Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisWhen Yuko Moriguchi''s four-year-old daughter died in the middle school where she teaches, everyone thought it was a tragic accident. It''s the last day of term, and Yuko''s last day at work. She tells her students that she has resigned because of what happened - but not for the reasons they think. Her daughter didn''t die in an accident. Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach...But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko''s last lecture is only the start of the story. In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.Trade ReviewExplosive... A dark thriller about love, despair and murder * Irish Tatler *Think of CONFESSIONS as the Gone Girl of Japan....[A] gut-wrenching thrill ride...its thrust should hit home for any reader with a pulse. It's a nauseating tale of morality and justice, with violent turns that will drop your jaw right to the floor * Los Angeles Times *Has the captivating quality of a gruesome car crash: As the murders grow bloodier and bloodier, the characters more and more twisted, we find ourselves fascinated and repulsed, unable to look away * New Republic *A reader is almost certain to be caught off guard more than once by the revelations of this award-winning best seller....Implacable, relentless * Wall Street Journal *Minato's intricate plotting and unnervingly understated sentences make the horrors follow each other as logically as pearls on a string * NPR *A spellbinding read, a fascinating peek into modern Japanese society, and a glimpse into the dark corners of the human psyche * Booklist *A creepy and mesmerizing psychological thriller that challenges the conventions of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, and law vs. justice. There are no happy endings here, but Minato has pieced together an intriguing puzzle that will keep readers glued to their seats * Library Journal *A nasty little masterpiece...That rare creature in fiction: an ambitious investigation into the darkest corners of human nature that - unlike certain relatively sluggish models by Dostoevsky and Camus that Minato references here - is also a crackling good yarn * Chicago Tribune *A dark, dystopic portrait of Japanese adolescence gone wrong. If Albert Camus had written Heathers, it would have looked a lot like this. * Alex Marwood, author of THE WICKED GIRLS *

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Book SynopsisFROM THE No.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR'Chilling, spectacular stuff' Mark Billingham_____________________________________A young boy wakes to find his mother missing. Outside, he sees her favourite scarf - wrapped around the neck of a snowman.Detective Harry Hole soon discovers that an alarming number of wives and mothers have gone missing over the years.When a second woman disappears, Harry's worst suspicion is confirmed: a serial killer is operating on his home turf.SOON THE FIRST SNOW WILL COMEAND THEN HE WILL APPEAR AGAINAND WHEN THE SNOW HAS GONEHE WILL HAVE TAKEN SOMEONE ELSE. . .___________________________________*JO NESBO HAS SOLD OVER 55 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**Watch out for KILLING MOON, the new Jo Nesbo book, out now*Trade ReviewThe Snowman is a superb thriller. Jo Nesbo is astonishingly good; he knows how to grab you, by the throat and by the heartChillingly adept...creepy, creepy stuff from the very first page * Time Out *Nesbo handles the tension with aplomb * Metro *Nesbo's plotting and pared-back prose style effectively keeps the reader hooked as he ramps up the action to a gripping climax * Big Issue *Hole is all a fictional detective should be...each scene is succinct, dovetails with another, shifts the reader's perspective, and keeps the pace fast and interesting...he ensures his readers keep turning the page to read more * Times Literary Supplement *Norwegian crime novel that's as gripping as The Silence of the Lambs * The Sunday Times *The quality of the writing (and its translation) is so impressive * Literary Review *Nesbo is shaping up to be the next big name in Scandinavian crime fiction... With its tensile-steel narrative grip, this most ambitious of Nesbo's crime novels banishes any fears that the omniscient serial killer scenario has been exhausted * Independent *With Henning Mankell having written his last Wallander novel and Stieg Larsson no longer with us, I have had to make the decision, to my own satisfaction, on whom to confer the title of best current Nordic writer of crime fiction. After finishing Jo Nesbo's The Snowman, I hesitate no longer. The Norwegian wins... This is crime writing of the highest order, in which the characters are as strong as the story, where an atmosphere of evil permeates, and the tension never lets up * The Times *There is no doubt in my mind that The Snowman is the best so far of Jo Nesbø's series about Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo police... The Snowman is a complex, intellectually satisfying plot with many twists and turns... Do yourself a favour and read it * Eurocrime *An ingenious, bizarre and exceptional serial-killer investigation...as riveting as The Silence of the Lambs * Sunday Times Summer Reading *Readers wondering where to turn after finishing Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy would be well advised to give Jo Nesbo a try. His Oslo-set thrillers about troubled detective Harry Hole feature a similar mix of icebound settings, relentless action, sexual violence and social comment * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisIt is the fifteenth century and war looms. The people of Albania have refused to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire and they know their fate is sealed. As they take refuge in a fortress in the mountains, the army arrives and prepares to lay siege to the Christian citadel.Trade ReviewThe Siege is a compelling tale of the savagery and uncertainty of war, and a brilliant historical novel by one of the world's greatest living writers -- Simon Sebag MontefioreGreat books, books that last, are shape-shifting books. The Siege is about what it is about - a siege in the fifteenth century. It is also a universal evocation of human violence * * Sunday Times * *A rallying cry to people besieged by the forces of tyranny -- Alice Fordham * * The Times * *The Siege is more relevant and powerful than ever . . . Kadare's early novel is stunning. The full panoply of the Ottoman's multi-ethnic empire is vividly rendered -- Heather McRobie * * Daily Telgraph * *His fiction offers invaluable insights into life under tyranny - his historical allegories point both to the grand themes and small details that make up life in a restrictive environment. He is a great writer, by any nation's standards -- Ben Naparstek * * Financial Times * *A tale steeped in blood, a snapshot of a centuries-long conflict, but at the same time Kadare's realism and lively sense of irony give it a modern twist -- Adam Lively * * Sunday Times * *The urgent gestures towards something that's not quite said somehow make the story linger in the mind long after the regime in which The Siege was written went the way of the empire it dreams back to life -- Christopher Taylor * * Guardian * *It is Kadare's great achievement to create individuals who are at the same time archetypes . . . Powerfully atmospheric . . . Fascinating -- Jane Jakeman * * Times Literary Supplement * *A story that is both stirring at a human level and steeped in historical symbolism . . . A vast and varied cast is expertly marshalled by a writer who is increasingly enjoying a worldwide reputation -- Sally Cousins * * Sunday Telegraph * *Ismail Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness * * Los Angeles Times * *

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Book Synopsis“Rasma hated her dreams; they made her sick — she rested best when she fell into complete silence and darkness."Rasma is a taxi driver with a mysterious past, a mysterious present, an uncertain future, and a complex relationship with a 'double'. We follow her through a series of encounters personal and professional - some troubling, some comic, some profound - as she struggles with her sense of identity and belonging while trying to make ends meet.

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Book SynopsisPermafrost's no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life. Desperate to get out of Barcelona, she goes to Brussels, 'because a city whose symbol is a little boy pissing was a city I knew I would like'; as an au pair in Scotland, she develops a hatred of the colour green. And everywhere she goes, she tries to break out of the roles set for her by family and society, chasing escape wherever it can be found: love affairs, travel, thoughts of suicide. Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women's freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.Trade Review'Permafrost is a discomfiting book about a sensual intoxication with life that just barely contains the desire for it to be over and done with forever. Like a perfect song, Eva Baltasar's words, as translated by Julia Sanches, have a sheen and inevitability that I won't soon forget. It held me in a trance.' Catherine Lacey; 'Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so surprising, so intensely liberating and funny, and at the same time, so full of grief? That is its genius.' Amina Cain; 'Forthright, fearless and funny, with a no-messing narrator, this is a maximal reading experience.' Wendy Erskine; 'An explosively witty, intense novel about freedom, desire and the body - Baltasar's voice is as bracing and sharp as cold mountain air, and her queer exploration of being and intimacy is intoxicating. Raw, fresh and uncompromising new writing.' Rebecca Tamas; 'Calling to mind the work of Herve Guibert and Olivia Laing, Permafrost is an iron fist swathed in velvet, a book at once inviting and intimidating, lush and severe, enormously witty, thoroughly intelligent, and devastatingly emotional. It is a text that trusts the wisdom of the body, finding pleasure everywhere-even in suicide, death, and disaster; this is the most weirdly uplifting book I have read in years, perhaps because it holds at its core such affection for all the nuances of being. Seamless, delicious, and nothing short of genius, Baltasar's fiction debut gives us "the whole crush of humanity[...] concentrated in a place that is absolutely personal."' Maryse Meijer; 'A novel about the beauty of love, sex and suicide, it strikes the perfect balance between passion, a dark sense of humour and tenderness.' Katharina Volckmer; 'Permafrost crackles and sparks with observations about living, family, and desire that are wry, searing, funny, and full of love for the love of women. A potent shot to be swallowed whole.' Saskia Vogel; 'Released from my annual dose of Bernhard, I usually feel a need for more and I usually do not have anything dark enough to hand. But this time I did - Permafrost by Eva Baltasar.' Imma Monso; 'A magma of sensations, doubts and aspirations. A trove of treasures. The piquancy of this novel, a surprise word-of-mouth hit in Spain, comes from the gap between the fantasies projected onto the narrator by the women around her--who see in her a free and contented woman--and the suffocating feeling constricting her. ' Le Monde; 'Eva Baltasar debuts as a novelist with a high voltage book about the self, the body, sex and the family. One of the books of the year.' La Vanguardia; 'The discovery of the year' Time Out ; 'Breathtaking, intense, poetic.' ABC; 'A cold but fiery lucidity, admirable, in its approach to detail.' El Mundo/El Cultural; 'Baltasar handles feelings as radioactive material, that is, as something that kills and illuminates us.' Babelia/El Pais; 'Baltasar describes how you didn't think it could be done. It surpasses everything. One of the best books of the year' La Vanguardia; 'Without doubt, one of the most memorable protagonists of contemporary Catalan narrative.' El Periodico; 'Baltasar is very skilled. A Catalan Dorothy Parker. Ironic, implacable.' La Repubblica; 'An investigation of the body as an instrument for measuring pain and desire. A besieged, solemn and majestically painful body, which ideally embraces all of humanity.' La Stampa; 'A new voice. Courageous and audacious. Baltasar's style is astonishing.' El Pais; 'Baltasar's is a strong debut.' Clarin; 'Intimate, beautiful, ironic and surprising.' Nuvol.com; 'An electrifying writing and a personal, raw and lucid gaze. It convinces.' Eva Piquer, Ara Llegim; 'Read until you come or read until you cry. That's what happens when you encounter the frozen casing of Permafrost. Ice, not because it is cold, but because it cracks.' Luna Miguel, Playground; 'Eva Baltasar performs an exercise in honesty with this protagonist, who does not beat about the bush and talks - talks to us - without half measures, without filters, without conventions. Perhaps that honesty has been responsible for the success of the novel, which has recently won the Premi Llibreter. This is the power of a voice without scorn, without regrets, that narrates its own introspection.' Jenn Diaz, El Periodico; 'Permafrost by Eva Baltasar is one of the revelatory books of this season . . . I had never read a book in Catalan about sex, seen from the perspective of a woman, such as Permafrost.' Julia Guillamon, Culturas; 'I came to Permafrost because it was recommended by everyone. And now I have devoured it, I also recommend it to you.' Jordi Benavente, La lanza; 'We talk about literature in capitals . . . This is a story that, in the search for reasons to end a life, allows us to find those reasons for which it is worth continuing to live, day by day, even if it is to be able to continue fantasizing about death, or even about life.' Marc Reig, A book a day

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Book SynopsisTHE FOURTH INSTALMENT IN THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING DARK ICELAND SERIES OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE When the body of a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted Icelandic village of Kalfshamarvik, Ari Thor Arason uncovers a startling and terrifying connection to an earlier series of deaths, as the killer remains on the loose... 'Jonasson's books have breathed new life into Nordic noir' Sunday Express 'Jonasson skillfully alternates points of view and shifts of time ... The action builds to a shattering climax' Publishers Weekly Two days before Christmas, a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted village of Kalfshamarvik. Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop? With winter closing in and the snow falling relentlessly, Ari Thor Arason discovers that the victim's mother and young sister also lost their lives in this same spot, twenty-five years earlier. As the dark history and its secrets of the village are unveiled, and the death toll begins to rise, the Siglufjordur detectives must race against the clock to find the killer, before another tragedy takes place. Dark, chilling and complex, Whiteout is a haunting, atmospheric and stunningly plotted thriller from one of Iceland's bestselling crime writers. 'Traditional and beautifully finessed ...morally more equivocal than most traditional whodunnits, and it offers alluring glimpses of darker, and infinitely more threatening horizons' Andrew Taylor, Independent 'Jonasson has come up with a bleak plot and characters, but his evocation of Iceland's chilly landscape is hard to put down' The Sunday Times Crime ClubTrade Review`Traditional and beautifully finessed... morally more equivocal than most traditional whodunnits, and it offers alluring glimpses of darker, and infinitely more threatening horizons' Independent; `Jonasson's books have breathed new life into Nordic noir' Sunday Express; `Bitingly contemporary in setting and tone' Express * `A modern take on an Agatha Christie-style mystery, as twisty as any slalom...' Ian Rankin; `A classic crime story seen through a uniquely Icelandic lens ... first rate and highly recommended' Lee Child; `Chilling, poetic beauty... a must read!' Peter James; `British aficionados of Nordic Noir are familiar with two excellent Icelandic writers, Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Here's a third: Ragnar Jonasson ... the darkness and cold are palpable' Marcel Berlins, The Times

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Book SynopsisTwenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country's dead. Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, and their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task.Trade ReviewHe has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil * Independent on Sunday *A novelist of dazzling mastery -- Paul Binding * Independent *Astonishing...his finest work -- Azar Nafisi, Man Booker judge and author of 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' * Guardian *With its metonymic realism and fidelity to its characters, The General of the Dead Army reminds us why his work is so valued * New Statesman *Literary gold dust - haunting, bleakly comedic and ultimately horrific * The Times *

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Book SynopsisJo Nesbo is one of the world's bestselling crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son, The Thirst, Macbeth and Knife all topping the Sunday Times bestseller charts. He's an international number one bestseller and his books are published in 50 languages, selling over 50 million copies around the world. Before becoming a crime writer, Nesbo played football for Norway's premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di Derre ('Them There'). They topped the charts in Norway, but Nesbo continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel,Trade ReviewFilled with the right mix of disturbed villains, corruption and deranged scenarios to make it completely terrifying. Exactly what you want from a Nesbo novel * RTE Guide *Nesbo is a clever writer and plotter. Over the years he has built a brilliant cast of supporting characters to orbit Hole and now it is their time to shine… Yet again, Nesbo has succeeded in producing a multi-layered and intertwining story that makes your head spin, while delivering a masterclass in suspenseful writing * Sunday Express *Policeman Harry Hole is flawed, but all the more perfect because of it… Nesbo keeps everything hanging in the balance, just the way his fans like it * UK Regional Press Syndication *Police is a story replete with gory events, dark musings and a little social commentary * Sunday Business Post *Boasts the customary ability to render attempts at work and sleep futile until it is finished * Daily Telegraph *As usual, the brilliant Nesbo is several steps ahead of you in this endlessly twisting, multi-layered thriller that also shines a light on the murky areas of Norway’s upper echelons * Sun *Scandinavian crime thrillers don’t come much darker or more tense than the best-selling Harry Hole series, and this tenth outing for the Norwegian detective is the best yet * Sunday Mirror *

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Book SynopsisBook Two of 1Q84 ended with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. She knows she is being hunted, and that she has put herself in terrible danger in order to save the man she loves. But things are moving forward, and Aomame does not yet know that she and Tengo are more closely bound than ever.Tengo is searching for Aomame, and he must find her before this world''s rules loosen up too much. He must find her before someone else does.Trade ReviewMurakami's magnum opus * Japan Times *1Q84 has a range and sophistication that surpasses anything else in his oeuvre. It is his most achieved novel; an epic in which form and content are neatly aligned... So like Murakami himself, I'll borrow from Orwell: 1Q84 is quite simply doubleplusgood * Independent on Sunday *1Q84 reads like a cross between Stieg Larsson and Roberto Bolaño... In its bones, this novel is a thriller * Daily Telegraph *It is a work of maddening brilliance and gripping originality, deceptively casual in style, but vibrating with wit, intellect and ambition -- Richard Lloyd Parry * The Times *Which other author can remind you simultaneously of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and JK Rowling, not merely within the same chapter but on the same page? Viewed through the "post-modern" lens, his exemplary blend of a light touch and weighty themes, of high literature and popular entertainment, ticks every box. Posh and pop, sublimity and superficiality, history and fantasy, trash and transcendence: they switch positions and then fuse -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *

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Book SynopsisFans of Beartown and A Man Called Ove will love this festive novella, from the 13 million copy internationally bestselling author. ________It is Christmas Eve and a father and son are meeting for the first time in years.The father has a story he needs to share before it''s too late. As he tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away, he reveals even more about himself; his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future. Now, on this night before Christmas, the father has been given the unexpected chance to do something remarkable that could change the destiny of a little girl he hardly knows. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he must find out what his own life has actually been worth, and only his son can reveal the answer.With humour and compassion, Fredrik Backman''s novella The Deal of a Lifetime reminds usTrade ReviewThe Deal of a Lifetime strikes straight at the heart and hits you -- Deccan Chronicle * India *This (dimensionally) tiny book comes packed with huge emotion. Readers will speed through it in under two hours, then spend the rest of the day - at least - pondering the astonishing ideas it unleashes. The Deal of a Lifetime quite literally will grab you from the start and set you off in a host of incredible directions. Fredrik Backman has a wonderful ability to reach deep inside his readers, pull out feelings they didn't know they had, and set their minds spinning. What a blockbuster! -- The Book Reporter, US[This] book is short but every word counts and that'll hit you square in the heart. . . . You may shed tears over this book. You may need to savor it a second time, to feel its words again. However you read it, The Deal of a Lifetime is an experience you'll never trade. -- Rushville Republican, USPraise for Beartown -- -Surrounded by impenetrable forests, it recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community. This is a mature, compassionate novel. * Sunday Times *A story about families, about friendship and loyalty, inequality, female vulnerability, male back-slapping, and parenthood ... No person's story is too little to be told, Backman includes them all. A novel with a big heart * Jönköpings-Posten, Sweden *A kind of problem play that moves extremely skilfully near the melodramatic without derailing. Its originality is substantial and the book credibly conveys the dual faces of everyday life. An impressive novel, like no other * BTJ, Sweden *Friday Night Lights for Swedes * O Magazine *As popular Swedish exports go, Backman is up there with ABBA and Stieg Larsson. * The New York Times Book Review *Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. . . There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor. . .Like Friday Night Lights, this is about more than youth sports; it's part coming-of-age novel, part study of moral failure, and finally a chronicle of groupthink in which an unlikely hero steps forward to save more than one person from self-destruction. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time. * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book Synopsis''A cracking good thriller...that will keep you gripped to the last page'' GuardianIn the depths of winter a killer stalks the city streets. Two women are found drowned in their own blood. A third woman is hanged from a diving board.YOU ARE ALLOWING THIS KILLING TO GO ON.The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options.IT''S TIME THIS WAS STOPPED...There is only one man who can help them catch the killer. But Inspector Harry Hole doesn''t want to be found....BECAUSE I HAVE APPOINTED THE NEXT VICTIM.*JO NESBO HAS SOLD OVER 55 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**Watch out for KILLING MOON, the new Jo Nesbo book, out now*Trade ReviewComparisons with Stieg Larsson have been made, but Nesbo's plots move quickly, carry more punch, and really do keep you guessing to the final page * Daily Mirror *A cracking good thriller...that will keep you gripped to the last page * Guardian *Outstanding... Probably the best big crime novel you could lay your hands on this year * BBC Radio 4 *Nesbo's novels keep going when you think there can't be any more twists to follow. Scenes switch from the avalanche-threatened ravines and mountain cabins of back-country Norway, close to oil-rich Stavanger and metropolitan Oslo, to an active volcano in Africa * Times Literary Supplement *Original Norwegian noir...absorbing -- Tom Huddleston * Time Out *

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Book SynopsisJo Nesbo is one of the world's bestselling crime writers, with The Leopard, Phantom, Police, The Son, The Thirst, Macbeth and Knife all topping the Sunday Times bestseller charts. He's an international number one bestseller and his books are published in 50 languages, selling over 50 million copies around the world. Before becoming a crime writer, Nesbo played football for Norway's premier league team Molde, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di Derre ('Them There'). They topped the charts in Norway, but Nesbo continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel,Trade ReviewExpertly plotted and structured...relentlessly paced...a compulsive page turner * Independent on Sunday *Nesbo wrings out the tension, by turns painful and delicious, with consummate skill. The surprises come like an avalanche as the end nears * Sunday Express *A first-class thriller...and the complex plot...contains several twists some of which will make you gasp and at least one of which will make you cry * Evening Standard *The relationship between Harry and Rakel is truly multifaceted, and richer in nuance than anything else in the crime genre. Phantom will maintain Jo Nesbo's unstoppable momentum * Independent *Jo Nesbo writes tightly plotted, claustrophobic thrillers with plenty of snow and a brutal yet hopelessly romantic policeman hero... They're also exuberantly, ingeniously gruesome * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThis wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife ware driven apart into rival worlds of erotic revenge.

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Book SynopsisDetective Huldar and psychologist Freyja are once again on the trail of a serial killer in this brilliant new novel from the internationally acclaimed author of Gallows Rock and The Silence of the Sea.Trade ReviewI love the Children's House series and Yrsa delivers again with The Doll. Such engaging characters and a compelling, twisted and creepy mystery-I couldn't put it down! * Shari Lapena *Yrsa is a wonderful storyteller. Her stories are atmospheric, mysterious and brilliantly plotted . . . you will never see the twists coming * Mari Hannah *Broody Icelandic thriller * Peterborough Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisAll the world’s a stage, but someone has to build it. Smooth Diao’s day is going anything but. Judging by how the stagehands treat him, you wouldn’t guess that he’s the foreman who makes sure there’s food on their tables – or that this bunch of yokels work for Xi’an’s premier theatre company, where their unseen grafting makes all the dazzling performances possible. Whoever said showbusiness was glamorous? Keeping the gang out of trouble in the city's many dives and cheap noodle bars is a thankless job when all Smooth wants to do is get home in time every night to salvage his third marriage. So, when this motley crew is given a seemingly ideal chance to set the stage for a performance in the nation's capital, it’s make or break. Can they set their internal drama aside and ignore the sneers of high society long enough to prove their worth? It’s time someone noticed who really makes the show go on.

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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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Book SynopsisA family story of epic scale, by the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD and THE BELL IN THE LAKE.An intricate story about war, family, secrets and,yes, wood ... An engaging, satisfying read The TimesSo cleverly plotted, and it builds up such effortless dramatic momentum as it zeroes in on its conclusion ScotsmanEdvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery - he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather''s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death - a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard''s desperate quest to unlock the family''s tTrade ReviewMytting's book is as much a romantic historical thriller as it is a book of promise, a page-turner as it is a reflective journey into selfhood, history, life's meaning and individual moral responsibility -- Mika Provata-Carlone * Bookanista *Mytting follows up Norwegian Wood with a mystery that fits together like a piece of fine marquetry -- Christian House * Observer *The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is so cleverly plotted, and it builds up such effortless dramatic momentum as it zeroes in on its conclusion -- Roger Cox * Scotsman *The tug of this book on the heart and mind is irresistible . . . And you will, I think, struggle to find a modern novel in which the emotional, imaginative lure of trees and wood is as powerful. -- Michael Duggan * Catholic Herald Books of the Year. *Though the twists of discovery drive the plot, it is the intimacy with the natural world - as we might expect from the author of the phenomenally successful Norwegian Wood - that most compels us: potato-flowers, islets, storm petrels, walnut trees and walnut wood. -- Paul Binding * Times Literary Supplement *Mytting's novel has it all: the propulsive narrative, the human interest, the deep historical context, the gorgeously detailed descriptions of the finer things in life -- Toby Lichtig * Wall Street Journal *

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Book SynopsisFor the sake of women everywhere, Ms Shibata is going to pull off the mother of all deceptions...'Incredibly thought-provoking... you'll love Yagi's writing' STYLISTMs Shibata refuses to clear away the coffee at work one day, because she's pregnant and can't bear the smell. The only thing is . . . Ms Shibata is not pregnant.Being a mother-to-be isn't easy. Ms Shibata has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and with the help of towel-stuffed shirts and a diary app that tracks every stage of her 'pregnancy', the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.Discover this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive new novel that's perfect for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs.'A subversive, surreal read that will strike a cord' RED'One of the most passionate cases I've ever read for female interiority, for women's creative pulse and rich inner life' NEW YORKERTranslated from the Japanese by David Boyd and Lucy NorthTrade ReviewIf you're in the mood for a matter-of-fact and incredibly thought-provoking read, you'll love Yagi's writing. * Stylist *The tension grows along with the comedic details. . . . Diary of a Void starts as stylish satire... but it becomes something even more profound. Always expect the unexpected when you're not expecting. -- Sloane Crosley * Departures *A subversive, surreal read that will strike a cord. * Red Magazine *One of the most passionate cases I've ever read for female interiority, for women's creative pulse and rich inner life. * The New Yorker *Endlessly strange, funny and meaningful... This book is a powerful exploration of what it means to be single and childless, and of the impact of work on our bodies and mental health * Good Housekeeping, *Books of the Year* *Yagi has a light touch for the endless ironies made possible by her premise. There is humor, but also the realization that the alienation of pregnancy and motherhood is no reprieve from the oppressive office culture that inspires Shibata's experiment. -- Lauren Oyler * New York Times Book Review *Delightful . . . Yagi's focus is on how acting pregnant reshapes Shibata's relationship to herself... Yet the book never idealizes pregnancy...We see the difficulty of being a woman with or without a child, and Yagi emphasizes how society makes both roles harder... If you've ever wanted to bite back at a nosy boss, a rude co-worker, an unfair assignment, or the endless list of shoulds we face, then maybe you'll find something to enjoy in Shibata's audacity too. -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan * The Atlantic *One of the most intriguing new novels of the summer. * Independent *Shibata is a modern-day Bartleby. * The Baffler *Darkly funny and surprisingly tender. -- Kirsty Logan, author of THINGS WE SAY IN THE DARKIn Diary of a Void, what begins as a bud of a lie blossoms into a gripping and thought provoking examination of womanhood and motherhood in a patriarchal society. A short read but by no means is this a small story. -- An Yu, author of BRAISED PORKSo tightly written, and so much fun to read. -- Kikuko Tsumura, author of THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN EASY JOBComical and tender, absurd, bold and joyful. -- Aysegul Savas, author of WHITE ON WHITEYagi captures Shibata's loneliness and the community she's granted upon 'falling into step' with her married peers in such a keen way that, reading along, you're on pins and needles to discover what will happen... The [fun] premise pays off. -- Eliza Smith * Literary Hub *Riveting and surreal . . . Absurdist, amusing, and clever, the story brings subtlety and tact to its depiction of workplace discrimination-as well as a touch of magic. Readers will eagerly turn the pages all the way to the bold conclusion. * Publishers Weekly *A book that reflects on life, solitude and what it means to be a woman. * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* *A surreal, engrossing meditation on loneliness, womanhood, and what it actually means to have a work-life balance. -- Ruth Murai * Mother Jones *Takes office toxicity and how we cope to new heights. * Fortune *I found myself completely captivated by this novel's unusual and inviting premise and all that it questions and stirs up. -- Aimee Bender, author of THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKEI loved it. It's incredible. Diary of a Void is joyful, exuberant, and triumphant. It made my heart sing. -- Claire Oshetsky, author of CHOUETTEFilled with sly humor and touching intimacy, Diary of a Void builds from its revolutionary premise into a powerfully resonant story of longing and defiance. An absolutely thrilling read - I didn't want to put it down. -- Claire Stanford, author of HAPPY FOR YOUIn this fictional diary of a pregnant woman, it is the real, rather than the made-up, aspects of society, such as single parenting and discrimination against women in the workplace, that are powerfully depicted. -- Kyoko Nakajima, author of THE LITTLE HOUSEYagi artfully blurs the boundary between truth and lies with this riotous solution to women's workplace challenges. * The Washington Post *[A] penetrating look at working life and gender expectations... In a tone perfectly modulated in Boyd and North's translation, Shibata's dry observations and choices are both relatable and humorous...At the heart of the story is Yagi's wry and witty consideration of how one woman, tangled up in a web of deceit, struggles to live a meaningful life through work and her relationships with others. * The Japan Times *Charming and funny * Crack Magazine *

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Book SynopsisWhen Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He's a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night. If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization. The Howling Miller is a dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world.Trade ReviewA gem of a novel * * New York Times * *Profound . . . Paasilinna's singular vision of freedom and persecution proves beguiling * * Guardian * *Part myth, part fable and part novel - a form that has a funny way of bypassing the head and directly affecting the animal instincts * * Los Angeles Times * *A literary folk tale . . . Extraordinary * * Times Literary Supplement * *It's a riotous novel, full of deadpan humour told in a comic style that, as the opening paragraph suggests, comes across like a fable * * booklit.com * *

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Book Synopsis*Watch out for KILLING MOON, the new Harry Hole thriller, available for pre-order now!*__________________________________________'The king of all crime writers' Sunday Express There's a new killer on the streets A woman is found murdered after an internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer. And he's out for blood Under pressure from the media to solve the crime, the force know there's only one man for the job. But Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case...*JO NESBO HAS SOLD OVER 55 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**Watch out for KILLING MOON, the new Jo Nesbo book, out now*Jo Nesbo was a Sunday Times number one bestseller with Macbeth on 20/09/2018Trade ReviewExpertly plotted with vividly drawn characters, frenetic police chases and philosophising villains [...] Expect to be thoroughly entertained * Crime Fiction Lover *Fast-moving...stunning * Sunday Times *[The Thirst is] a breath-taking reading experience... Nesbo is the master when it comes to building a long and increasingly steep dramatic curve... The pace in The Thirst is somewhat calmer than in the previous Harry Hole books, more of a waltz than a rock and roll, until we're a bit more than halfway through. But from there on, it's full on action with blood gushing and splattering until the last page is turned * Verdens Gang, Norway *The Thirst like its stablemates is a bulky but zippy 500-pager which never loiters in one place for long. Nesbø keeps you guessing with his usual bag of tricks, making everyone seem a little suspect (or almost everyone). His cynicism about bent coppers and unscrupulous journalists is an inexhaustible and entertaining sideshow...if you liked the other ten, you'll greedily sink your teeth into this * Arts Desk *Jo Nesbo is on top form... [The Thirst is] a spell-binding story about brutal crimes and ambitions gone astray * Dagbladet, Norway *

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Book SynopsisAsta Olivia Nordenhof is an award-winning poet and author. Money to Burn was first published in Denmark in 2020 and went on to win the European Union Prize for Literature and the PO Enquist Prize, and to be shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Its publication caused a sensation internationally and it is set to be published in sixteen languages. The second book in the series, The Devil Book, was an instant bestseller in Denmark.

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Book SynopsisIn her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of family and the battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle's great-great-grandmother Aliss. In Jon Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on. Aliss at the Fire, is a visionary masterpiece, a haunting exploration of love and loss that ranks among the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate.Trade Review‘Jon Fosse is a major European writer.’ — Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle‘The Beckett of the twenty-first century.’ — Le Monde‘Jon Fosse has managed, like few others, to carve out a literary form of his own.’ — Nordic Council Literary Prize‘It is some measure of Fosse’s talents that he manages to weave such a compelling narrative from a largely static setting ... Nothing really happens and yet there is something quietly dramatic about Fosse's meandering and rhythmic prose, aided by Damion Searls's limber translation, which has a strangely mesmerising effect. ... [A]n intense reading experience.’ — Lucy Popescu, Independent‘Fosse carefully captures the contradictions…It is hard not to marvel at what peace and sorrow he fits into a single thought…’ — George Berridge, TLS‘A drowning is solemnly relived over the generations in Fosse's circuitous, claustrophobic tale. ... The immense burden of family history weighs heavily on each generation as ghosts, memories, and tragedies collide to effects both confounding and enlightening.’ — Publishers Weekly‘Prose doesn’t have hooks, and Fosse’s incantations are as unexcerptable as Philip Glass symphonies or Béla Tarr tracking shots.... On it goes, building layer upon layer of past and present, ancestors and loved ones, until you are immersed in that world and the prose conjures luminous glory flashing past like Blakean angels. Maybe it is convincing to say that Fosse is the only writer whose book has made me weep with emotion as I translated it.’ — Damion Searls, Paris Review‘Like Faulkner’s best works, Aliss at the Fire is about the inescapability of the past and how history reverberates mysteriously across generations. Through voices and narratives that are constantly interrupting and interfering with one another, Fosse captures the grief—and love—that can never be put into words.’ — Alex Shepherd, The Atlantic‘It is becoming increasingly difficult to find any Norwegian author who can equal Jon Fosse.’ — Tom Egil Hverven, NRK

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Book SynopsisTravelling to Italy on their honeymoon, Erszi and Mihaly are ready to take in all the beauties and pleasures of the country. But when they reach Venice, it is clear that Mihaly prefers to roam around the back alleys and the canals on his own, and as they continue their journey through the Bel Paese there is a growing sense of unrest between them, until Mihaly misses the train to Rome they were due to take together. Wandering alone from city to city, with his marriage rapidly falling apart, Mihaly must confront the ghosts of his past and try to find a sense of purpose. Originally written in 1937, and here presented in a brilliant new translation by Peter V. Czipott, Antal Szerb's gently humorous and psychologically subtle exploration into the workings of a budding bourgeois marriage has been hailed as one of the great rediscovered classics of the twentieth century.Trade ReviewA novel to love as well as admire, always playful and ironical, full of brilliant descriptions, bon mots and absurd situations... it's a book utterly in love with life. -- Kevin Crossley-Holland * The Guardian * A true classic beautifully translated by Peter V. Czipott, it will linger in my memory for a long time. -- Bill Spence * Yorkshire Gazette and Herald * One of the most engaging and moving novels I have read for a long time. * Nudge Books *

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Book SynopsisThe first novel in a thrilling Norwegian historical trilogy - by the author of The Sixteen Trees of the Somme Trade ReviewRich, sinuous prose makes tangible the villagers' gritty perseverance in the face of poverty, isolation and the unpredictable climate . . . The Bell in the Lake is a beautiful example of modern Norwegian folklore -- Johanne Elster Hanson * Guardian *Mytting uses the love story to explore the clash between tradition and modernity -- Antonia Senior * The Times (Historical Fiction Book of the Month) *Love, suspense, nature and superstition are woven together in this powerful novel. Set in spectacular surroundings where anything can happen it will give the reader a taste of something deeply and genuinely Norwegian. -- Maya Lunde * author of THE HISTORY OF BEES *Lyrical, melancholy and with beautifully drawn characters, this pitches old beliefs against new ways with a haunting delicacy that rings true. -- Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *An exquisitely atmospheric novel about the struggle to cherish the beauty that is right in front of us; be it a blue-dark night, the bear-colored wood of a decaying stave church, or a love that is blooming through a late-thawing snow. The Bell in the Lake does what fiction promises: to steal you away to another world and ask you, if unfairly, to leave a little of your heart behind. -- Derek B. MillerMytting shows how landscape and climate can define a character . . . He delivers village wisdom . . . and jagged realism. It is a fireside read with splinters. -- Christian House * Financial Times *Mytting's cleverly crafted story heads inexorably to a moving conclusion -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *Lovers of good historical fiction are in for a real treat. * Radio New Zealand *Magnificent historical novel * Adresseavisen *Lars Mytting's historical novel is captivating and engaging . . . With his powerful narrative style, intertwined story and detailed knowledge of carpentry, fishing and stave churches, there is reason to believe that this time he will again reach many many readers. * Dagbladet *

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Book SynopsisThe Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist from the provinces who has come to conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws in his own genius. While his boyhood friend Pierre Sandoz becomes a successful novelist, Claude's originality is mocked at the Salon and turns gradually into a doomed obsession with one great canvas. Life - in the form of his model and wife Christine and their deformed child Jacques - issacrificed on the altar of Art.The Masterpiece is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it provides a unique insight into his career as a writer and his relationship with Cézanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence. It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public.Table of ContentsNo Penguin competition.

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Book SynopsisThe Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.Trade ReviewWalter Benjamin was the interlocutor of all the demons and angels of storytelling. And this is why he knew its endless secrets. Listen to him. -- John BergerThis volume collects an extraordinary array of short pieces by Walter Benjamin that lets us see the centrality of stories, dreams, and tales to his own experimental writings. During the time in which Benjamin sought to understand the conditions of communicability between languages, he was also testing the thesis in the stories he told. Telling the tale and reflecting on its very possibility, under conditions such as war and poverty, Benjamin gives us short forms that are broken up by interruptions and sudden closure. This elegant and moving volume is beautifully edited, including an introduction that shows how these collections of short tales and dream sequences are already doing the critical work of the essay form. This volume is a marvelous gift that will reorient our reading of Benjamin in startling ways -- Judith ButlerA complex and brilliant writer. -- J.M. CoetzeeWalter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre. -- Hannah ArendtBenjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation. his life and work speak challengingly to us all." -- Terry EagletonThere has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George SteinerHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagWalter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of the twentieth century. * Sunday Times *One doesn't read him to feel better. One reads him to feel. In his universe nothing is as it appears to be and there is a vital need to go beyond surfaces and connect with humanity. -- Elif Shafak * Guardian *The greatest German critic of the 20th century -- Stuart Jeffries * Financial Times *Everything which fell under the scrutiny of his words was transformed, as though it had become radioactive. -- Theodor AdornoA circular book to visit again and again, a book one can start reading right in the middle or read backwards, playing with its chapters and sentences wildly and freely, just as the philosopher would have probably wished. -- Elif Shafak * FT *An event. -- Jonathon Sturgeon * Guardian *Dreams, diaries, reviews, fragments, and short fiction make up The Storyteller, but there's no denying that this potpourri by the German critic and philosopher Benjamin is an essential addition to the corpus of one of the 20th century's preeminent figures. As the translators note in an elegant introduction, these pieces explore both the European oral storytelling tradition and a curious mysticism under the aegis of modernist literature...thoroughly illuminating. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisA young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. But life keeps getting in the way - there's his beloved grandmother's illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti, who she invites him into her private world. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.Trade ReviewOne of John Freeman's 29 Writers to Watch"Whimsical… Described as Haruki Murakami’s “favorite young novelist,” Kawakami is destined to charm Anglophone audiences as well." — Library Journal"Mieko Kawakami is a master of the novella. . . A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, it is no overstatement to assert that Ms Ice Sandwich is Mieko Kawakami at her very best. . . Very highly recommended." — Midwest Book Review"Delightful… Kawakami’s dialogue, fluidly rendered into English by Louise Heal Kawai, captures beautifully and with great humor the eager dynamism of a child’s mind." — World Literature Today"A subtle and endearing novella with a sweet sense of humor. Kawakami touches on loss, societal perceptions, first loves and new beginnings through the eyes of a grade-school boy and his relationships with the women closest to him." --Sara S., Vroman’s Bookstores"Mieko Kawakami’s 2008 novel Breasts & Eggs won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The reissued novella Ms Ice Sandwich... is a delightful distraction, and an appetiser for her work." — The Irish Times"A touching novella. . . Poignant." — Culture Trip"Easily digestible…a book that ultimately lives longer in the memory than the hour or so it takes to read." — Financial Times"Among many other awards, Haruki Murakami listed Mieko Kawakami as his favorite young writer, so you're obviously going to want to snatch up Ms. Ice Sandwich, her first book translated into English. This is a lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches." — Bustle"In Louise Heal Kawai’s translation, the novella is a wonderful example of the power of narrative voice." — Japan Times"Reading this quirky coming of age novella was one of the best hours I've spent in sometime." — The Word’s Shortlist (blog)"Haruki Murakami’s favourite young writer. . . a funny, touching story." — A Life in Books

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Book SynopsisThis saga brings alive the world of the 10th century AD when the Vikings raided the coasts of England.Acclaimed as one of the best historical novels ever written, this engaging saga of Viking adventure in 10th century northern Europe has a very appealing young hero, Orm Tostesson, whose story we follow from inexperienced youth to adventurous old age, through slavery and adventure to a royal marriage and the search for great treasure. Viking expeditions take him to lands as far apart as England, Moorish Spain, Gaardarike (the country that was to become Russia), and the long road to Miklagard. The salt-sea spray, the swaying deck awash in slippery blood are the backdrop to fascinating stories of King Harald Blue Tooth, the Jomsvikings, attempts to convert the Northmen to Christianity, and much else. Like H. Rider Haggard, Bengtsson is a master of the epic form.Trade Review‘A masterpiece’New York Times ‘The author and his excellent translator bring that old, warrior world alive with such vigorous enjoyment and simplicity that the deeds of those men roving about the world in their dragon ships seem as marvellous as those of our atomic age’Daily Telegraph ‘A boldly illuminated picture of the Northmen… confidently recommended’The Times ‘A banquet of adventure by sea and land, with man-size helpings of battle and murder, robbery and rape’New Statesman

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Book SynopsisYukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppTrade ReviewA dark vision...a beautiful, disturbing novel * Los Angeles Times *Mishima writes with a fury that seldom flags * Glasgow Herald *Glitters with images of beauty and destruction, cruelty and sacrifice, dedication and betrayal * The Times *An amazing literary feat * Chicago Tribune *I adore Mishima's prose and vivid descriptions. They pull me out of my daily reality -- Amanda Harlech * Harpers Bazaar *

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Book SynopsisMoney centres on the figure of Aristide Rougon, known as Saccard, and his unscrupulous money-making schemes. His story intertwines the worlds of politics, finance, and the press, and resonates disturbingly with our own times. This is the first new translation for more than a hundred years, and the first unabridged translation in English.Trade Reviewthis superb translation ... pulls off the rare double feat of fidelity and fluency. * Alison Finch, Emile Zola Society Bulletin *Much praise to OUP for bringing out this excellent translation by Valerie Minogue, complete with an informative introduction and notes. * Shiny New Books *I was justifiably excited by this new translation of Emile Zola's novel Money ... Overall the text is fluid and reads as if it were not a translation at all. * ANZ Lit Lovers *

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Book SynopsisIn this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor and the degradation, in relentless detail. The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Turgenev to passages from Dante's Inferno. Terror and resignation - the rampages of a pyschopath, thebrief serence interlude of Christmas Day - are evoked by Dostoevsky, writing several years after his release, with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment. For this reason, House of the Dead is certainly the least Dostoevskian of his works, yet, paradoxically, it ranks among his greatmasterpieces.

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Book SynopsisFrom helpful elves to an enchanting Nutcracker, rediscover the German Christmas tales behind our most iconic festive traditions*A Daily Express Book of the Year*Eine fröhliche Weihnachten -- A Merry Christmas -- made all the more joyful with these literary treats redolent of candle-lit trees, St. Nikolaus, gingerbread, roast goose and red cabbage, tinsel and stollen cakes, accompanied by plenty of schnapps.In this collection, classic works by the Brothers Grimm and Thomas Mann intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Peter Stamm and Martin Suter to bring together the greatest festive tales from Austria, Switzerland and Germany. From a child lost in a snowy, pine-scented forest meeting an unlikely saviour to old lovers reuniting during a last-minute dash across the city for presents, each story creates magical moments of reflection and rediscovery.Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, A German Christmas showcases those works that have helped define the festive period the world over.Trade ReviewA festive treat with a German twist * Daily Express, *Christmas Gift Guide 2022* *A gorgeous little book and the perfect Christmas stocking filler * Art Shelf, *Christmas Gift Guide 2022* *

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Book Synopsis'If the antidote to a year of solitude and trauma is art, then this novel is the answer. It is superb’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘A rare kind of literary celebrity' VOGUE 'A hypnotic disappearing act' OBSERVER The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author: a haunting portrait of a woman, her decisions, her conversations, her solitariness, in a beautiful and lonely Italian city The woman moves through the city, her city, on her own. She moves along its bright pavements; she passes over its bridges, through its shops and pools and bars. She slows her pace to watch a couple fighting, to take in the sight of an old woman in a waiting room; pauses to drink her coffee in a shaded square. Sometimes her steps take her to her grieving mother, sealed off in her own solitude. Sometimes they take her to the station, where the trains can spirit her away for a short while. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will change forever. A rare work of fiction, Whereabouts – first written in Italian and then translated by the author herself – brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement. A dazzling evocation of a city, its captures a woman standing on one of life’s thresholds, reflecting on what has been lost and facing, with equal hope and rage, what may lie ahead. ‘An unusual literary and linguistic feat' NEW YORK TIMESTrade ReviewOne of the most interesting American writers at work today ... Whereabouts feels like her answer to Matisse’s cut-outs: she has taken her writing apart and reconstructed it, sparely, to make something new, where silence matters … If the antidote to a year of solitude and trauma is art, then this novel is the answer. It is superb * SUNDAY TIMES *Elegantly done, a portrait veiled in quiet melancholy, but which still celebrates the unexpected joys of the quotidian, and how much more sharply you can appreciate them when alone * THE TIMES *Insightful, elegant prose exposing the faults that make us human * I NEWS *Addictive … Sometimes we’re in the mood for intimate novels exploring the intricacies of human emotion … Quietly mesmerising * STYLIST *So timely … Takes daring and to my mind beautiful risks with structure and plot -- ELIZABETH DAY * BBC Radio 4 Open Book *Its sentences are honed to minimalist beauty ... The most exciting moments of the novel are when it becomes a novel of thinking, when it dives down into its sharp, provocative fragments -- MADELEINE THIEN * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *A beautifully poised exploration of an interior life * DAILY MAIL *Each chapter an espresso shot of regret and loneliness … This is a book about belonging and not belonging, place and displacement * GUARDIAN *Compelling … Whereabouts feels like a movie … Stylish and therapeutic * GUARDIAN *A quietly bracing work of fiction ... This is arguably Lahiri’s most beautifully written novel * THE NATION *Whereabouts is rendered in short, journal-like fragments so strongly and rightly voiced that other books sound wrong when you turn to them * THE ATLANTIC *An utterly compelling and contemplative story, infused with a fascinating character study, whose presence I still can't seem to shake off. * STYLIST *Lahiri writes with subtlety and delicacy * NPR *Whereabouts signals a new mode for Lahiri, and a daring transformation ... It feels true and wise to the core * LOS ANGELES TIMES *Slim and bewitching … A modern day flaneuse … The author has a talent for capturing the everyday * SPECTATOR *Evokes fleeting but resonant encounters with Chekhovian efficiency, making ordinary memories seem profound … Ms Lahiri has taken risks for her craft, and they have paid off, beautifully * ECONOMIST *Lahiri’s prose is magnetic * MAIL+ *A hypnotic disappearing act ... The book’s peculiar magnetism lies in its clash of candour and coyness * OBSERVER *An unusual literary and linguistic feat … If, in English, Lahiri is an eye, in Italian, she’s an ear * NEW YORK TIMES *Glorious … Written with grace and sensitivity … Magnificent * INDEPENDENT *Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing is wonderful in the literal sense: on every page there is something to take your breath away * SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE *Subtle and stirring ... A fascinating departure in cadence and form for Lahiri ... The sort of deft hand so few can properly wield: it evokes the sort of slow thrum of despair and loneliness so few can manage well.Lahiri is no ordinary writer ... Poetic as she is and always has been, seemingly innocuous turns of phrase cut to the core, while descriptions of light and darkness take you aback and make you swoon. Elegant, beautiful ... Whereabouts will stay with you longer than you anticipate * USA TODAY *A meditative and aching snapshot of a life in suspension ... Lahiri’s poetic flourishes and spare, conversational prose are on full display. This beautifully written portrait of a life in passage captures the hopes, frustrations, and longings of solitude and remembrance * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY *Painterly … exquisitely detailed… [Lahiri’s] language seems to have been sieved through a fine mesh, each word a gleaming gemstone … An incisive and captivating evocation of the nature and nexus of place and self * BOOKLIST *Subtle and stirring ... A fascinating departure in cadence and form for Lahiri. Told in fragments, Whereabouts [is written with] the sort of deft hand so few can properly wield: it evokes the sort of slow thrum of despair and loneliness so few can manage well. But Lahiri is no ordinary writer. There’s a calming sense of comfort one finds in the solitude experienced by our main character, largely due to the exactness of Lahiri’s writing. Poetic as she is and always has been, seemingly innocuous turns of phrase cut to the core, while descriptions of light and darkness take you aback and make you swoon. Elegant, beautiful ... Whereabouts will stay with you longer than you anticipate * USA TODAY *Some books leave you with a feeling for which there are no words, or at least no words in English that you know of. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts is one of those books. The feeling closest to what is evoked by this beautifully crafted novel is a stroll during the blue hour on the first warm evening of spring. A jewel of a book * BOOKPAGE *A series of dreamy vignettes, an unconnected shuffle of moments or mornings of encounters that create a window into the life of an educated woman and teacher who is happily single... Beautifully observed and ruminative ... -- Penelope Debelle * SA Weekend *Not one word is wasted. A total absence of exposition ensures each microfiction is surgically edited to its barest, most beautiful bones. And yet there is a warmth here that encourages great affection for the anonymous narrator. Written with intelligence, elegance, empathy and hypnotic power, Whereabouts is destined to become a book of the year. * IRISH TIMES *The storyteller in whose hands we can always expect to find the sacredness of the ordinary and the grace of the mundane constantly unveiled * FINANCIAL TIMES Summer Books 2021: Critics' picks *A novel with radical ambitions … [An] evocation of a life at once painfully precarious and yet full of small, intensely physical pleasures * LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS *This is one to read and re-read * I PAPER, Summer Reading Picks 2021 *Beautiful Italian miniatures, best dipped into when the need for a few pages of calm reflection is required * Otago Daily Times *

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Book SynopsisA charming, mind-bending and anarchic book of imagined civilizations''Most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to...''Trurl and Klapaucius are ''constructors'' - they travel around the universe creating machines of astonishing inventiveness and power and visiting a bewildering variety of violent, peculiar and morose civilizations. The Cyberiad is oddly reminiscent of Gulliver''s Travels, The Hitchhiker''s Guide to the Galaxy, The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland. Charming, mind-bending and anarchic, it is perhaps Lem''s greatest work. This edition includes all of Daniel Mroz''s hallucinatory original illustrations.Trade ReviewStanislaw Lem may be the most famous science fiction writer you've never heard of ... [this] collection of stories may go some way to redressing that ... The linguistic inventiveness is extraordinary ... Lem has created a curious world in which robots and rockets rub shoulders with kings, dragons, witches and pirates * Independent on Sunday *A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age * New York Times *

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Book Synopsis''Ambitious, intricate, riveting'' The Times** The first instalment in the bestselling original Dutch thriller** Haunted by a past you can never escape . . . When a young boy from Afghanistan is the victim of a brutal hit-and-run in woods outside Amsterdam journalist Farah Hafez visits the scene, seeking to discover how a child from her homeland ended up here. Instead, she finds a burnt-out car and two bodied - sinister clues to a far darker mystery. It is the beginning of a journey that leads her into an intricate web of crime and corruption stretching across Europe and deep into a past that Farah had once sought to escape - a past that nearly killed her.And if she goes back will she ever make it out again? Butterfly on the Storm is the first mystery to unravel in a tense, explosive and gripping new trilogy you won''t want to put down. For lovers of Stieg Larsson''s Millennium series, thiTrade ReviewJournalist Farah Hafez embarks on a journey that will lead her into an intricate web of crime and corruption in the start of a new Dutch trilogy which has drawn parallels with Stieg Larsson's Millennium series * from publisher's description *Ambitious, intricate, riveting * The Times *It's been compared to Stieg Larsson's Millennium series ... Butterfly on the Storm is a compelling, engrossing read ... Walter Lucius is one to watch * Nudge *Disturbing, apocalyptic, gripping * Dutch Daily De Limburger *Riveting until the very end * AD Weekend [Dutch Newspaper] *The Dutch answer to the tsunami of Scandinavian thrillers * BB Boekblad *

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Book SynopsisThree women. Three countries. One unforgettable journey. The Braid is a vibrant and singular reminder of what connects us all – across borders, across languages, across cultures.‘A beautifully written novel of determination, bravery, and hope. You will remember Smita, Giulia, and Sarah long after you’ve read their stories.’ – AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs Bird In India, Smita is an untouchable. She dreams of giving her young daughter an education and will go to any length to make that happen, including leaving behind all she knows in search of a better future. In Sicily, Giulia works in her father’s wig workshop, the last of its kind in Palermo. When her father is the victim of a serious accident, she discovers that her family’s livelihood is at stake. In Canada, Sarah is a twice-divorced mother of three children and a successful lawyer whose identity is wrapped up in her work. Just as she expects the promotion she’s been working her entire career for, she learns she has breast cancer. 'Laetitia Colombani is master at the art of storytelling.' – Le MondeTrade ReviewWe truly loved reading this beautiful, simple novel . . . with characters who teach or remind us of the all too often unacceptable conditions in which women around the world live. * ELLE (France) *The Braid is a beautifully written novel of determination, bravery and hope. You will remember Smita, Giulia and Sarah long after you’ve read their stories. -- AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs BirdA screenwriter and director, Laetitia Colombani is clearly a master of the art of storytelling and editing. She creates female characters with strong personalities, whose lives she interweaves in a hopeful vision. But her writing is sensitive and restrained enough to save the novel from any accusation that it’s nothing more than a ‘feel good’ book. * Le Monde *Elegant and engaging . . . What stood out for me was the colour and authenticity the author gives to each character’s background as they face lifechanging challenges and search for the courage to confront and overcome them. * Daily Mail *Tuck a copy of Laetitia Colombani’s The Braid under your arm for ultimate cultural clout this spring. * ES magazine *

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Book SynopsisMeet Michela - English gangster father, flamenco dancer mother - a hard, uncompromising police officer, operating on the shadier side of the law. Esther Garcia Llovet takes us on a breath-taking, high-speed, anarchic romp through the underbelly of the Costa Brava, Benidorm, on the hunt for Reggie Kray's stolen cigarette lighter.

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Book SynopsisLife and Fate is an epic tale of twentieth-century Russia told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad.As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman''s characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war.Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece.''One of the finest Russian novels of the 20th century'' Daily Telegraph''Compelling... Grossman''s portrait is timelessly relevant... Life and Fate is worth all the audience it can find'' The TimesTrade ReviewThe War and Peace of the 20th century -- Antony BeevorOne of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century * Times Literary Supplement *It is only a matter of time before Grossman is acknowledged as one of the great writers of the 20th century... Life and Fate is a book that demands to be talked about * Guardian *One of the finest Russian novels of the 20th century * Daily Telegraph *What better time to read Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic novel about the second world war, to put our current troubles into perspective? Grossman's book, which traces the fate of the family of the brilliant physicist Viktor Shtrum at the time of the Battle of Stalingrad, records how humanity endured the monstrous evils of Nazism and Stalinism, surviving like weeds in the cracks of concrete slabs * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisThe One State is the perfect society, ruled over by the enlightened Benefactor. It is a city made almost entirely of glass, where surveillance is universal and life runs according to algorithmic rules to ensure perfect happiness. And D-503, the Builder, is the ideal citizen, at least until he meets I-330, who opens his eyes to new ideas of love, sex and freedom.A foundational work of dystopian fiction, inspiration for both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World, WE is a book of radical imaginings - of control and rebellion, surveillance and power, machine intelligence and human inventiveness, sexuality and desire. In this brilliant new translation, it is both a warning and a hope for a better world.Trade ReviewThe best single work of science fiction yet written -- URSULA K. LE GUINTwo of the most iconic novels in the English language - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell - owe an enormous debt to Zamyatin. We is the ur-text of science-fiction dystopias . . . the product of a powerful imagination * * Wall Street Journal * *The prototype . . . Zamyatin is a major artist * * New York Times * *This new edition, which contains Orwell's review as well as an introduction by Margaret Atwood, an afterword by Ursula Le Guin and an absorbing comment by the translator Bela Shayevich, who grew up in the former Soviet Union, will be the definitive version in English for the foreseeable future * * New Statesman * *[A] fine new translation . . . In a market of competing editions . . . Shayevich's stands out, and for very good reason . . . truly excellent . . . Shayevich's [translation] retains the novel's bold, jagged, elemental energy [and] remains true to the spirit of the work in a way that the author himself would have applauded * * Times Literary Supplement * *A seminal dystopian classic . . . This timely and thoughtful edition is a fitting tribute to book of lasting influence * * Irish Times * *It is in effect a study of the Machine, the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again -- GEORGE ORWELL

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