of contemporary Mexico. With echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Roberto Bolano and Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy and a tribute to those bodies - loved, sanctified, lusted after, and defiled - that violent crime has touched.Trade Review'The Transmigration of Bodies represents a highpoint in the genre of the novel. Herrera has been slowly building an oeuvre constructed on a singular conception of the world, in which literature's past and present form a continuum. Reading him gives one the sense of diving into his library, a place that is unashamed of belonging to a tradition and being well-read and much-underlined.' Alvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies is a magnificent book and its author one of the few indispensable Latin American writers of our times.' Patricio Pron, author of My Fathers' Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain ---------- 'Bracingly unbookish ... The after-effect is more like that of a video game or Marvel comic, with both the brightness and unabashed flatness those entail. Darkly satisfying ... Swift, slick images and one-liners glitter at regular intervals.' James Lasdun, The Guardian ---------- 'Herrera packs his slim book with the sex, booze and nihilism of a better Simenon novella ... Dillman brings out a gritty, pulpy flavor in the writing.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ---------- 'A novella in nine dramatic acts loaded with images, moments suspended in time that evolve into an extended dream, or rather a cautionary tale ... The author of playful, prophetic, unnerving books that deserve to be read several times, with dialogue so telling it eats into your brain rather like the worm in the Redeemer's preferred mescal, Herrera is a writer for our doomed epoch.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ---------- 'Herrera's brilliantly surreal turns of phrase mirror the strangeness of the world: he knows that brutal everyday truths are best revealed through dreams. Blood-soaked, driven deep and expertly written.' Jeff Noon, The Spectator ---------- 'Yuri Herrera [is] my favorite of the new Mexican writers. The Transmigration of Bodies goes straight for the soul. Unsettling and deep, Herrera transmigrates us to a Mexico that feels like a metaphysical condition, a timeless kingdom in which the living are forever dancing with the dead.' John Powers, NPR Fresh Air ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre's habitual moral opposites ... There's plenty to admire about this allegorical vision of a country under lockdown, where violence and death have ceased to be the motors for fiction, instead becoming the backdrop of everyday life.' Bookforum ---------- 'Herrera's characteristic concision goes a step further here, his skill for expression more impressive in its restraint than its excess. This is a harsh novel, as are those from a borderland besieged by extreme violence, but it's also oddly comforting, in large part due to its exceptional literary quality.' El Pais -------- 'In Herrera's slim, amusing book, [he] strips Romeo & Juliet to its essence and sets it against a plague that symbolises Mexico's recent violent history.' Publishers Weekly ---------- 'Yuri Herrera's novels are like little lights in a vast darkness. I want to see whatever he shows me.' Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA ---------- 'This is as noir should be, written with all the grit and grime of hard-boiled crime and all the literary merit we're beginning to expect from Herrera. Before the end he'll have you asking how, in the shadow of anonymity, do you differentiate between the guilty and the innocent?' Tom Harris, Mr B's Emporium, Bath ---------- 'Both hysterical and bleak, The Transmigration of Bodies builds an entire world in 100 pages. Herrera's ability to express everything in so few words, his skill of merging the argot of the streets with the poetry of life is unrivalled. The world his characters inhabit is dangerous and urban, like a postcard sent from the ends of the earth. Reading his compact novels is both exhilarating and unforgettable.' Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX ---------- 'A fabulous book full of low-life characters struggling to get by. It's an everyday story of love, lust, disease and death. Indispensable.' Matthew Geden, Waterstones Cork, Ireland ---------- 'Reading The Transmigration of Bodies was akin to being enveloped in a dream state, yet one that upon waking somehow makes profound sense. Another truly magnificent novel from one of the most exciting authors to emerge on the world stage for aeons.' Ray Mattinson, Blackwell's, Oxford ---------- 'A microcosmic look at the lives of two families straight out of a Shakespearean drama. Pick it up and you won't put it down till you've finished.' Grace Waltemyer, Posman Books in Chelsea Market, NY ---------- 'A work replete with the gritty, informal prose first displayed in Signs - rooted firmly in the modern world yet evoking the feel of an epic divorced from time ... a cross between Cormac McCarthy and a detective novel, an incisive portrait evoking a Mexican Inherent Vice.' Marina Clementi, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Chicago, IL ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies reads like a fever dream: an intense, enthralling examination of how people live in a city of the dying and the dead. It takes an extraordinary amount of skill to combine elements of noir, political commentary, hardboiled crime, and allegory (not to mention Shakespeare, with a seasoning of existential ennui) and keep the novel moving, or in this case, racing along. Herrera, clearly, has at least that much talent, and then some.' Thomas Flynn, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago, IL

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Book SynopsisLong before he was the taco seller whose ‘Gringo Dog’ recipe made him famous throughout Mexico City, our hero was an aspiring artist: an artist, that is, till his would-be girlfriend was stolen by Diego Rivera, and his dreams snuffed out by his hypochondriac mother. Now our hero is resident in a retirement home, where fending off boredom is far more gruelling than making tacos. Plagued by the literary salon that bumps about his building’s lobby and haunted by the self-pitying ghost of a neglected artist, Villalobos’ old man can’t help but misbehave. He antagonises his neighbours, tortures American missionaries with passages from Adorno, flirts with the revolutionary greengrocer, and in short does everything that can be done to fend off the boredom of retirement and old age . . . while still holding a beer. A delicious take-down of pretensions to cultural posterity, I’ll Sell You a Dog is a comic novel whose absurd inventions, scurrilous antics and oddball characters are vintage Villalobos.Trade Review‘I'll Sell You A Dog is a reminder of how effortless literature should be to love. This unexpected ride through a character's second childhood, his building, neighbourhood and history is so magically twisted that it could be real. As ever Villalobos writes a peephole through politics and time, to simply watch us dance in all our lurid whimsy.' * DBC Pierre *‘Villalobos subjects the colourful and at times very funny plot to a rigorously, gracefully applied style, which never projects reality but rather, sentence by sentence, constructs a parallel reality upon it . . . Nothing is real and yet at the same time, everything is recognisable . . . Villalobos has found a tone and a rhythm all his own, unlike anything else in Mexican fiction today. He makes the reader laugh at the absurd and as he does so, he reveals the senselessness of the world.’ -- Fernando García Ramírez * Letras Libras *‘With this, his third novel, Villalobos is confirmed as the definition of new Mexican literature.’ -- Matías Néspolo * El Mundo *‘Villalobos’s farce spares no one. And with the laughter there emerges a compassion for people living marginal lives which positions the novel on the side of the unexpected and unknown, as the novel demands the imagination’s autonomy over reality, thus rebuking the conventions of fiction in a way that is as stimulating as the novel’s humour.’ -- Francisco Solano * El Pais *

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Book SynopsisGrains of sand, bridges, shampoo, a bike, board games, yoga, sellotape, birds, balloons, tattoos, wandering hands, tweezers, maths, fish, letterboxes, puppets, a vacuum cleaner, a ball of string – and love. In this novel of yous and mes, of hims and hers, Pagano choreographs the objects, gestures, places, and persons through which love is made real.Trade Review'Trysting reveals what only literature can: the basic irrationality, the arbitrary enchantment, but also the residual grace within the feeling of love. A multitude of anonymous male and female characters show us in what ways we are seduced by each other: a scent, a movement, a way of being, a way of making love.' Alexandre Gefen, Magazine litteraire ---------- 'Though she insists on brevity, Pagano never abandons complexity and holds fast to the animal sensuality that forms the bedrock of every couple's relationship.' Clementine Goldszal, Les Inrockuptibles ---------- 'It's familiar but never banal. Having nothing of the a performance, and everything of a sharing of confidences, it is all of an incredible delicacy.' Olivia de Lamberterie, Elle

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Book Synopsis‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,are of imagination all compact.’- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s DreamTo commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, And Other Stories and Hay Festival have selected twelve contemporary international authors to each write an original and previously unpublished story as their tribute to these giants of world literature.In order to celebrate the international influence of both writers and offer us new and intriguing perspectives on them, six English-speaking authors have taken inspiration from Cervantes and his work, while six Spanish-language authors have written stories inspired by Shakespeare.The authors are Ben Okri, Deborah Levy, Kamila Shamsie, Yuri Herrera, Marcos Giralt Torrente, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Vicente Molina Foix, Soledad Puértolas, Hisham Matar, Nell Leyshon, Rhidian Brook and Valeria Luiselli. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the liberating legacy of Cervantes and Shakespeare for contemporary fiction.Trade Review‘These amazing new stories are not only a tribute to Cervantes and Shakespeare from some of the best contemporary authors writing in English and Spanish, they are also a tribute to the power of translation.’ Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Director, Hay Festival Americas -- Cristina Fuentes Roche‘A splendid homage to two visionaries’ -- Boyd Tonkin‘Some of the brightest lights in contemporary fiction celebrate the timelessness of Shakespeare and Cervantes . . . these stories [are] fresh and exciting. Much of this comes from the diversity of writer backgrounds on show, and their style and traditions add a wealth of interpretation and perspective.’ -- Graeme Smith * Herald Scotland *‘These stories range far and wide . . . a notable collection, with a welcome international focus.’ * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisAward-winning journalist Wolfgang Bauer and photographer Stanislav Krupař were the first undercover reporters to document the journey of Syrian refugees from Egypt to Europe. Posing as English teachers in 2014, they were direct witnesses to the brutality of smuggler gangs, the processes of detainment and deportation, the dangers of sea-crossing on rickety boats, and the final furtive journey through Europe. Combining their own travels with other eyewitness accounts in the first book of reportage of its kind, Crossing the Sea brings to life both the systemic problems and the individual faces behind the crisis, and is a passionate appeal for more humanitarian refugee policies.Trade Review'The last words of this book are "Have mercy." There is no more to say. Wolfgang Bauer’s impressive and brutally honest depiction of the fates of refugees speaks for itself.' -- Berthold Merkle * Der Tagesspiegel *'The book affects you on two levels. There is the gripping reportage that brings us very close to the people, and there is also the epilogue’s entreating words. Bauer’s accusation is powerful.' * Südwest Presse Ulm *'Wolfgang Bauer is a sophisticated and conscientious reporter, an expert on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, and a brilliant writer.' -- author of Mislaid and The Nell Zink Wallcreeper‘It’s not just the detail in this book that counts. It’s the anger.’ -- Robert Fisk * The Independent *‘An excellent book.’ -- Melissa Fleming (Spokesperson and Head of Communications UNHCR)‘In 2014, journalist Wolfgang Bauer went undercover to document the flight of Syrian refugees firsthand . . . An incisive portrait both of the lives behind the crisis, and the systemic problems that constitute it.’ * Publishers Weekly *‘Crossing The Sea offers an inside perspective on their plight, and tells a story rarely told . . . The refugees’ stories and remarkable photos provide a counter-narrative to the popular media rhetoric.’ -- Antonia Charlesworth * Big Issue North *

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Book SynopsisIn a small town in Argentina, a seamstress is sewing a wedding dress. All of a sudden she fears that her son has been kidnapped and driven off to Patagonia. She gives chase in a taxi. Her husband finds out and takes off after her – to the end of the world, to the place where monsters are born, and where the southern wind falls hopelessly in love.Trade Review'I was quickly seduced by The Seamstress and the Wind, which takes place in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, Aira’s hometown. It figures he’d come from a place called Pringles, where funny music resounds and nothing ever happens, except everything.' -- Patti Smith

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Book SynopsisGathered for the first time in English and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choir boy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras’s Paris apartment and watches his dinner companion slip into the abyss. An unsuspecting man receives a mysterious phone call from a lonely ophthalmologist and visits his abandoned villa. The stories in Vampire in Love, selected and brilliantly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, are all told with Vila-Matas’s delightful erudition and wit, and his provocative questioning of the interrelation of art and life.Trade Review‘A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.’ -- Roberto Bolaño‘Highly original, both lucid and ludic.’ -- Valerie Miles * The Guardian *‘He absorbs the reader into a singular territory in which life and literature are a shared enterprise.’ -- Valerie Miles * New York Times *‘Arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure.’ -- Joanna Kavenna * New Yorker *‘Enrique Vila-Matas is a consistently rich and challenging contemporary Spanish-language novelist’ * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisIn the court of the King, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part noir romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.Trade Review'Herrera's metaphors grasp the freedom, and the alarming disorientation, of transition and translation.' Maya Jaggi, The Guardian----------'Short, suspenseful ... outlandish and heartbreaking.' John Williams, New York Times----------'Herrera packs his slim book with the sex, booze and nihilism of a better Simenon novella.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal----------'Yuri Herrera's tiny, beautiful novels each conjure myth and metaphor from a contemporary experience in a precise location, transformed by archaic-colloquial prose.' Lorna Scott-Fox, Times Literary Supplement----------'Playful, prophetic, unnerving books that deserve to be read several times.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times-----------'Darkly satisfying.' James Lasdun, The Guardian----------'Yuri Herrera combines a dreamlike setting with vigorous style.' Anthony Cummins, Times Literary Supplement-----------'My favorite of the new Mexican writers.' John Powers, NPR Fresh Air-----------'The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre s habitual moral opposites.' Bookforum----`Mesmerising & stunningly crafted 5!’ Rebecca Choudhury, Waterstones Birmingham


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Book SynopsisDuring the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, an Iraqi journalist is given a tour of a military prison. He is informed by the major in charge about what is expected of him: he is to write a fabricated report about a murder that has occurred in the camp, in order to demoralise the enemy soldiers. The journalist is unwilling to write this story. In a long night of intense discussion at his home, he speaks to the major of a historic conflict between the two countries and tells him that he is writing a novel about a group of soldiers trapped on a hill, dying of thirst as they compete for a water tank with a group of enemy soldiers on the opposite hill. So far the water tank has remained undamaged at the bottom of a rift between the hills, but neither group has a hope of reaching it without being shot by the other. Delirious, the soldiers await their end: either being saved by a fabled female lion who feeds her milk to all who are thirsty, or morphing into doves once they are martyred. At the same time, in Iran, another writer remembers how he first came into contact with a gun...In a narrative riddled with surreal images, shifting perspectives and dark humour, Dowlatabadi blurs the boundaries between the two warring countries as he questions the meaning of national identity when confronted with time and human suffering.Trade ReviewPraise for The Colonel: "Mr. Dowlatabadi draws a detailed, realist picture of Iranian life, especially that of the rural poor, in language that is complex and lyrical, rather than simplistic." - The Financial Times "It's about time everyone even remotely interested in Iran read this novel." - The Independent

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

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Book SynopsisRio de Janeiro. A family hotel whose clients reflect Brazilian society, multi-racial, with starkly contrasting backgrounds, and destitute. Rio is the perfect backdrop with its dictatorships, drug wars, child gangs and violent policing tactics. The first victim is found decapitated in bed, the head lying on the floor of his room. An eerie Mona Lisa smile on the victim's face and no evidence of a struggle indicate a murderer received as a friend. Other hotel guests are eventually killed, all decapitated. A classical crime novel in one way but really an opportunity for the author to describe Brazilian society, especially those left behind. Fascinating back stories are told such as that of the maid who dreams of making it in television soaps, and the female pimp who has survived incestuous rape, wrapped in a suspenseful intrigue that could have been thought up by Ruth Rendell.Trade Review"A wonderful classic mystery novel written to the best standards of the genre. Between layers of the investigation of an unsolvable crime, Betto slips in a view of the real Brazil, raw and bleeding." Le Monde Diplomatique "A roman noir, but above all a bitter sweet novel, Hotel Brasil plunges the reader into the heart of a Rio that feeds on its people." Metro

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Book SynopsisA novel about a mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. Johanne is a young woman in her twenties who lives with her mother. When she falls in love with Ivar, she finally feels ready to leave home. The couple plan a trip to America. But the morning of her departure, Johanne wakes up to find the door locked. Can she overcome her fears? Will she shout for help? Will she climb out of her fourth floor window? ------ Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'Everyone who has read Fifty Shades of Grey should read this book. Why? The Blue Room holds up a mirror to a part of the female psyche that yearns for submission. The story shows how erotic fantasies are formed by the relationship with our parents. It then delves further to analyse the struggle of women to separate from their mothers - a struggle that is rarely addressed in either literature or society.' Meike Ziervogel, PublisherTrade Review'A masterpiece of unreliable narration.' Nicholas Lezard, GUARDIAN ------ 'A highly unusual, coolly daring psychological thriller that explores emotional pain and indifference with an unsettling detachment.' Eileen Battersby, IRISH TIMES ------ 'A work of chilling, masterly control.' Laura Profumo, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ------ 'Nothing is certain, no motive is clear and no person is above suspicion in Orstavik's perfectly pitched, tightly stitched and captivating brain-teaser.' Pam Norfolk, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST ------ 'Orstavik treats the everyday and existential with intensity.' Max Liu, INDEPENDENT ------ 'Psychologically astute and deftly translated ... A brilliant examination of a woman struggling to own her sexuality, to break free from the guilt and forge her own identity.' Lucy Popescu, TABLET

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Book SynopsisA beautiful homage to the art of reading - light and funny. A celebration of the union of sensuality and language. Marie-Constance loves reading and possesses an attractive voice. So, one day she decides to put an ad in the local paper offering her services as a paid reader. Her first client, a paralysed teenager, is transformed by her reading of a Maupassant short story. Marie-Constance's fame spreads and soon the rich, the creative and the famous clamour for her services. ------ Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'The premise of the story is brilliant: a woman who loves reading aloud acquires - without realizing - power over others. What's true for her clients becomes real for you, the reader of this book. As you turn the pages, think of Marie-Constance as the personification of "reading" itself. And I promise you an experience you will never forget.' Meike Ziervogel, PublisherTrade Review'A clever, funny, and humane work that champions the power of literature.' David Mills, SUNDAY TIMES ------ 'An entertaining, sensuous and, above all, fun outing into the converging worlds of reading, language and sexuality.' Pam Norfolk, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST ------ 'Reader for Hire might be the perfect book - written with an elegance whose validity it also questions.' Joanna Walsh, NATIONAL ------ 'An excellent new translation of a novel ... written with a lightness of touch.' Harry Ritchie, DAILY MAIL

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Book SynopsisWarning: This story is narrated by a gorilla. He is plucked from the jungle. He learns to chat and passes the ultimate test: a cocktail party. Eventually he is moved to an amusement park, where he acts in a play about the history of civilisation. But as the gorilla becomes increasingly aware of human frailties, he must choose between his instincts and his training, between principles and self-preservation. ----- Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'This is Peirene's first book narrated by an ape. Animal fables are usually not my thing. It needed Belgian deadpan humour to convince me otherwise. Mixing Huxley's Brave New World with Orwell's Animal Farm, the fast-paced plot leaves behind images that play in your mind long after you have closed the book.' Meike Ziervogel, PublisherTrade Review'Again we can salute this enterprising publisher for chipping away at our insularity. A haunting, apocalyptic novella, supremely and deliberately difficult to pin down... We are in a fictional landscape where literalism is no help to us, and we are all the richer for it.' NICHOLAS LEZARD, THE GUARDIAN; 'A stunning exploration of man's inherent inhumanity... The first of Peirene's 2016 Fairy Tale: End of Innocence series, this exceptional opener packs a powerful punch as we follow the gorilla's rollercoaster journey from blissful naivete in his jungle home to the ruthless training that makes him 'human.' PAM NORFOLK, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST

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Book SynopsisA little girl lives happily with her mother in war-torn Paris. She has never met her father, a prisoner of war in Germany. But then he returns and her mother switches her devotion to her husband. The girl realizes that she must win over her father to recover her position in the family. She confides a secret that will change their lives. ----- Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'This is a poetic story about a girl's love for her father. Told from the girl's perspective, but with the clarity of an adult's mind, we experience her desire to be noticed by the first man in her life. A rare examination of the bonds and boundaries between father and daughter.' Meike Ziervogel, PublisherTrade Review'A delicate, discreet novel. Like its little heroine. Impressive.' SUD OUEST DIMANCHE ----- 'Sizun's beautifully controlled and simple story captures the surprisingly clear gaze of a little girl who discovers how adults excel in the art of concealment.' LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR ----- 'This story brings to mind, like a slap in the face, our forgotten childhood memories. We remember the way adults fail to hear the tiny cries of the heart.' MARIE CLAIRE

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Book SynopsisA family is torn apart by their dream of a better future in the West. A true story narrated through the eyes of a child. West Germany, early 1960s: A little girl arrives with her parents from East Germany in a camp for displaced people. The girl's father is abusive, the mother ignores her. Soon she will celebrate her seventh birthday and all she wants is a cat. Instead she receives an illuminated globe. The girl can't hide her disappointment - but then she discovers that the globe offers her a way to escape the misery of the camp.Trade Review`Impressive and clever.' DEUTSCHLANDFUNK `A novel full of pain, humour and hope.' WDR, SCARLA-BUCHER

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Book SynopsisMarcelino lives alone on his parents' farm, set deep in the beautiful but impoverished countryside of northern Spain. It's the place where he grew up, the place where he doted on his beloved baby brother and protected his mother from his father's drunken rages. But when Marcelino's brother tricks him out of his house and land, a moment of anger sparks a chain of events that can't be reversed. Marcelino flees to the wild peaks of rural Asturias, becoming a cult hero as he evades authorities. Into this unconventional crime story, Astur weaves fables about the sun and the moon, tales of death and love, and reveals a community and a way of life that may soon be lost. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous and poetic portrayal of an outcast's struggle to survive in a changing world, and a seamless blend of the tragic and the majestic.Trade Review'Meticulous and vivid ... mesmerising.' ASYMPTOTE; 'Ambitious and unpredictable - the best kind of new spin on a timeless story.' WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS; 'An astonishing novel that marks Astur out as a novelist of unique brilliance.' LUNATE; 'Melancholic and somewhat unnerving ... a beautiful book.' EUROPEAN LITERATURE NETWORK; 'A fierce, passionate book - at home in every genre.' PATRICK MCGUINNESS; 'An extraordinary feat of writing.' SOPHIE HUGHES; 'This literary novel has the seal of determined originality, and is the admirable work of an author worth following.' EL CULTURAL;'With a sensuous style that produces an almost physical effect, Astur plays with time, earth, and violence, weaving together a plot that finds its logic in disorder, like every real tragedy.' ABC CULTURAL; 'One of the most exquisite writers of Spanish literature.' THE OBJECTIVE

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Book SynopsisKintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with liquid gold, to highlight and celebrate an object's past. In this powerful and personal novella, Senka Maric uses the concept of kintsugi to interrogate ideas of illness, survival and recovery. Two months after her husband packs his bags and leaves the family home, the narrator finds a lump in her armpit. It's a discovery she's been dreading ever since her mother's breast cancer diagnosis sixteen years earlier, and one that will change her body forever. Through diagnosis, chemotherapy, and surgery, the narrator returns to those moments of her girlhood when she learnt to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body - the same body that now threatens to fall apart during her illness. Laced with a drive for life, sensuality and pleasure, Body Kintsugi is an intimate and optimistic book about a woman's relationship with her body as it breaks and is put back together.Trade Review'A raw and moving book, written in exquisite, taut prose, which explores illness and healing through an inventive, kaleidoscopic narrative.' Sam Mills, author of Chauvo-Feminism and The Fragments of My Father; 'As a revelatory account of illness, the novel stands alongside Anne Boyer and Audre Lorde, while the sensuous intelligence of the prose, in Celia Hawkesworth's astonishing translation, reminded me of Virginia Woolf. It's a wonderful book.' Caleb Klaces, author of Fatherhood; 'A brave book written from personal experience that offers us much-needed hope in the victory of life over death' Faruk Sehic, author of Under Pressure and Quiet Flows the Una; 'The writing is intimate - patient, sensory, murky - a portrait of consciousness under duress.' Stacy Mattingly, Literary Hub; 'Nobody has written about the female body in our language like Senka Maric.' Sasa Dragojlo, Noizz; 'Gentle and combative, sad but not at all pathetic, it is an unusually strong narrative about weakness.' Vladislava Gordic Petkovic, Bosnian scholar

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Book SynopsisA young PhD student believes she has uncovered the first professional female artist in Britain. It’s a discovery that could transform her career and reputation. However, in her haste to break new ground, she has made a simple mistake which threatens everything –and she won’t acknowledge her error until it’s far too late. As she goes to ever greater lengths to protect her work from the truth, she begins to lose her grip on her thesis, her life and ultimately her sanity. History. A Mess. is a remarkable exploration of intellectual integrity and denial, and a gripping portrait of academic ambition.Trade Review"Its ambition is met with resounding success every step of the way." WILLOW HEATH, BOOKS AND BAO -- "Palsdottir writes with the hand of a mystery author and the mind of a postmodernist, teasing out her protagonist's problem while playing with literary forms, fragmenting timelines, and injecting fierce irony." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- "Absolutely brilliant from beginning to end." ICELANDIC NATIONAL TELEVISION

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Book SynopsisThe rich seam that is Jansson's adult prose continues with this penultimate collection of short stories, written in her seventies at the height of her Moomin fame and translated into English for the first time. In these light-footed, beautifully crafted yet disquieting stories, Jansson tells of discomfiting encounters, unlooked for connections and moments of isolation that span generations and decades. Letters From Klara proves yet again her mastery of this literary form.Trade ReviewA treat of a collection * Mail on Sunday *Delightful ... Jansson is by turn funny, melancholy and slyly mischievous - qualities brilliantly evident in the titular story * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisThe island of Otterøya, a rural backwater of Norway, provides the setting for Book Two of Tiller's multi-award winning Encircling trilogy. Its singular premise continues: an enigmatic central character, David, has lost his memory and his friends and family write letters at the behest of his psychiatrist about the lives they once shared. The encircling narratives offered by two childhood friends and the midwife who attended his birth, reveal both the roots of his waywardness and, in a shocking twist, the traumatic secret of his identity. Tiller uses a carefully scored polyphony of voices to present this epic saga of dysfunctional lives misshapen by poverty. As in the work of our own Ken Loach or Mike Leigh, its strength lies in its close domestic focus. Encircling: Book 2 is an intimate and modern portrait of Norwegian life that is both searingly honest and uncomfortably true. Encircling 2 is the second volume of a multi-award winning trilogy, published to acclaim in Norway.

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

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Book SynopsisMurakami's 69, a side-splittingly funny coming-of-age novel set in the Japan of the sixties In a small, inconsequential city in Japan, all that matters to 17-year-old Kensuke Yazaki and his friends is girls, rock music and, to a much lesser extent, school. Told at high speed and with irresistible humour by Kensuke himself, this is the story of their 1969, as they engage in heated conversations about Marxism, Rimbaud, Godard, the Beatles and the Stones, set up a barricade in their school, organise a rock festival and map out a highly successful strategy in girl-winning. This is a young Japan entirely turned towards the West, pervaded by Western music, where the girls have nicknames pulled from famous British films, but still locked in a fight with the rigid post-war conservatism of the older generation. Translated from the Japanese by Ralph McCarthy and published by Pushkin Press 'A light, rollicking, sometimes hilarious, but never sentimental picture of late-sixties Japan.' Library Journal 'A great deal of fun, and Murakami ... is a find.' Kirkus Reviews 'The hero is a thoroughly engaging smartass.' Los Angeles Times A superb and very funny bluffer, and one sympathizes with him all the way. Atlantic Monthly 'A cross between The Catcher and the Rye and The Strawberry Statement.' Review of Contemporary Fiction Born in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, Ryu Murakami is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, a novel about a group of young people drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup and From the Fatherland, with Love. Murakami is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.Table of ContentsBorn in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, Ryu Murakami is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, a novel about a group of young people drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup and From the Fatherland, with Love. Murakami is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.

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Book SynopsisAn ambitious, epic dystopian novel - part political thriller and part satire. From the Fatherland, with Love is set in an alternative, dystopian present in which the dollar has collapsed and Japan's economy has fallen along with it. The North Korean government, sensing an opportunity, sends a fleet of rebels in the first land invasion that Japan has ever faced. Japan can't cope with the surprise onslaught of Operation From the Fatherland, with Love . But the terrorist Ishihara and his band of renegade youths - once dedicated to upsetting the Japanese government - turn their deadly attention to the North Korean threat. They will not allow Fukuoka to fall without a fight. Epic in scale, From the Fatherland, with Love is laced throughout with Murakami's characteristically savage violence. It's both a satisfying thriller and a completely mad, over-the-top novel like few others. Translated by Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori, and published by Pushkin Press 'A troubled meditation on the soul of modern Japan... Alarmingly pertinent in light of current British politics... A morbidly funny comedy... Above all, it is a phenomenal feat of storytelling 700 pages, dozens of characters and scores of ideas woven into one gripping whole.' Andrzej Lukowski, Metro 'This is a novel by the other Murakami. Not Haruki... If Haruki is The Beatles of Japanese literature, Ryu is its Rolling Stones... [From the Fatherland, with Love] has a Tolstoyan cast of characters, from crack North Korean commandos and hapless Japanese bureaucrats to a gang of hoodlums who eventually decide to save Japan. It unfolds with the pace of a thriller...' David Pilling, Financial TImes 'Massively ambitious and uncompromising... prescient in unexpected ways' Joanne Hayden, Sunday Business Post ''[Mixes] the thrills of a spy novel with some national soul-searching' Lionel Barber, Financial Times, Summer Books 'Definitely edgier and darker than Haruki [Ryu Murakami] has a worldwide following and is regarded by many as one of the most thrilling writers of contemporary Japanese fiction... [He] offers a thrilling insight - with a geopolitical panoramic view - into national character, human relationships, chaos and disorder' - Tatevik Sargsyan, Hunger Magazine 'Like nothing else out there... a Japanese Tarantino... Highly addictive' Morpheus Tales Born in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, Ryu Murakami is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, a novel about a group of young people drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition and In the Miso Soup. Murakami is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.Trade ReviewA troubled meditation on the soul of modern Japan... Alarmingly pertinent in light of current British politics... A morbidly funny comedy... Above all, it is a phenomenal feat of storytelling 700 pages, dozens of characters and scores of ideas woven into one gripping whole. -- Andrzej Lukowski Metro This is a novel by the other Murakami. Not Haruki... If Haruki is The Beatles of Japanese literature, Ryu is its Rolling Stones... [From the Fatherland, with Love] has a Tolstoyan cast of characters, from crack North Korean commandos and hapless Japanese bureaucrats to a gang of hoodlums who eventually decide to save Japan. It unfolds with the pace of a thriller... -- David Pilling Financial Times Massively ambitious and uncompromising... prescient in unexpected ways -- Joanne Hayden Sunday Business Post [Mixes] the thrills of a spy novel with some national soul-searching -- Lionel Barber Financial Times, Summer Books ...a truly unhinged bit of satire... this long and very strange political novel by the "other" Murakami seems even more beady-eyed after Fukushima... Sunday Telegraph

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Book Synopsis''...reading The Dark Domain by Stephan Grabinski is such a revelatory experience. Because here is a writer for whom supernatural horror is manifest precisely in modernity - in electricity, fire-stations, trains:the uncanny as the bad conscience of today. Sometimes Grabinski is known as the Polish Poe but this is misleading. Where Poe''s horror is agonised, a kind of extended shriek, Grabinski''s is cerebral, investigative. His protagonists are tortured and aghast, but not because they suffer at the caprice of Lovecraftian blind idiot gods: Grabinski''s universe is strange and its principles are perhaps not what we expect, but they are principles - rules- and it is in their exploration that the mystery lies. This is horror as rigour.''China Mieville in The Guardian

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Book SynopsisThe Mystery of Sintra road begins when two friends are kidnapped by several masked men, who, to judge by their manners and their accent are men of the best society. One of the friends is a doctor, and the masked men say that they need him to assist a noblewoman, who is about to give birth. When they reach the house, they find no such noblewoman, only a dead man. Ea de Queiroz wrote this spoof ''mystery'' with his friend Ramalho OrtigÆo, publishing it in the form of a series of anonymous letters in the Dirio de Notcias in 1870.

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Book SynopsisBarbara, originally written in Danish, was the only novel by the Faroese author Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen (1900–1938), and yet it quickly achieved international best-seller status and is still one of the best-loved twentieth century classics in Danish and Faroese literature. On the face of it, Barbara is a straightforward historical novel in the mode of many a so-called 'romance'. It contains a story of passion in an exotic setting with overtones of semi-piracy; there is a powerful erotic element, an outsider who breaks up a marriage, and a built-in inevitability resulting from Barbara's own psychological make-up. She stands as one of the most complex female characters in modern Scandinavian literature: beautiful, passionate, innocent, devoted, amoral and uncomprehending of her own tragedy. Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen portrays her with a fascinated devotion.

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Book SynopsisOften referred to as Sweden's Charlotte Bronte, Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) was widely translated during her lifetime and became internationally acclaimed as the author of an impressive series of novels and travel books. The Colonel's Family first appeared in two parts in 1830-31 as part of a series which she called Sketches from Daily Life - a title which at an early stage declared her lifelong preoccupation with the details of her domestic day. What was less immediately apparent to her contemporaries was her courage in abandoning the prevailing conventions of insipid romantic fiction in order to explore more profound social and moral problems. Her novel is now recognised as a sensitive exploration of the problems of a frustrated, silenced woman, a creature of strong repressed passions, in an era of highly constrictive marital conventions. The striking narrative style is a combination of the picaresque, the sentimental, the realistic, the comic and even the farcical. This translation of a classic of Swedish literature preserves the freshness and idiosyncratic flavour of the original. Sarah Death has over thirty years' experience as a translator from Swedish and has won the George Bernard Shaw Prize three times. In 2014 she was awarded the Royal Order of the Polar Star for services to Swedish literature. She has translated books in a wide variety of genres including children's stories, crime fiction, literary criticism, novels by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloef and the work of many contemporary writers. She lives and works in Kent.

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Book SynopsisIn a remote community on the edge of a windswept desert, a woman has been condemned to death by stoning. Steeped in the harsh values of her traditional, patriarchal society, Noor accepts her fate. When an aid worker befriends her, urging her to defend herself and her unborn child, the two women form a bond. Together with Amina, Noor's outspoken friend, they struggle to defy the law. Written in prose imbued with the rhythms and images of the author's native language, Arabic, this is a tale of the bonds of female friendships, solidarity and empowerment in a society where a woman's voice, especially in the public sphere, has been denied.Trade Review"A timely and necessary read... powerful and endlessly smart, it's a crucial work of fiction for people of all ages."

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Book SynopsisSet during Carnival in Haiti 1938, a young and beautiful woman named Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion on her wedding day and collapses at the altar. She is buried and later resurrected by an evil sorcerer and, as a zombie, enters the collective memory of her town of Jacmel. Hadriana's conversion serves as the inciting incident into an exploration of the strange and esoteric on the island, where Voodoo and Catholicism keep a symbiotic relationship, young women turn into zombies, young men turn into lascivious butterflies and nothing is quite what it seems. Hadriana in All my Dreams is a frolic through mystery and eroticism that reveals vital truths about the nature of humanity.

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Book Synopsis"It is rare to say about a book that you have never read anything like it, and this is one such case." Elle"A pure diamond, a magnificent event. A mind-blowing debut novel." Le PointEel is a 17-year-old girl who leaves her rock on the archipelago of Comoros to lose herself at sea. She drifts between two states of mind and between two islands 'in a hollow maze', evoking her memories so as to forget nothing and so as to delay the inevitable outcome.Confronted with the pressing immediacy of imminent death, Eel recounts the story of her whole life in one long, sustained breath, in a series of brief couplets.A story told in a single sentence, A Girl Called Eel is a memorial, a reckoning, and a powerful narrative imbued with a prevailing sense of urgency.

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