Fiction in translation
Vintage Publishing I Served The King Of England
Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELL''Our very best writer today'' Milan KunderaSparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, I Served the King of England is a story of how the unbelievable came true. Its remarkable hero, Ditie, is a hotel waiter who rises to become a millionaire and then loses it all again against the backdrop of events in Prague from the German invasion to the victory of Communism. Ditie''s fantastic journey intertwines the political and the personal in a narrative that both enlightens and entertains.Trade ReviewThe fantasising and storytelling deliver a body blow of total irreverence to the solemn mythopoeia of monumental historiography * Times Literary Supplement *Hrabal bounces and floats. His mode is a sort of dancing realism, somewhere between fairytale and satire.He is a most sophisticated novelist, with a gusting humour and a hushed tenderness of detail. We should read him -- Julian BarnesWell worth reading * The Book Magazine *A master of rueful comedy and tender eroticism, Hrabal was, for all his eccentricity, a major figure in 20th-century world literature. -- Jonathan Coe
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Hodder & Stoughton And Their Children After Them: 'A page-turner of
Book Synopsis'[A] page-turner of a novel . . . I couldn't put the book down' - New York Times'A multi-viewpoint panorama of thwarted aspirations, spiced with breathy sex scenes and nostalgic detail.' - Mail on SundayAugust 1992. Fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin decide to steal a canoe to fight their all-consuming boredom on a lazy summer afternoon. Their simple act of defiance will lead to Anthony's first love and his first real summer - that one summer that comes to define everything that follows.Over four sultry summers in the 1990s, Anthony and his friends grow up in a France trapped between nostalgia and decline, decency and rage, desperate to escape their small town, the scarred countryside and grey council estates, in search of a more hopeful future.Nicolas Mathieu's eloquent novel gives a pitch-perfect depiction of teenage angst. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, it won praise for its portrayal of people living on the margins and shines a light on the struggles of French society today.'Deeply felt . . . An exceptional portrait of youth' - Irish TimesTrade ReviewNicolas Mathieu's Goncourt-winning And Their Children After Them, translated by William Rodarmor, winningly wove people, place and time into a lyrical, almost-Lawrentian saga of left-behind France. -- Boyd Tonkin, Spectator, Books of the Year[A] page-turner of a novel . . . I couldn't put the book down * New York Times Book Review *Mathieu won France's prestigious Goncourt prize for this absorbing Nineties narrative set in a French valley community left stranded by the decline of industry . . . a multi-viewpoint panorama of thwarted aspirations, spiced with breathy sex scenes and nostalgic detail * Mail on Sunday *And Their Children After Them . . . finds space too for beauty, for tenderness, for hope . . . you might think of a Ken Loach movie with a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen . . . an elegiac anthem * Financial Times *The plot, involving drug dealing and simmering violence . . . keeps you turning the pages * Sunday Times *A deeply felt novel, filled with characters that demand the empathy of the reader . . . There are no villains in the book, but there is a deep sense of humanity in all its flaws. It's easy to see why And Their Children After Them won so many awards in its native France. It's an exceptional portrait of youth, ennui and class divide. -- John Boyne * Irish Times *Mathieu captures the vulnerability and awkwardness of adolescence with painful acuity . . . A gritty, expansive coming-of-age novel filled with sex and violence that manages to be tender, even wryly hopeful * Kirkus Reviews *Mathieu's stunning, bittersweet Prix Goncourt-winning English debut . . . will enrapture readers and appeal to fans of Édouard Louis. * Publishers Weekly *Described by this paper's reviewer as "a Ken Loach movie with a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen", this haunting Prix Goncourt-winning novel is set in a post-industrial town in Lorraine, where the long decommissioned steel mill continues to loom over the inner lives of a younger generation heading falteringly towards adulthood. * Financial Times, Summer Reads *'A masterly, far-reaching exploration of a de-industrialized country which "treated its families like a minor footnote to society . . . And Their Children After Them invites comparison with the great naturalist and realist writers of the French nineteenth century. * TLS *We've probably all read books and seen movies depicting Paris as the elegant and luxurious City of Light, but for a more nuanced study of the French capital, I would recommend Nicolas Mathieu's And Their Children After Them * The Gloss *
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Penguin Books Ltd Bulgakov M Dogs Heart
Book SynopsisA Dog''s Heart: An Appalling Story is Mikhail Bulgakov''s hilarious satire on Communist hypocrisies. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Andrew Bromfield, and includes an introduction by James Meek.In this surreal work by the author of The Master and Margarita, wealthy Moscow surgeon Filip Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken petty criminal into the body of a stray dog named Sharik. As the dog slowly transforms into a man, and the man into a slovenly, lecherous government official, the doctor''s life descends into chaos. A scathing indictment of the New Soviet Man, A Dog''s Heart was immediately banned by the Soviet government when it was first published in 1925: alternating lucid realism with pulse-raising drama, the novel captures perfectly the atmosphere of its rapidly changing times.Andrew Bromfield''s vibrant translation is accompanied by an introduction by James Meek, which places the work in the context of the Russian class struggles of the era and considers the vision, progressive style and lasting relevance of an author who was isolated and suppressed during his lifetime. This edition also contains notes and a chronology.Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev, today the capital of Ukraine. After finishing high school, Bulgakov entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works Notes on Cuffs and Notes of a Young Country Doctor. His later works treated the subject of the artist and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but The Master and Margarita is generally considered his masterpiece. Fame, at home and abroad, was not to come until a quarter of a century after his death at Moscow in 1940.If you enjoyed A Dog''s Heart, you might like Bulgakov''s The Master and Margarita, also available in Penguin Classics. ''One of the greatest of modern Russian writers, perhaps the greatest'' Nigel Jones, Independent
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Columbia University Press The Nose and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThe tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. They showcase Nikolai Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own.Trade Review[A] first-rate collection . . . Admirers of Gogol and his odd sensibilities will devour this excellent gathering. * Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review *While they deal in subjects including witchcraft, demonic influence, and madness, Gogol’s stories are as humorous as they are bizarre . . . The Nose and Other Stories is filled with ill-fated characters, strange happenings, and satirical commentary. * Foreword Reviews *Since much of Gogol’s humor depends on linguistic play, he has proven resistant to adequate translation. . . Fusso’s ear for humor makes all the difference. * New York Review of Books *Crazy, colorful, delightful, and sad, Gogol’s short stories are among the great gems of Russian literature. Susanne Fusso’s scholarly and stylish new translations bring them alive once again and make this selection a pleasure to read. -- David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of EverythingThe first major English translation of Gogol’s stories in more than twenty years, The Nose and Other Stories captures his humor and complexity brilliantly. This volume will prove to be a great read for students and Russian literature enthusiasts alike. -- Bruce Holl, Trinity University[A] really wonderful collection of Gogol’s writings, and essential for any lover of his work. * Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings *An erudite, modern translation of [Gogol’s] work that shows clearly how this strange writer became a defining influence on Russian literature and beyond. * Paperback Paris *In a move that preserves a sense of foreignness in the English translation, Fusso employs something closer to a literal translation than the more idiomatic one used by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky in their 2011 rendering of Gogol’s stories. Fusso maintains the pacing and eeriness of Gogol’s narrative flow while also stretching out some of the language . . . Such choices in translation create a subtle nod to the linguistic distance Russian readers would have experienced reading Gogol’s prose. * The Nation *Susanne Fusso does excellent work making the Russian-to-English prose accessible, readable, and unfussily poetic. * Jason Half's Blog *[Fusso's] translation captures all of Gogol’s magic. * Evilcyclist's Bookshelf *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction, by Susanne FussoNotes on the TranslationTable of Ranks1. The Lost Letter2. Viy3. The Portrait (1835 version)4. Nevsky Avenue5. Diary of a Madman6. The Carriage7. The Nose8. Rome (A Fragment)9. The OvercoatNotes
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Daunt Books The Road to the City
Book Synopsis
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Quercus Publishing The Capital
Book SynopsisTHE PRIZE-WINNING SATIRICAL BESTSELLER - MORE THAN 500,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDETrade ReviewFirst-class satire . . .The Capital delivers, within a brilliant satirical fiction, thoughtful and instructive analysis of both the weaknesses in the EU that galvanise leavers and the strengths that motivate remainers. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *A traditional novel, broadshouldered, omniscient, almost Balzac-ian, but with terrorism part of a plot centeredsatirically around an all-too-plausible Brussels idea. -- Steven Erlanger * New York Times *The Capital is a mischievous yet profound story about storytelling; about the art of shaping a narrative by finding resonances in the messy stuff of life . . . [An] unexpectedly delightful book about Brussels. * Economist *Menasse has a finely tuned satirical ear that easily criss-crosses borders . . . an intelligently written, pacy novel whose wide-ranging narratives ensure the momentum never wavers . . . Robert Menasse has produced an extraordinary piece of work -- Charlie Connelly * New European *A thoroughly entertaining fiction that serves both as a sort of campus satire and a novel of ideas . . . Menasse packs his Brussels with sharply-etched types . . . With its zest, pace and wit, Jamie Bulloch's translation serves him splendidly. -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator *A deliciously vicious - and timely - satire about the E.U. and the meaning of Europe today -- Frederick Studemann * Financial Times *[An] ambitious panorama that arrives amid the throes of Brexit and the Chinese Year of the Pig. Intelligent, fun, sad, insightful - an exceptional work. * Kirkus Reviews *An elegantly written, brilliantly constructed novel, full of discussion points and ideas -- Andreas Isenschmid * Die Zeit *A sharply observed, witty novel, a character comedy . . . the best novel about European bureaucracy you'll read . . . a brave and funny book -- Charlie Connelly * New European Best Books of 2019 *A brutally funny and exhaustive tableau of both a continent in transition and the organisation straining to hold it together . . . a teeming epic -- Andrew R. Chow * Time Magazine *Rumbustious . . . deliciously witty -- Paul Connolly * Metro *The Capital could hardly be more topical . . . It is about Europe reconnecting with its ideals via a tragic past . . . It's a smart read, unlike anything being written in Britain today. -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *Robert Menasse's polyphonic EU satire juggles a multitude of wryly amusing storylines. -- Siobhan Murphy * The Times *This is above all the polyphonic novel in excelsis . . . I want to read much more from this major European writer -- David Nice * Arts Desk *Witty but humane. . . . The massive cast never becomes unwieldy thanks to Menasse's delightful prose. This epic, droll account of contemporary Europe will be catnip for fans of mosaic novels and comical political machinations. * Publishers Weekly (*****) *I enjoyed The Capital so much . . . A major book about coincidences, of linked and overlapping meanings . . . This is a deeply humane novel, a novel for adults. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *Menasse assembles his cast from the different member states . . . but he gives their inner lives a complexity that belies the satirical shorthand of simple labels . . . brilliantly comic . . . An important and timely book. -- Michael Cronin * Irish Times *A gripping novel with an urgent political purpose -- Fintan O'Toole * New York Review of Books *
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Transworld Publishers Ltd The Boy in the Headlights
Book SynopsisSamuel Bjork (Author) Samuel Bjork is the pen name of Norwegian novelist, playwright and singer/songwriter Frode Sander Øien. The Munch and Krüger series features five books: the Richard & Judy Bookclub bestseller I'm Travelling Alone, The Owl Always Hunts At Night, The Boy in the Headlights, The Wolf and Dead Island.Charlotte Barslund (Translator) Charlotte Barslund translates Scandinavian novels and plays. Her recent work includes Calling Out For You by Karin Fossum, Machine by Peter Adolphsen and The Pelican by August Strindberg.
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Orenda Books The Darkest Winter
Book Synopsis
£17.09
Verso Books Will and Testament
Book SynopsisLonglisted for The Millions Best Translated Book Awards for FictionLonglisted for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureFour siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a dispute over her parents' will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different-a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman's struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth's novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.Trade ReviewHjorth parcels out the secrets with a precision worthy of Ibsen, so that the level of suspense is maintained up to the very last of the 343 pages. * Aftenposten *Vigdis Hjorth's new novel is furious and wise, trembling and stringent. Wills and Testaments examines who owns the past. This is the novel in weaponised form. * NRK *This was a novel that people could enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge. The tabloids loved it as much as the broadsheets, and it became the bestselling novel of the year. * The Guardian *Its strong emotional truths take hold of you immediately - even before the family secret's consequences are made apparent: I dogeared page after page to mark off insights, movements, formulations. * Dagens Nyheter *The strength of the novel lies in Bergljot's convincing and continuing vulnerability, in her mixed feelings and her flaws . A clear-eyed and convincing story of a family's doomed attempt to reconcile and the limits of forgiveness. * Kirkus *Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers. -- Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?In a ruthless yet patiently delivered work, Hjorth does something that few writers achieve: Will and Testamentis both economical and overwhelming. -- Elsa Court * Financial Times *Devastating -- FriezeWill and Testament is a compulsively readable novel, one that turns questions of shame into weapons against silence. * Paris Review *Hjorth's thoughtful, drily funny, and often devastating novel will leave a deep and lasting impression on readers. * Publishers Weekly *Will and Testament is a reminder that it's easier to hide darkness than face it ... Hjorth argues cogently that conflicts and atrocities often stem from what a nation represses or denies. * Observer *Compelling ... Hjorth proves brilliant at revealing the stubborn, unredemptive quality of childhood suffering. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian *Even in the depths of family trauma, the scent of the forest, sea and meadow may still drift over the troubled cities and suburbs of Norwegian fiction. That forest may be a real place. It may also, as in Will and Testament, be a longed-for state of mind. -- Boyd Tonkin * Norwegian Arts *Hypnotic -- John Williams * New York Times Book Review *A powerfully humane novel about inheritance, trauma and the inheritance of trauma * Times Literary Supplement *Precise, contemplative, and deeply moving, it's a masterful unpacking of the tensions, secrets, and bonds that hold a family together. -- Hannah Williams * Los Angeles Review of Books *An extraordinary storyteller * LA Review of Books *Readers pining for a dose of brooding Norwegian writing in the style of Karl Ove Knausgaard may be drawn to this account of a woman's struggle to achieve reconciliation with a family that refuses to recognise she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her own father -- Ángel Gurría-Quintana * Financial Times *One of the year's gems in translation was Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund. A story of abuse, inheritance and the battle for the truth among a privileged Norwegian family, it grips like a vice while interrogating national as well as individual self-conception. * Guardian, Best Fiction of 2019 *Published to a storm of controversy in Vigdis Hjorth's native Norway in 2016, Will and Testament arrived in English this year. The novel is a meticulously paced account of a property dispute that bleeds poisonously back into the history of the narrator and the family members whose squabbling over a cabin comes to seem darkly absurd compared with the trauma she has suffered. -- Megan Nolan * New Statesman, Books of the year 2019 *Unsettling, beautifully constructed * Observer *Unspooling in a splenetic torrent of raw emotional intensity, [Will and Testament] speaks to wider issues of collective traumas that societies refuse to confront. * Morning Star *Add Vigdis Hjorth to the growing list of writers of significant autofiction, reality literature whose characters depend on recognizable people and actual situations. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard's monumental six volumes of the autobiographically inspired My Struggle and Elena Ferrante's indelible four-volume Neapolitan series (beginning with My Brilliant Friend), Hjorth's Will and Testament brilliantly examines the troubled life occasioned by recovered memories of a traumatic personal event. -- Robert Allen Papinchak * World Literature Today *A curious and very good short novel. -- Laura Waddell * Scotsman *
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Pan Macmillan The Root of Evil
Book SynopsisHåkan Nesser, 'the Godfather of Swedish Crime' (Metro), is back with the second installment in the Inspector Barbarotti series, The Root of Evil.*Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger*July 2007. A letter arrives on Inspector Barbarotti’s doorstep detailing a murder that is about to take place in his quiet Swedish town. By the time the police track down the subject of the letter, he is already dead. So when a second letter arrives, then a third, and a fourth, it’s a game of cat and mouse to stop the killer before he can make good on all of his promises. Meanwhile, an anonymous diary is unearthed depicting the incidents of a two week holiday in France five years earlier, and it doesn’t take Barbarotti long to realize the people populating the diary are the ones whose lives are now in the balance . . .Continue the thrilling investigative series with The Secret Life of Mr Roos.'One of the best of the Nordic Noir writers' - GuardianTrade ReviewThe godfather of Swedish crime * Metro *Told with wry humour and compassion, Nesser has four more Barbarotti stories to come — cherish them all -- Daily Mail on The Darkest DayA master of suspense * Sunday Times *In an exemplary translation by Sarah Death, this tangled tale of guilt and betrayal whets the appetite for translations of the other Barbarotti novels -- Financial Times on The Darkest DayOne of the best of the Nordic Noir writers * Guardian *One of Sweden's best crime writers * Mail on Sunday *Barbarotti has to disentangle years of bad blood and resentment to get to the heart of a thrillingly complex case * Sunday Times (on The Darkest Day) *
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And Other Stories Proleterka
Book SynopsisA fifteen-year-old girl and her father, Johannes, take a cruise to Greece on the SS Proleterka. Jaeggy recounts the girl's youth in her distinctively strange, telescopic prose: the remarried mother, cold and unconcerned; the father who was allowed only rare visits with the child; the years spent stashed away with relatives or at boarding school. For the girl and her father, their time on the ship becomes their `last and first chance to be together.' On board, she becomes the object of the sailors' affection, receiving a violent, carnal education. Mesmerised by the desire to be experienced, she crisply narrates her trysts as well as her near-total neglect of her father.Proleterka is a ferocious study of distance, diffidence and `insomniac resentment.'Trade Review`"Incorruptible crystal" is an apt description of Jaeggy's style. Her sentences are hard and compact, more gem than flesh. Images appear as flashes, discontinuous, arresting, then gone . . . this feels appropriate for a writer who is a "stranger" and an "enemy" to the familial.' Sheila Heti, The New Yorker ---- `Jaeggy's works are a translator's dream: short, lucid and complex. Her distinctive vocabulary and syntax move elegantly and it would seem effortlessly into the English language.' Margaret Drabble, The New Statesman ---- `. . . an elegantly structured and stubbornly moving study of innocence destroyed and love denied. Very accomplished indeed.' Kirkus Reviews ---- `. . . an elegantly structured and stubbornly moving study of innocence destroyed and love denied. Very accomplished indeed.' Kirkus Reviews ---- `[Jaeggy] has a startling ability to go beyond: beyond the sentimental heart, the writerly niceties, the conventions that bind us, and the messy effusions of contemporary life.' The New Yorker ---- `[Jaeggy] has a startling ability to go beyond: beyond the sentimental heart, the writerly niceties, the conventions that bind us, and the messy effusions of contemporary life.' The New Yorker --- Praise for Fleur Jaeggy --- `Fleur Jaeggy's pen is an engraver's needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness-extraordinary.' Joseph Brodsky ---- 'The fierceness of her words erupts from the seams of her tiny sentences ... Jaeggy's highly unusual work is finally gaining recognition in the English-speaking world.' Emily Rhodes, The Spectator---`Proleterka is a ferocious study - a masterclass in distance , diffidence, death, and `insomniac resentment.’ Barbara Epler
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Vintage Publishing Money to Burn
Book SynopsisAsta Olivia Nordenhof (Author) Asta Olivia Nordenhof is an award-winning poet and author. Money to Burn, the first book in the Scandinavian Star septology, was first published in Denmark in 2020. It was awarded the PO Enquist Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. An international sensation and translated into eighteen languages, Money to Burn was published in English by Jonathan Cape. The Devil Book is the second in the series and was an instant bestseller upon first publication in Denmark.Caroline Waight (Translator) Caroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German and Norwegian. Her translations include books by Caroline Albertine Minor, Ingvild Rishøi, Maren Uthaug and Dorthe Nors. She was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Award and received a special commendation at the 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
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Vintage Publishing History of Violence
Book Synopsis** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award **The radical, urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy - a personal and powerful story of violence.I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria. We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began.History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, class, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes. 'It stays with you' Times'A heartbreaking novel' John BoyneTrade ReviewLouis’s greatest strength as a writer is that he feels things so passionately, sometimes to the point of obsession, but that he also has a philosophical turn of mind that explores, rather than neutralises, his feelings. -- Edmund White * Guardian *[B]oth brave and ambitious in its determination never to let its reader, or its author, escape lightly the damaging realities it describes. -- Tim Adams * Observer *[A] harrowing piece of autofiction… History of Violence is a slim but densely layered novel that begins with raw urgency. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * The Times *[A] heartbreaking novel… I find myself captivated by Édouard Louis's books and his raw honesty. -- John Boyne * Irish Times *An intense and uncomfortably thrilling book, which uses the harrowing events of that Christmas Eve as a basis for a wider exploration of class, race and individualism... a novel that is unflinching in its examination of class and discrimination. -- Tash Aw * Times Literary Supplement *
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Pan Macmillan The Sicilian Method
Book SynopsisIn The Sicilian Method, Andrea Camilleri's twenty-sixth novel in the Inspector Montalbano mystery series, a troubling murder invesitgation may see Montalbano find his answers on a theatre's stage . . .'[E]ven the contents of his fridge are described with the wit and gusto that make this narrator the best company in crime fiction today' – GuardianMimi Augello is visiting his lover when the woman's husband unexpectedly returns to the apartment. Hurriedly he climbs out the window and into the downstairs apartment, but finds himself swinging from one danger to another. In the dark he sees a body lying on the bed.Shortly afterwards another body is found and the victim is Carmelo Catalanotti, a director of bourgeois dramas with a harsh reputation for the methods he has developed for his actors: digging into their complexes to unleash their talent, a traumatic experience for all. Are the two deaths connected? Catalanotti scrupulously kept notes and comments on all the actors he worked with – as well as strange notebooks full of figures, dates and names . . .Inspector Montalbano finds all of Catalanotti's dossiers and plays, the notes on the characters and the notes on his final drama, Dangerous Turn. Indeed, it is in the theatre where he feels the solution lies.Trade ReviewMontalbano’s colleagues, chance encounters, Sicilian mores, even the contents of his fridge are described with the wit and gusto that make this narrator the best company in crime fiction today * Guardian *Among the most exquisitely crafted pieces of crime writing available today . . . Simply superb * Sunday Times *One of fiction’s greatest detectives and Camilleri is one of Europe’s greatest crime writers * Daily Mail *
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Oneworld Publications Little Eyes: LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER
Book SynopsisA visionary novel about our interconnected world, about the collision of horror and humanity, from the Man Booker-shortlisted master of the spine-tingling tale A Guardian & Observer Best Fiction Book of 2020 * A Sunday Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year * The Times Best Science Fiction Books of the Year * NPR Best Books of the Year World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2020 * Ebook Travel Guides Best 5 Books of 2020 * A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 They’re not pets. Not ghosts or robots. These are kentukis, and they are in your home. You can trust them. They care about you... They've infiltrated apartments in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of Sierra Leone, town squares of Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. Anonymous and untraceable, these seemingly cute cuddly toys reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls – but they also expose the ugly truth of our interconnected society. Samanta Schweblin's wildly imaginative new novel pulls us into a dark and complex world of unexpected love, playful encounters and marvellous adventures. But beneath the cuddly exterior, kentukis conceal a truth that is unsettlingly familiar and exhilaratingly real. This is our present and we’re living it – we just don’t know it yet. *Little Eyes comes with two different covers, and the cover you receive will be chosen at random*Trade Review'Ingenious... An artful exploration of solitude and empathy in a globalised world… In a nimble, fast-moving narrative, what’s most impressive is the way she foregrounds her characters’ inner hopes and fears.' * Guardian *'Disturbing... Schweblin enjoys hovering just above the normal. Inspired by Samuel Beckett, she is interested in exposing absurdities.' * Financial Times *‘Little Eyes makes for masterfully uneasy reading; it’s a book that burrows under your skin.’ * Telegraph *'I cannot remember a book so efficient in establishing character and propelling narrative; there’s material for a hundred novels in these deft, rich 242 pages... The writing, ably translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is superb, fully living up to the promise of Schweblin's stunning previous novel, Fever Dream... A slim volume as expansive and ambitious as an epic.' * New York Times *'A timely meditation on humanity and technology.' * Harper's Bazaar *'Little Eyes provides us with a powerful examination of the underlining disparities that persist. It is a fable for a society in which we are all made to feel simultaneously exposed and anonymous, connected and alone.' * Times Literary Supplement *‘Little Eyes acts as a clear warning that every digital decision we make has consequences... It does feel alarmingly real.’ * i *'This dazzling inquiry into loneliness and connection...has been given added resonance by the atomisation of lockdown.' * Guardian, '50 Brilliant Books to Transport You This Summer' *'A dark story, beautifully translated by Megan McDowell, it leaves the reader in a world from which there is no escape, as it questions our growing complicity in social media and neocapitalist technologies.' * Morning Star *'Creepy as hell.' * Weekend Sport *‘Enjoyable reading… riffing on everyday human foibles – jealousy, capriciousness, existential restlessness…the understatedly arch tone is well served by Megan McDowell’s translation, which is so slick that one hardly seems to be reading a translated work.’ * Literary Review *'Daring and original... Schweblin deftly explores both the loneliness and casual cruelty that can inform our attempts to connect in this modern world.' * Booklist *'If you want a spookily prescient vision of human isolation both assuaged and deepened by inscrutable, glitch-prone tech, then Little Eyes more than fits the brief... Adroitly served by Megan McDowell’s winningly deadpan translation, these stories deal not in 'truly brutal plots' but 'desperately human and quotidian' urges, fears and scams... In the middle of our stay-at-home, broadband-enabled apocalypse, that feels right.' * Spectator *'The 'toys' Schweblin has created are the perfect hybrid between a pet and a social network, enabling her to dissect problems that touch all of our lives: the dark side of the internet; the global epidemic of loneliness; the dumb inertia that leads us to jump on board with the latest trend… As always in the worlds Schweblin creates, the real monsters are to be found not in the outside world, but inside each of us.' * New York Times (Spanish edition) *'A dystopian novel that is necessary, hypnotic, irresistible.' * Elle Italia *'This brilliant and disturbing book resembles Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale in how it speculates…Schweblin unspools a disquieting portrait of the dark sides of connectivity and the kinds of animalistic cyborgs it can make of us, as we walk through barriers that even spirits cannot cross.' * Literary Hub *'The finest novel of the past five years. Quite exceptional. Little Eyes will certainly feature in future lists of the ten best novels of this century.' * Luisgé Martín, author of The Same City *'A nuanced exploration of anonymous connection and distant intimacy in our heavily accessible yet increasingly isolated lives...Capacious, touching, and disquieting, this is not-so-speculative fiction for an overnetworked and underconnected age.' * Kirkus Reviews *'Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell, is a chilling and often hilarious book on the pitfalls of living in a highly interconnected world. Schweblin has a true talent for getting to the centre of our fears and drawing them out. An intensely clever title that will have you examining your own relationship to the internet.' -- Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters'This has a propulsive, Dave Eggers-ish readability.' * Daily Mail *'Little Eyes is a short, powerful, disquieting novel. The story explores the grey area that constitutes an invasion of privacy, and the line between intimacy and exhibitionism. Samanta Schweblin guides the narrative with a skilful hand reminiscent of her very finest short stories. An excellent storyteller, but above all, a true writer.' * La Razón *'Readers will be fascinated by the kentuki-human interactions, which smartly reveal how hungry we are for connection in a technology-bent world. Of a piece with Schweblin’s elliptical Fever Dream and the disturbing story collection Mouthful of Birds...this jittery eye-opener will appeal to a wide range of readers.' * Library Journal *'Schweblin’s handling of tension and her viscously instantaneous ironic twists, familiar from her short story collection Mouthful of Birds, are delicious... An eerie sense of disjuncture characterises the entire reading experience...an indicator of the deep, discomforting place it has made itself under my skin.' * 3:AM magazine *'Schweblin unfurls an eerie, uncanny story… Daring, bold, and devious.' * Publishers Weekly *'Her most unsettling work yet – and her most realistic.' * New York Times *‘A master of the unsettling… the imaginary technology at the heart of Little Eyes feels all too real, and Schweblin persuasively elaborates its operations and implications… the novel’s breadth provides much of its pleasure, allowing an inventiveness that balances the bleakness of its characters’ lives.’ -- Hannah Rosefield * The New Statesman *'In Samanta Schweblin's fiendishly readable Little Eyes, the new must-have tech gadget allows users to leapfrog into the lives of strangers – a sharp idea that became even more pertinent with the isolation and atomisation of lockdown.' -- Guardian, Best Fiction of 2020'Schweblin's clear and brisk language, aided by a seemingly effortless translation from Spanish by Megan McDowell, drives home the accessibility of this outlandish story. Little Eyes is strange and addictive, an experience made even more frightening by how familiar this feels.' * Salon *‘Alluring and unsettling in equal measure… A subtle and scathing parody of modern communications technology and social media… Colourful and near-hypnotic prose… A rare, yet powerful, indictment of a society that tolerates and even encourages violations of one of our most precious moral commodities – privacy.’ * E&T *'She has a gift for fiction that is pure, original, revelatory.' * El País *'Little Eyes calls to mind the world of Black Mirror. The result is suffocating and addictive in equal measure; combining the minutiae of domestic life with a picture of the dark side of technology in a disconcertingly natural style. A story about voyeurism, and the pleasure of looking at the world through someone else’s eyes.' * El Mundo *'An insightful reflection on solitude and privacy.' * ABC *'[Schweblin is] a literary explorer of 21st century fears.' * La Vanguardia *'Schweblin plunges herself once again into the disturbing limits of what we think of as 'normal'.' * Letras Libres *'This isn’t science fiction; this is the here and now.' * El Diario *'Drawn in quotidian elegance, the novel is a string of nonstop, colorful vignettes… If Schweblin’s sci-fi thriller Fever Dream made sleep difficult, Little Eyes raises the unease quotient. The book seems to watch viewers creepily as it unfolds.' * BookPage *'Like a true master, Schweblin manages to lure us in with a story that leaves us both bruised and fascinated.' * Culturas *'The undisputed star of Latin American fiction.' * ABC Sevilla *'The fantastic and strange worlds of Samanta Schweblin’s work are described with wisdom and ferocity.' * La Repubblica *'[Little Eyes is] yet another unsettling glimpse of life...providing us with the disturbing psychological insights which we associate with her work... Once again Schweblin has produced a novel which is prescient and frightening in equal measure.’ * 1streading *'Embedded within this novel of international interconnectivity are questions of the exhibitionism and voyeurism tied up in our use of technology. Expect echoes of the Wachowskis' Sense8, except told with what has been characterized as Schweblin's "neurotic unease."' * The Millions, Most Anticipated Titles of 2020 *'Samanta Schweblin will injure you, however safe you may feel.' * Jesse Ball, author of Census *'Samanta Schweblin is one of the most promising voices in modern literature.' * Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature *'Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin was pure sorcery. Hands down, one of the best books of 2020 (so far)... I was intoxicated.' * The Book Satchel *'In accentuating so many of the dangers of online communities, as well as [the] advantages, Schweblin takes you on a psychological journey that feels like a Black Mirror episode and has you questioning actions that seemed mundane before.' * The Book Slut *'Brilliantly creepy.' -- New York Times, Notable Books of 2020'Little Eyes supposes a world that is our world, 5 minutes from now... It then introduces one small thing — one little change, one product, one tweaked application of a totally familiar technology — and tracks the ripples of chaos that it creates... Think for just a moment the kind of joy and the kind of horror something like that would create. Then read Little Eyes and see how whatever it was that you imagined was just the beginning of how awful it could be.' -- NPR, Best Books of the Year'A smart and timely meditation on what the internet is doing to the human soul... Funny, frightening and bound to make you turn off your mobile.' -- Tablet, Summer reads
£9.49
Orion Publishing Co Olga
Book SynopsisTHE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER''Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart'' New York TimesOlga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era''s dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.This is the story of that love, of Olga''s devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.Translated from the German by Charlotte CollinsTrade ReviewFrom the author of The Reader comes a brilliant new novel about history and the nature of memory... The story of Olga, translated here from German by Charlotte Collins, is the story of Germany's modern history. It is also a study of memory... You should read this novel if you appreciate the power of history. How do we remember each other? As individuals, or as parts of a larger whole? As they were, or as we wish they had been? The narration can be breakneck: decades pass in single sentences, while other paragraphs describe mere moments. This is the effect of memory; lives are condensed into a series of experiences and relationships. One line still sticks in my head, in a letter from a Norwegian bookseller. "History is not the past as it really was. It's the shape we give it". * Evening Standard *A cleverly-constructed tale of cross-class romance... Olga's story draws us into a present-day reckoning with Germany's past. * Mail on Sunday *A poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time. * Observer *Bernhard Schlink, one of Germany's best-loved authors, is famous beyond its borders for the international bestseller The Reader. Like that excellent novel, his latest, Olga, is a searching examination of modern Germany and its scarred soul... there's a sophisticated precision to his writing, which is superbly translated by Charlotte Collins. And in Schlink's macro look at Germany's past, it's the small acts - of kindness and humility - that linger. * Sunday Telegraph, Novel of the Week *This is not a straightforward elegy - and throughout the book, death is not an absolute end. Instead, Schlink frames the novel as a search for meaning, which dances in Olga between a multitude of timeframes and territories. Throughout, Charlotte Collins's translation is careful and beautifully paced * Financial Times *A compelling tale of love and thwarted dreams... Schlink's lucid, no-frills prose lends his novel immediacy, and at times potency, and gives us a character to root for. * The Herald *One of Bernhard Schlink's secrets stems from his art of telling stories by interweaving the standpoints of different generations in the very same life story. Olga is another very well-done example of that. * Le Monde *In this moving book Bernhard Schlink resurrects the last traces of an unfulfilled love, with his trademark, sophisticated nostalgia. * Le Nouvel Observateur *Bernhard Schlink, whose The Reader we haven't forgotten, impresses again with Olga. * Lire *Everything points towards Olga being a new bestseller which can pick up where the international success of The Reader left off. In other words: not to be missed! * SWR1 *Schlink is a brilliant stylist; this bittersweet love affair is deeply moving. * Hamburger Abendblatt *The third part of the novel - letters Olga writes to Herbert after he's set out for the Arctic - is the most beautiful. Here, the camera finally zooms in and we learn of Olga's feelings, how she's torn between hope and fear, love and anger at her lover, who has left her for a madcap expedition. * Spiegel *[Schlink] takes up motifs from his most famous work The Reader. Olga, who fights to be allowed to continue her education, seems like an alternative draft of the illiterate Hannah, whose lacking abilities led to her becoming a concentration camp guard during the Nazi era. * Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung *Olga is captivating. Bernhard Schlink tells the story in lucid, serene language. He is a master of this warm, pleasant tone, which has a hint of the old-fashioned to it. * Stern *Schlink tells a gripping, true-to-life story which startles you with its unforeseen twists, and not only makes you think, but feel too. * NDR Kultur *Schlink was and is an author for readers who love intelligently told stories. And they won't be disappointed by Olga. * Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich *
£8.54
Granta Books The Moro Affair
Book SynopsisOn 16 March 1978, Aldo Moro, former Italian Prime Minister, was ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed all five members of his escort and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the Red Brigades announced that Moro was in their hands; on 18 March they said he would be tried in a 'people's court of justice'. Seven weeks later Moro's body was discovered in the boot of a Renault parked in the crowded centre of Rome. In this book, Leonardo Sciasica, a master of detective fiction, untangles the real-life events of these crucial weeks and provides a unique insight into the dangerous world of Italian politics in the 1970s.
£8.99
Canongate Books Conversations In Sicily
Book SynopsisVividly capturing the heat, sounds and smells of southern Italy, Conversations in Sicily astounds with its modernity, lyricism and originality. Driven by a sense of total disconnection, the narrator embarks on a journey from northern Italy to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. Through the conversations of the islanders and a reunion with his mother, he gradually begins to feel reconnected. But to what kind of world? Written during Mussolini's time in power, Conversations in Sicily is one of the great novels of anti-fascism.Trade ReviewSuperbly written ... Vittorini's unique prose laps against one in repetitious wavelets, alive to the rhythm and significance of language in a way more common to poetry than to prose.Praised in the past by writers like Ernest Hemingway and Italo Calvino, this new translation by Alane Mason restores a paint-fresh vividness to a classic novel, too-little known in the English speaking world. -- Wayne BurrowsVittorini is one of the very best . . . I care very much about his ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need. -- Ernest HemingwayIt is very hard to give any adequate sense of [its] power, rendered in lucid, supple lines of almost Homeric simplicity whose cadences are faithfully captured in this excellent new translation * * Guardian * *An extraordinary book ... For anyone interested in memory and place, the loss of the past and the attempt to recover it in words, this book will be rewarding ... giving the reader an experience that is vividly new, yet strangely familiar -- Kirsty Gunn
£9.49
HarperCollins India Legal Fiction: A Novel
Book SynopsisArjun travels to a small town to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend's husband, uncovering corruption and danger. The story explores themes of love jihad and legal manipulation in modern India.
£11.99
ACA Publishing Limited Longevity Park
Book SynopsisChina is ageing. Its shrinking households, overworked and overstretched, struggle to carry the burden of care for their elderly. Retired Beijing judge Uncle Xiao is one among millions of old-timers who face a hopeless choice: accept a lonely decline, or chase dubious ‘miracle cures’.Then into his life steps Miss Zhong, a young rural nurse with her own share of problems. The two have little in common, but as time delivers tragedies they learn that family can take many forms. Will this unlikely pair weather life’s storms together, and will Xiao find warmth in his sunset years?
£13.49
Pushkin Press The Royal Game: A Chess Story
Book SynopsisChess world champion Mirko Czentovic is travelling on an ocean liner to Buenos Aires. Dull-witted in all but chess, he entertains himself on board by allowing others to challenge him in the game, before beating each of them and taking their money. But there is another passenger with a passion for chess: Dr B, previously driven to insanity during Nazi imprisonment by the chess games in his imagination. But in agreeing to take on Czentovic, what price will Dr B ultimately pay? A moving portrait of one man's madness, The Royal Game: a chess story is a searing examination of the power of the mind and the evil it can do.Trade Review'Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game. Never mind that you may have never moved a pawn to King four; the story will grip you.' - Economist'The novella is one of Zweig's most horrifying investigations into monomania and at the same time a parable of the dangers inherent in engaging with Nazism.' - Ruth Franklin'A Chess Story by Stefan Zweig; the games our minds play.' - Candia McWilliam
£9.93
ACA Publishing Limited My Travels in Ding Yi
Book SynopsisOf all the brief lives I’ve inhabited, humans are definitely the most interesting. Poetry and painting, literature and drama, song and dance; there’s nothing they can’t do.As I fell into this young creature named Ding Yi, a life filled with hardship, love and betrayal unfolded before me.I’ll try to make this account as entertaining as possible, but please bear with me – it was several lifetimes ago.My Travels in Ding Yi is an epic novel told from the perspective of a nomadic spirit named Shi who inhabits a Chinese boy living in the second half of the 20th century. Shi describes coming of age during the Cultural Revolution in language that dips and soars from crude to lyrical, often in a single breath. Unpredictable and engrossing, this contemporary classic of Chinese fiction was first published in 2006 and is now available in English for the first time.
£10.79
And Other Stories The Taiga Syndrome: Winner of the 2019 Shirley
Book SynopsisA fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple that has fled to the far reaches of the Earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down - that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation serves to betray both sense and the senses. The stories of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest. As she enters a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of capitalism - accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty -the lessons of her journey unfold: that sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do.Trade Review`One of Mexico's greatest living writers, and we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer... I'm excited.' Jonathan Lethem----`The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza is a dark, daring contemporary fable with echoes from the past. Small, short, covered in gray, it sparkles on the page and dazzles the mind.' Sjon----'A suspenseful fable [that] defies traditional narrative.' Anna Aslanyan, The Guardian ----'Through her powerful command of language, she eases the reader into her nightmarish Fairytale.' Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times ----`An explosive writer yet to be fully accounted for in English.' Lina Meruane----`Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.' Yuri Herrera----`The contemporary Latin American detective novel is a form that uses the individual's rollicking quest as a means of resistance against repressive structures and the violences they engender. Cristina Rivera Garza's The Taiga Syndrome, in this stellar translation by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, gives English-language readers a lyrically luminous take on the genre while not skimping on its adventurous antics. If The Taiga Syndrome is a book of illness, it's also about exile, disappearance, borders, love, language and translation, desire, capitalism and its discontents, fairy tales, and what it means to be possessed by the madness of others and the madness of ourselves. The murmurs that haunt the detective in the novel evoke the history of Mexican fiction, most notably Juan Rulfo. But this is not a religious state of purgatory. It's more like Apocalypse Now fused with the worlds of Clarice Lispector and Jorge Luis Borges. In other words, there is no one writing novels as phantasmagorically exquisite as Cristina Rivera Garza's. The Taiga Syndrome, which is both quietly poetic and narratively unhinged, is a crucial addition to her distinguished oeuvre.' Daniel Borzutzky----`Innovative Mexican author Rivera Garza's dazzling speculative noir novel is narrated by a woman hired to find a man's missing second wife... As she tracks the mysterious couple over snow-covered trails in the boreal forest, the universe becomes eerie and unpredictable. She encounters a feral boy, a ferocious wolf, earthy villagers and wild lumberjacks. Rivera Garza invokes Hansel and Gretel as she spins her marvellous, atmospheric tale.' Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com, `The 10 Best Books of 2018'----`This novel, in a translation by Levine and Kana, is taut, lyrical, and strange, and it fits right in with Dorothy, A Publishing Project's commitment to work that challenges what genres and forms can do. Like the best speculative fiction, it follows the sinuous paths of its own logic but gives the reader plenty of room to play. Fans of fairy tales and detective stories, Kathryn Davis and Idra Novey, will all find something to love. An eerie, slippery gem of a book.' Kirkus Reviews, starred review----`As lyrical as a poem ("Look at this: your knees. They are used for kneeling upon reality, also for crawling, terrified. You use them to sit on a lotus flower and say goodbye to the immensity") and as fantastic as a fairy tale, Rivera Garza's gorgeous, propulsive novel will haunt readers long after it's finished.' Publishers Weekly, starred review----`A Lynchian noir from one of Mexico's best novelists tracks a missing couple in a ravaged no-man's-land, weaving a mystery out of fairy tales, disaster capitalism, and shadowy afflictions.' Vulture ----`Readers of this book will encounter one of the most fiercely original literary voices from Latin America.' Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, Los Angeles Review of Books----`Mystery, sci-fi, Socratic dialogue, retelling of `Hansel and Gretel': The Taiga Syndrome is a delightful shape-shifter of a novel.' Jonathan Woollen, Politics & Prose----`This insanely creepy & brilliant book by the incomparable Cristina Rivera Garza will keep you awake at night. Garza is a master of atmosphere. A detective novel directed by David Lynch & narrated by Bolano.' Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore---- `Wood, snow, blood: old stories. The witch in the forest, the breadcrumb trail, the grandmother-skinned wolf - everybody's here, in this wild little book, breath steaming humid in the cold air.' Sarah McCarry, Tor.com----`Rivera Garza belongs to the tradition of iconoclastic writers who question why our world has to be the way it is. This is the sort of powerful inquiry that often brings art to its most immersive, rewarding, and generative place. Read her books and explore your own taiga.' Veronica Scott Esposito, Literary Hub----`In plain, lyrical language, [Rivera] Garza drapes a poetic hush over the narrative, creating an unsettling fable-like world. It's a mystery that creeps, with careful, steady steps.' Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club ---- `So far so noir, except that this summary, along with every other summary I've seen in reviews and copy for The Taiga Syndrome, fails to give an accurate impression of the experience of reading the book. First, the story is nonlinear, not in a Memento kind of way but in a You-realize-time-is-an-illusion-don't-you? one. What there is in the way of plot - and there is plot here - is dominated by an obsession with language.' Ploughshares----`Diaphanously translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, this deceivingly spare, noir fairy tale can be read (devoured) at a sitting, but the subconscious wounds it (in)exacts may fester in one's non-fiction ever after.' Minor Literature(s)----`Come for the satisfying sense of utter disorientation, stay for the gangly homunculus that bursts out of the woman's mouth in the middle of the night.' Literary Hub, `Four Haunting Books for the Halloween Season'----`[Rivera] Garza doesn't stop with fairy tales, however; she inverts traditional tropes from any number of genres to great effect. The subject of the mystery is not the crime or even the victim, but the detective. The unreliable narrator reports on her own unreliability.' Shelf Awareness
£9.50
Dedalus Ltd La Madre: The Woman and the Priest
Book Synopsis
£8.54
Banipal Books Banipal 71 Salutes Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
Book SynopsisBanipal 71 Salutes Ihsan Abdel Kouddous commemorates two great Arab authors and introduces new literature in translation, plus reviews and photo report. We say “Farewell” to the inimitable Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, “the last communist”, who passed away on 13 June. In a special feature we salute the prolific Egyptian writer Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (1919–1990), whose stories and novels were adapted into dozens of films, but hardly translated into English. With articles and translations from three of his works, Hassouna Mosbahi writes: “It would be no exaggeration to equate Abdel Kouddous’ daring and braveness with that of great writers from the West who challenged all forms of censorship imposed on subjects related to love and sexuality”. Translations and reviews of two new novels: Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Oman), and Things I left Behind by Shada Mustafa (Palestine) Poems from Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, founder of the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza A travelling tale, The Calligrapher of Kufa, from Mohammed al-Sharekh
£9.50
Fitzcarraldo Editions Paradais
Book SynopsisInside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor – an attractive married woman and mother – while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society – fractured by issues of race, class and violence – and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.Trade Review‘Fernanda Melchor explores violence and inequity in this brutal novel. She does it with dazzling technical prowess, a perfect pitch for orality, and a neurosurgeon’s precision for cruelty. Paradais is a short inexorable descent into Hell.’ — Mariana Enríquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire‘Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.’ — Julian Lucas, New York Times‘With a nimble command of the novel’s technical resources and an uncanny grasp of the irrational forces at work in society, [Paradais and Hurricane Season] navigate a reality riven by violence, race, class, and sex. And they establish Melchor, who was born in 1982, as the latest of Faulkner’s Latin American inheritors, and among the most formidable.’ — Juan Gabriel Vásquez, New Yorker‘Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage, and has the skill to pull it off.’ — Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream‘A masterpiece of concision ... Paradais is a labyrinthine monologue on the banal violence of a modern-day teenager.’ — Virginie Despentes, author of Vernon Subutex ‘Melchor uses shock to lay bare issues of classism, misogyny, and the ravages of child abuse. Her prose, ably translated by Hughes, is dizzying but effective; it’s as if she’s holding the reader’s head and daring them to look away from the social problems she brings to light. This might be a deeply disconcerting novel, but it’s also a brave one. A fever dream that's as hard to read as it is brilliant.’ — Kirkus
£10.44
Fitzcarraldo Editions The Fallen
Book SynopsisA powerful, unsettling portrait of ordinary family life in Cuba, Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s debut novel The Fallen is a masterful portrayal of a society in free fall. Diego, the son, is disillusioned and bitter about the limited freedoms his country offers him. Mariana, the mother, is unwell and forced to relinquish her control over the home to her daughter, Maria, who has left school and is working as a chambermaid in one of the state-owned tourist hotels. The father, Armando, is a committed revolutionary who is sickened by the corruption he perceives all around him. In meticulously charting the disintegration of a family, The Fallen offers a poignant reflection on contemporary Cuba and the clash of the ardent idealism of the old guard with the jaded pragmatism of the young.Trade Review‘A beautiful and painful novel that demonstrates the power of fiction to pursue the unutterable.’ — Alejandro Zambra, author of Multiple Choice‘The Fallen is the story of a family; not a romanticized saga, but a tale of unconditional love and friendship. Through careful and subtle prose, the strain and suffering in every voice emerges loud and clear. Carlos Manuel Álvarez has painted a powerful, burning image of illness, isolation and harrowing rancour.’ — Laila Obeidat, the London Magazine‘Álvarez does a neat job in this very short but nutritious novel of establishing the personalities of his characters firmly enough that it comes as a real shock when he upends our expectations of how they might behave.’ — Jake Kerridge, the Telegraph‘A war foretold that never takes place. A death foretold that never takes place. And in the middle of this is the inevitable collapse of a family and a country. The Fallen is a subtle, intelligent and profoundly moving novel which sketches, in elegant and thoughtful prose, a rarely seen Cuban landscape.’ — Alia Trabucco Zerán, author of The Remainder‘In chapters which alternate between the perspectives of the four family members, Álvarez slowly and cleverly builds up a picture of a family unit on the brink of collapse.’ — Roger Cox, The Scotsman‘The best in Latin American literature is here: with the precocious skill of someone who is a paragon of narrative resources and sensitivity, Carlos Manuel Álvarez vividly portrays the only identity that really matters: not national, but human. The Fallen is a museum of solitude and of the cracks separating our inner world from the one we live in and from those with whom we coexist.’ — Emiliano Monge, author of Among the Lost
£8.54
Orion Publishing Co The City of Mist
Book SynopsisTHE LAST BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SHADOW OF THE WIND'Zafón is a master of the atmospheric' Financial TimesTrade ReviewAs well as allusions to the Forgotten Books novels themselves, there's everywhere evidence of the storytelling skill and intoxicating tropes - Faustian pacts, fateful meetings, labyrinthine architecture and nested stories - that made Zafon such a phenomenon. -- Stephanie Cross * DAILY MAIL *The Dickens of Barcelona... A flamboyant farewell from a grand contemporary writer. * Sydney Morning Herald *Ruiz Zafón's many fans are sure to find his collection of short stories both familiarly satisfying and poignant . . . Readers will once again luxuriate in his florid descriptions of his hometown of Barcelona that bring to life that magical and mysterious city . . . [they] will encounter new characters but also find familiar names, offering fresh perspectives on fictional lives we already know so well * Washington Post *A posthumous parting gift from Ruiz Zafón to his millions of fans . . . with much-loved places and characters making fleeting reappearances, it's a fitting coda to his life and world * Observer *Mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of Zafón's inimitable voice . . . the stories contained within this posthumous collection summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him * Book Riot *PRAISE FOR CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON AND THE CEMETERY OF FORGOTTEN BOOKS'The real deal: one gorgeous read' Stephen King'Will change your life. An instant classic' Daily Telegraph'A book lover's dream' The Times'Marvellous' Sunday Times'A hymn of praise to all the joys of reading' Independent'Gripping and instantly atmospheric' Mail on Sunday'Irresistibly readable' Guardian'Diabolically good' Elle
£9.49
Random House All Quiet on the Western Front
Book SynopsisThe most famous anti-war novel ever written.In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ''glorious war''. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ''unknown soldier'' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.''Remarque''s evocation of the horrors of modern warfare has lost none of its force'' The TimesTRANSLATED BY BRIAN MURDOCHThis series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.
£9.49
Scribe Publications Birth Canal
Book SynopsisA dazzling novella from a rising star of Indonesian literature that explores what it means to be a woman — whoever you are, wherever you are, and whenever it is in history and time. In today’s Jakarta, an unnamed man tells the story of his lifelong friend Nastiti, and what happened on the day she vanished. In the Dutch East Indies’ Semarang, a young Indo-Dutch girl, Rukmini, is captured by the Japanese military and is forced into prostitution. Years later, Arini travels to the Netherlands to share her mother’s dark past with a researcher. After the American occupation of Japan in WWII ends, a former war photographer revisits his memories of Hanako, the wife of a traumatised ex-Imperial soldier, but can’t escape his own darkness. And in present-day Osaka, a young Indonesian woman, Dara, haunted by her past and struggling to conceive, becomes obsessed with a Japanese porn star. Through these interconnected narratives, in stunning prose, Dias Novita Wuri explores generational legacies, lost loves, the damage that war does to men, and the damage that men do to women.Trade Review‘The ground beneath the reader is constantly shifting … Birth Canal jumps in time and moves between places of security and insecurity, hiding and transit, literal and metaphorical light and dark … In the end, this extraordinarily accomplished and profound novel, translated from Indonesian by the author, is about how difficult love can be, and how precious.’ -- Linda Jaivin * The Saturday Paper *‘Indonesian author Dias Novita Wuri is a rising literary star. Her novella Birth Canal writhes with talent compressed into a forceful and beguiling suite of interconnected stories … Wuri’s gift for metaphor is matched by a supple and sidewinding narrative construction that follows women across time and place.’ * The Sydney Morning Herald *‘Birth Canal was written with a dripping golden pen. Captivating and devastating, the stories of these women are told with truth and love.’ -- Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach and Little Plum‘[Dias Novita Wuri] confronts the reader with the realisation that often it’s too easy for us to simply look away. [Birth Canal] consists of expertly and beautifully crafted interconnected stories, its narrative jumping back and forward in time as echoes in a chamber where no trauma ever goes away entirely, but rather returns in another configuration … the spare dialogue allows stillness and solidarity to seep in through the violence.’ -- Angelique Kasmara * Listener *‘Impressive.’ * Tony's Reading List *‘[N]othing short of genius … For such a short work, it contains multitudes. Expertly translated by the author Birth Canal reveals the triumphs and tribulations of several generations of Indonesian women, each dealing with their own personal struggles with their lovers, humanity, and the course of world events.’ * Driftless Area Review *‘Crossing multiple timelines and cities in Indonesia and Japan to establish the links among its six female protagonists, this compact yet far-reaching novel endeavours to make visible both the female body and the structure of storytelling by using the idea of the birth canal as a site of conflicts and thwarted possibilities. Failed conception — stillbirth, miscarriage, filicide, abortion and suicide — thus represents both an acknowledgment of female trauma and a form of political protest. In exploring women’s sexuality, mental health, reproductive choice, and domestic violence, this gifted Indonesian author deftly explores topics that impact women in a Muslim-majority country.’ -- Thúy Ðinh, book critic and editor-at-large of Asymptote
£9.49
Daunt Books Sagittarius
Book Synopsis
£8.54
Scribe Publications Juja
Book SynopsisPublished for the first time in English, the sweeping debut novel set in bohemian Paris, by the author of international bestseller The Eighth Life. In 1953, a teenage girl, Jeanne Saré, jumps in front of a train at the Gare du Nord station. She leaves behind writings that to some are unreadable, but to others tell universal, unspoken truths about the lives and struggles of women. When published in the 1970s, her work triggers a rash of copycat suicides. It is hastily withdrawn from sale and eventually forgotten about. Then, in 2004, two women from opposite corners of the globe — Amsterdam and Sydney — rediscover Jeanne Saré’s book and set out to discover who the author was and what happened to her. Women across the ages have attached their own stories to Saré’s, often with devastating results, but the truth about her may be even stranger than the fictions they have invented.Trade Review‘Haratischvili's lyrical prose and mastery of tone shine … Her mosaic of broken souls and elusive mystery offer many rewards for patient readers, culminating in a provocative statement on art's capacity to both shatter and redeem.’ -- Chris Reed * NZ Booklovers *‘You can see in this novel the fledgling novelist testing the reader and I can see her magnificent book Eighth Life emerging from the embers of Juja.’ -- Rosalind Ephram * Burway Books *Praise for The Eighth Life: ‘Something rather extraordinary happened. The world fell away and I fell, wholly, happily, into the book ... My breath caught in my throat, tears nestled in my lashes ... devastatingly brilliant.’ -- Wendell Steavenson * The New York Times Book Review *Praise for The Eighth Life: ‘The Eighth Life … is a lavish banquet of family stories that can, for all their sorrows, be devoured with gluttonous delight. Nino Haratischvili’s characters … come to exuberant life. Her huge novel … shows a double face, its crushing pain and loss nonetheless conveyed with an artful storyteller’s sheer joy in her craft.’ -- Boyd Tonkin * The Financial Times *Praise for The Eighth Life: ‘A harrowing, heartening, and utterly engrossing epic novel … astonishing … A subtle and compelling translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin should make this as great a literary phenomenon in English as it has been in German.’ -- Maya Jaggi * The Guardian *Praise for My Soul Twin: ‘A passionate novel.’ -- Matthew Janney * The Guardian *Praise for My Soul Twin: ‘The novel’s sexual voltage buoys you through its twists and turns.’ -- Anthony Cummins * The Observer *
£9.49
Random House The Wolves of Eternity
Book SynopsisThe future is no more, and eternity has begun. It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a cache of letters that lead to the Soviet Union. In present-day Russia, Alevtina is trying to balance work and family. She has always sought the answers to life's big questions, but is preoccupied with care of her young son. Her friend Vasilisa offers some nourishment: she is writing a book about an ancient feature of Russian culture, the belief in eternal life. Meantime, Alevtina is heading towards a meeting that will redraw the contours of her world. A searching and humane novel, The Wolves of Eternity is an intimate journey into the experiences of a half-brother and half-sister in their two
£10.44
Pushkin Press The Devil's Flute Murders
Book SynopsisAn ingenious and highly atmospheric classic whodunit from Japan's master of crime. Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning. The old viscount Tsubaki, a brooding, troubled composer, has been found dead. When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed patriarch, death visits the house once more, and the brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate. But before he can get to the truth Kindaichi must uncover the Tsubakis' most disturbing secrets, while the gruesome murders continue... PRAISE FOR SEISHI YOKOMIZO 'The diabolically twisted plotted is top-notch' New York Times Readers will delight in the blind turns, red herrings and dubious alibis... Ingenious and compelling' Economist 'Plenty of golden age ingredients... with a truly ingenious solution' Guardian, Best New Crime NovelsTrade Review“Yokomizo at his absolute best... From the ominous opening through the brilliant final reveal, [he] ably blends suspense and fair-play detection... A classic of the genre.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review“Another fiendishly complex mystery from the master of locked room murders... Atmospheric, chilling, and structurally complex.” --CrimeReads
£9.49
Pan Macmillan Before Your Memory Fades
Book SynopsisToshikazu Kawaguchi was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He formerly produced, directed and wrote for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. As a playwright, his works include COUPLE, Sunset Song and Family Time. The novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold is adapted from a 1110 Productions play by Kawaguchi, which won the 10th Suginami Drama Festival grand prize. It was followed by Tales from the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye and Before We Forget Kindness.Trade ReviewThe third novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Having read the first two, we can attest it will be just the thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon. * Sheerluxe *
£10.44
Faber & Faber No One Prayed Over Their Graves
Book SynopsisA sweeping tale of life and death, set in the Syrian capital at the turn of the twentieth century from the International prize winning author of Death is Hard Work and In Praise of Hatred.A soulful and perfectly unsentimental writer. Hisham MatarDecember, 1907: one morning after a night of drunken carousing in the city, Hanna and his friend Zakariya return home to their village near Aleppoonly to discover a scene of tragedy. A devastating flood has levelled their homes, shops and places of worship, and their neighbours, families and children are nearly all dead. Their lives will never be the same.Tracing Hanna's life before and after the floodwhen he embarks on a search for the meaning of lifeNo One Prayed Over Their Graves is a portrait of a wider society on the verge of great change; from the provincial village to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work
£13.49
Orion Publishing Co The Physics of Sorrow
Book Synopsis''Compulsively readable'' New York Times''Utterly original'' Alberto ManguelIn the small and the insignificant - that''s where life hides, that''s where it builds its nest.Our unnamed narrator is not well. He suffers from attacks of ''pathological empathy'', which cause him to wander unbidden into other people''s memories. He moves from recollection to recollection - from a Bulgarian country fair in 1925, where he meets a Minotaur, to inside the mind of a slug, as it is swallowed by his own Grandfather.Part family history, part coming-of-age story, part meditation on life in Communist Europe, The Physics of Sorrow is a dazzlingly inventive, mind-expanding novel from one of Europe''s most important writers.TRANSLATED FROM THE BULGARIAN BY ANGELA RODEL
£9.49
Orenda Books Night Shadows: The twisty, chilling new Forbidden
Book SynopsisIcelandic detective Elma faces mortal danger as she investigates the death of a young man in a mysterious Akranes house fire, and a Dutch au pair’s perfect placement turns deadly … The breathtaking third instalment in the award-winning Forbidden Iceland series. ***WINNER of the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger*** ‘Her best, boldest work to date: a mystery both merciless and compassionate, subtly eerie yet flat-out frightening, featuring a detective as complicated as Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole. This is virtuoso suspense writing’ A J Finn ‘Chilling and addictive, with a completely unexpected twist … I loved it’ Shari Lapena ‘Another beautifully written novel from one of the rising stars of Nordic Noir’ Victoria Selman _________________________ The small community of Akranes is devastated when a young man dies in a mysterious house fire, and when Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case involving multiple suspects. What’s more, the dead man’s final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two. A few months before the fire, a young Dutch woman takes a job as an au pair in Iceland, desperate to make a new life for herself after the death of her father. But the seemingly perfect family who employs her turns out to have problems of its own and she soon discovers she is running out of people to turn to. As the police begin to home in on the truth, Elma, already struggling to come to terms with a life-changing event, finds herself in mortal danger as it becomes clear that someone has secrets they’ll do anything to hide… ____________________________ ‘A creepily compelling Icelandic mystery that had me hooked from page one. Night Shadows will make you want to sleep with the lights on’ Heidi Amsinck ‘I loved everything about this book: the characters, the setting, the storyline, an intricately woven cast … this book had me utterly gripped!’ J M Hewitt ‘With the third release in the Forbidden Iceland series, Eva Björg establishes herself as not just one of the brightest names in Icelandic crime fiction, but in crime fiction full stop. Night Shadows is an absolute must-read!’ Nordic Watchlist ‘The author writes so beautifully you are immediately immersed in the chilly surrounds … a genuinely excellent novel’ Liz Loves Books ‘One of the most compelling contemporary writers of crime fiction and psychological suspense’ Duncan Beattie,Fiction from Afar Praise for the Forbidden Iceland series: ‘Fans of Nordic Noir will love this’ Ann Cleeves ‘Elma is a fantastic heroine’ Sunday Times ‘Complex, gripping and moving’ The Times ‘An exciting and harrowing tale’ Ragnar Jónasson ‘Eerie and chilling. I loved every word!’ Lesley Kara ‘Not only a full-fat mystery, but also a chilling demonstration of how monsters are made’ The Times ‘Beautifully written, spine-tingling and disturbing … a thrilling new voice in Icelandic crime fiction’ Yrsa Sigurðardóttir ‘As chilling and atmospheric as an Icelandic winter’ Lisa Gray ‘An unsettling and exciting read with a couple of neat red herrings to throw the reader off the scent’ NB Magazine ‘Chilling and troubling … reminiscent of Jorn Lier Horst‘s Norwegian procedurals. This is a book that makes an impact’ Crime Fiction Lover ‘Elma is a memorably complex character’ Financial Times ‘The twist comes out of the blue … enthralling’ Tap The Line Magazine For fans of Ragnar Jonasson, Camilla Lackberg, Ruth Rendell, Gillian McAllister and Shari Lapen
£9.49
Pan Macmillan Last Summer in the City
Book SynopsisA cult classic of Italian literature, published in English for the first time, with an afterword by André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name.'A masterpiece' - Le Figaro'Dazzling in every detail' - ElleIn the late 1960s, Leo Gazzara leads a precarious life in Rome. He spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between hotels, bars, uninspiring jobs, romantic entanglements and the homes of his rich friends. Leo drifts, aimless and alone.But on the evening of his thirtieth birthday, he meets Arianna. All night they drive the city in Leo’s run-down Alfa Romeo, talking and talking. They eat brioche for breakfast, drink through the dawn, drive to the sea and back. A whirlwind beginning. What follows is the story of the year Leo fell in love and lost everything.Intense, romantic, witty and devastating, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature which offers an intoxicating portrait of two lonely people, pushing and pulling each other away and back again.'The most beautiful love story of the year' - Il GiornaleTrade ReviewThe true quality of this novel is the way it enlightens, with a desperate clearness, a relationship between a man and a city, that is, between crowd and loneliness -- Natalia GinzburgThe most beautiful love story of the year * Il Giornale *A masterpiece * Le Figaro *Dazzling in every detail * Elle *[A] sublime text, of extraordinary languid beauty and sadness * Sud Ouest *Calligarich’s time capsule of love and existential drift in a lost Rome, translated into sparkling prose by Curtis, is ripe for a rediscovery * New York Times Book Review *A sad, seductive declaration of love for Rome * Il Messaggero *A short, gorgeous, moving and magnificent story of love and solitude -- Il Sole 24 OreThis book, at once painful and ironic, remains a small gem * La Repubblica *A heartrending marvel * L’Echo *Charming, decadent, and emotionally ruthless . . . equal parts Fitzgerald and Antonioni . . . It's wonderful to have this devastating gem at large in the world again -- Andrew Martin, author of Cool for AmericaDeeply haunting . . . A marvel of a novel * Booklist *Calligarich’s rendering turns la dolce vita into something more akin to Camus’s L’Etranger in a contemporary-ish urban setting. Out of print for years, this welcome new translation is elegiac and heart-rending * Vogue, Best Books to Read This Summer 2021 *The account of a lost generation in Rome in the early 1970s (possibly the children of the children of Hemingway’s lost generation) carries the weight of both family history and generational saga * Kirkus *Evocative . . . Calligarich conjures Italy’s piazzas, parties, beaches, and bars with a mood reminiscent of A Movable Feast . . . the feeling that Leo is alone in the world is poignantly conveyed * Publishers Weekly *
£9.49
Quercus Publishing Look Who's Back
Book SynopsisTHE SMASH-HIT HITLER SATIRE - MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD"A brilliant book" RUSSELL KANE "Brilliant and hilarious" KEN FOLLETT A box-office-hit film now available on NETFLIXA two-part BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation directed by and starring David Threlfall (Shameless)Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. Things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognises his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognise him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own T.V. show, and people begin to listen. But the Führer has another programme with even greater ambition - to set the country he finds a shambles back to rights. Look Who's Back stunned and then thrilled 1.5 million German readers with its fearless approach to the most taboo of subjects. Naive yet insightful, repellent yet strangely sympathetic, the revived Hitler unquestionably has a spring in his step.Translated from German by Jamie BullochTrade ReviewBe warned. This book is funny. Very funny -- Rebecca K Morrison * Independent *Worryingly believable (time travelling despots aside) and unsettling. But also very funny -- Nathan FilerA brilliant book -- Russell KaneBrilliant and hilarious -- Ken FollettIncredible . . . Very funny -- Alastair CampbellLaugh-out-loud funny . . . An uproarious, disturbing book that will resonate long after you turn the final page * Daily Express *Both funny and frightening . . . A powerful and important book * Independent on Sunday *Peculiar, provocative and very funny . . . It makes you laugh and forces you to think * Irish Independent *Wonderfully inventive, very funny and superbly written * We Love This Book *The Hitler of Look Who's Back has aged not a whit: his fascist views are intact, and he is as foul-tempered and misanthropic as ever * Sunday Times *There's no question that the novel has hit upon the key paradox of our modern obsession with Hitler * Observer *The jokes are very funny . . . rollicking, enjoyable * Financial Times *A satire on the cult of personality . . . nicely played * Monocle *This uproariously funny satire will have you in stitches * Shortlist *'An uproarious, disturbing book that will resonate long after you turn the final page' Caroline Jowett, Daily Express. * Daily Express *'Be warned. This book is funny. Very funny' Rebecca Morrison, Independent. * Rebecca Morrison, Independent *'Both funny and frightening, this is a subtle, historical study of the commanding nature of the fanatical demagogue, as well as a savage critique of contemporary western culture. It is a powerful and important book' Sue Gaisford, Independent. * Independent *
£9.49
Fitzcarraldo Editions Septology — WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN
Book SynopsisWhat makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. Jon Fosse’s Septology is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.Trade Review‘Jon Fosse is a major European writer.’ — Karl Ove Knausgaard‘Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths. The social world seems distant and foggy in this profound, existential narrative.’ — Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears‘I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.’ — Ruth Margalit, New York Review of Books‘Septology feels momentous.’ — Catherine Taylor, Guardian‘Having read the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse’s Septology, an extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself, I’ve come into awe and reverence myself for idiosyncratic forms of immense metaphysical fortitude.’ — Randy Boyagoda, New York Times‘Time soon loses its meaning, or at least some of its hold over us. Picking up Septology after a while is like slipping back into a gently flowing river, your body buoyed by the current of ‘and’s, ‘yes’s and ‘I think’s. Memories, everyday observations, prayer, spectres of lives not lived – these all bleed into one seamless whole…The effect is subtle and cumulative. Any attempt to isolate and analyse it collapses its magic, like a kind of literary quantum phenomenon.’ — Frazer McDiarmid, Oxford Review of Books‘The narrative keeps circling, inching slowly, as interior monologues sometimes do, and the way a painting might gradually appear from a cumulation of small brushstrokes.The effect is meditative, devotional, like the rhythm of the Christian liturgy…The reader may sometimes feel weary with the amount of words here too. But there is generosity. And persistence, like in the rituals of worship and devotion, is rewarded.’ — Nick Mattiske, Insights
£15.29
Vintage Publishing Midnight Sun: Discover the novel that inspired
Book Synopsis**NOW A MAJOR FILM AS THE HANGING SUN**'A perfectly formed thriller that pierces the heart with its icy brilliance' Sunday MirrorWhen you betray the Fisherman...Jon is on the run. He has crossed Oslo's biggest crime lord. Fleeing to an isolated corner of Norway, to a mountain town so far north that the sun never sets, Jon hopes to find sanctuary among a local religious sect.You can run.Hiding out in a shepherd's cabin in the wilderness, all that stands between him and his fate are Lea, a bereaved mother and her young son, Knut. But while Lea provides him with a rifle and Knut brings essential supplies, the midnight sun is slowly driving Jon to insanity. And then he discovers that the Fisherman's men are getting closer...But you can't hide.'Brilliant... A short, lyrical tale where every word counts' Daily Express*JO NESBO HAS SOLD OVER 50 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE*Watch out for The Jealousy Man, the new Jo Nesbo book, out nowTrade ReviewA perfectly-formed thriller, written in pure, unadorned prose, that pierces the heart with its icy brilliance -- Deirdre O'Brien * Sunday Mirror *A thrilling tale -- Cole Moreton * Mail on Sunday *Another success for Nesbo -- Geoffrey Wansell * Daily Mail *A short, lyrical tale where every word counts and the slow paces helps to build the tension[…] another brilliant thriller from the master storyteller -- Jon Coates * Daily Express *Short, brisk, emotionally compelling and stylishly written * Belfast Telegraph Morning *
£8.95
Vintage Publishing The Man Who Planted Trees: A novel from the
Book Synopsis'And so, with great care, he planted his hundred acorns'While hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a solitary shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness.Ten years later, after surviving the First World War, he visits the shepherd again. A young forest is slowly spreading over the valley - Elzéard has continued his work. Year after year the narrator returns to see the miracle being created: a verdant, green landscape that is testament to one man's creative instinct. miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man's creative instinct.'I love the humanity of this story and how one man's efforts can change the future for so many' Michael Morpurgo, IndependentVINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.Trade Review • "One of the greatest writers of our generation." --Andre Mairaux • "Giono: he's a god. I rank him with Chateaubriand and Proust." --Jean d'Ormesson • "In Giono's work what every sensitive, full-blooded individual ought to be able to recognise at once is 'the song of the world." --Henry Miller
£7.59
Alma Books Ltd Virgin Soil: New Translation
Book SynopsisTurgenev’s final novel, Virgin Soil traces the destinies of several middle-class revolutionaries who seek to “go to the people” by working on the land and instilling democratic ideas in the countryside’s locals. They include the daydreaming impoverished young tutor Nezhdanov – employed by the liberal councillor Sipyagin and his vain and beautiful wife Valentina – the naive young radical Maryanna and the progressive factory manager Solomin. Their liaisons, intrigues and conspiracies, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, form the matter of Turgenev’s most ambitious and elaborate work, which cemented the author’s place in the West as Russia’s foremost novelist while at the same time proving controversial at home – culminating in the arrest of fifty-two real-life revolutionaries barely a month after it was published.Trade ReviewTurgenev to me is the greatest writer there ever was. -- Ernest Hemingway
£8.54
Alma Books Ltd In the Twilight: Newly Translated and Annotated
Book SynopsisIn the Twilight, the third collection of short stories compiled by Anton Chekhov himself, was his first major success and won him the prestigious Pushkin Prize when it was published in 1888. This volume represents a clear milestone in the writer’s passage from the youthful Antosha Chekhonte, author of slight comic sketches, to the mature master of the short-story genre. This edition presents the sixteen tales of the original collection – ranging from well-known and acknowledged gems such as ‘Agafya’ and ‘On the Road’ to others which will be fresh even to many seasoned readers of Chekhov – in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin, providing an invaluable glimpse into a pivotal moment in the writer’s literary career.Trade ReviewWhat writers influenced me as a young man? Chekhov! As a dramatist? Chekhov! As a story writer? Chekhov! -- Tennessee WilliamsTable of ContentsContains: In the Twilight, Dreams, A Trivial Occurrence, A Bad Business, At Home, The Witch, Verochka, In Court, A Restless Guest, The Requiem, On the Road, Misfortune, An Event, Agafya, Enemies, A Nightmare, On Easter Eve
£7.59
Vintage Publishing Fish Can Sing
Book Synopsis*BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE*'Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice' Nicholas ShakespeareAbandoned as a baby, Alfgrimur is content to spend his days as a fisherman living in the turf cottage outside Reykjavik with the elderly couple he calls grandmother and grandfather. There he shares the mid-loft with a motley bunch of eccentrics and philosophers who find refuge in the simple respect for their fellow men that is the ethos at the Brekkukot. But the narrow horizons of Alfgrimur's idyllic childhood are challenged when he starts school and meets Iceland's most famous singer, the mysterious Garoar Holm. Garoar encourages him to aim for the 'one true note', but how can he attain it without leaving behind the world that he loves?'It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life' Murray BailTrade ReviewLaxness is a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: he takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humour: it is not possible to be unimpressed * Daily Telegraph *This weird and wonderful novel, about the price you pay for 'the one true note', is Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice * Nicholas Shakespeare *It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life, its strangeness, its goodness, ocassions for stubbornness, and the stoicism of people - people everywhere * Murray Bail *Laxness's view of a child's bounded universe has humour and a light touch * Guardian *
£9.49
Fitzcarraldo Editions Hurricane Season
Book SynopsisThe Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of La Matosa is rife with rumours about how and why this murder occurred. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, Fernanda Melchor paints a moving portrait of lives governed by poverty and violence, machismo and misogyny, superstition and prejudice. Written with an infernal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling, Hurricane Season, Melchor's first novel to appear in English, is a formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, brilliantly translated by Sophie Hughes.Trade Review'Brutal, relentless, beautiful, fugal, Hurricane Season explores the violent mythologies of one Mexican village and reveals how they touch the global circuitry of capitalist greed. This is an inquiry into the sexual terrorism and terror of broken men. This is a work of both mystery and critique. Most recent fiction seems anaemic by comparison.' — Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School‘Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage, and has the skill to pull it off.’ — Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream‘This is the Mexico of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, where the extremes of evil create a pummeling, hyper-realistic effect. But the “elemental cry” of Ms. Melchor’s writing voice, a composite of anger and anguish, is entirely her own.’ — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal‘A brutal portrait of small-town claustrophobia, in which machismo is a prison and corruption isn’t just institutional but domestic, with families broken by incest and violence. Melchor’s long, snaking sentences make the book almost literally unputdownable, shifting our grasp of key events by continually creeping up on them from new angles. A formidable debut.’ — Anthony Cummins, Observer‘Hurricane Season is a Gulf Coast noir from four characters’ perspectives, each circling a murder more closely than the last. Melchor has an exceptional gift for ventriloquism, as does her translator, Sophie Hughes, who skillfully meets the challenge posed by a novel so rich in idiosyncratic voices. Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.’ — Julian Lucas, The New York Times‘Stomach-churning, molar-grinding, nightmare-inducing, and extraordinarily clear-eyed account of the ordinary horrors men inflict upon women. Melchor refuses to look away, refuses to indulge in fantasy or levity—even in the moments when the novel is laugh-out-loud funny. And lest the far-off reader think the horror is contained to the lives of others, Melchor repeatedly threads the reminders of the long reach of these crimes—and their causes—throughout the narrative.’ — Lucas Iberico Lozada, The Nation‘I found it impossible to look away. Hurricane Season unfurls with the pressure and propulsion of an unforeseen natural disaster, the full force of Melchor’s arresting voice captured in Sophie Hughes’ masterful translation.’ — Lucy Scholes, Financial Times‘A sprawling, heaving thing, and I loved it because I have no idea how Fernanda Melchor was able to write it. The prose has the quality of a storm.’ — Avni Doshi, Guardian Best Books of 2020‘Hurricane Season is, first and foremost, a horror story—its horror coming from rather than contrasting with the lyricism of Melchor’s prose [...] Melchor’s kaleidoscope keeps circling around the untold source of the horrors, and we are increasingly keen to unveil it. This is an effect of the structure of the novel as much as of its writing. Sophie Hughes’s translation renders the expansive, punishing spirit of Mexican slang so impressively that one wonders whether the harsher sounds of English in fact suit the novel better.’ — Emmanuel Ordóñez Angulo, New York Review of Books
£12.34
Bitter Lemon Press Thursday Night Widows
Book SynopsisThree bodies lie at the bottom of a swimming pool in a gated country estate near Buenos Aires. It's Thursday night at the magnificent Scaglia house. Behind the locked gates, shielded from the crime, poverty and filth of the people on the streets, the Scaglias and their friends hide lives of infidelity, alcoholism, and abusive marriage. Claudia Pineiro's novel eerily foreshadowed a criminal case that generated a scandal in the Argentine media. But this is more than a story about crime. The suspense is a by-product of Pineiro's hand at crafting a psychological portrait of a professional class that lives beyond its means and leads secret lives of deadly stress and despair. It takes place during the post 9/11 economic melt-down in Argentina but it's a universal story that will resonate among credit-crunched readers of today.Trade Review"An agile novel written in a language perfectly pitched for the subject matter, a ruthless dissection of a fast decaying societyA"-Jose Saramago A razor-sharp psychological and social portrait not only of Argentina, but of the affluent Western world as a whole.A"-Rosa Montero
£12.05
