Fiction: literary and general non-genre
Other Press LLC Changing Destiny
Book SynopsisA bold new adaptation of the 4,000-year-old Egyptian poem about Warrior King Sinuhe that captures the essence of civilization and the complexities of immigration, from the Booker Prize–winning author.Forced to flee Egypt, Sinuhe is captured as a prisoner of war by the foreign Kingdom of Retenu. Stripped of status and tormented by memories, Sinuhe will need great force of will to survive as a stranger in an unknown land. But can he transcend the mysterious powers of Egypt and the tribulations of exile?With two actors incarnating a multitude of characters, Ben Okri’s play recreates one of the world’s first known stories, a timeless tale about the strength of the human spirit.
£14.44
Other Press LLC Tiger Work: Stories, Essays and Poems About
Book SynopsisA Best Book of 2023 by The New YorkerIn this poignant, timely collection, the renowned Booker Prize–winning author evokes the magic of nature and the urgency of protecting our environment.Twenty thousand years after a catastrophe wiped out the human race, visitors uncover their final messages scattered across the planet, in flooded cities and disintegrating books. These writings reveal the tragedies of people who continued to live as they always did—fearfully, selfishly—even as the end of their world loomed. These haunting stories within a story, together with a powerful selection of poems, fables, and essays, are a necessary reminder of the beauty of the earth and the importance of addressing the climate crisis with clarity, artistry, and passion.
£19.99
Other Press LLC What You Need from the Night: A Novel
Book SynopsisA CrimeReads Best International Fiction Book of Fall 2023A powerful, intimate portrait of grief and radicalization that grapples with the conundrum of having loved ones we no longer recognize.After the death of his wife, a father raises his two sons alone. His bond with Fus, the elder, and Gillou, the younger, is a close one. But their town is not a place of opportunity, and it soon becomes clear that the boys are heading down different paths. Gillou sets his sights on university in Paris. Fus, despite his socialist upbringing, falls in with the local far-right group. Though he joins mostly for the camaraderie, their activities, which might on the surface appear harmless, lead to a violent confrontation.How can a father and son find common ground when everything seems set to break them apart? A sudden tragedy will force them to find an answer.Tense, sharp, and ultimately heartbreaking, What You Need from the Night asks what acts can truly be forgiven, and shines a spotlight on the forgotten corners of a country where white supremacy has taken hold much like in the US.
£13.59
Other Press LLC Galore: A Novel
Book SynopsisWinner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award, and the Winterset AwardWhen a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon. Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries. With Paradise Deep, award-winning novelist Michael Crummey imagines a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us.
£16.19
Bloomsbury Publishing Brother
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£13.60
Bloomsbury Publishing Zorrie
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£14.45
Semiotext (E) Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia
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£15.26
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Show Them a Good Time
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£15.29
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Mrs Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs Harris Goes to New
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£15.30
Counterpoint Manazuru: A Novel
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£12.34
Counterpoint The Widow Nash: A Novel
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2017 Reading the West Award A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceThis gorgeously written historical novel follows Dulcy, a young woman in 1904 who attempts to flee her late father's business problems―and her violent ex–fiance's grasp―by traveling west and posing as a wealthy widow. ―Entertainment Weekly Dulcy Remfrey has traveled the globe with her eccentric father, Walton, a wealthy entrepreneur obsessed with earthquakes and catastrophe, searching to cure his long battle with syphilis through any crackpot means necessary. Their deep connection is tested, however, when Walton returns from an African expedition without any of the proceeds from the sale of his gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the great sum of money, his health declining rapidly. Her father's business partner (and her ex–fiancé) insists Dulcy come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks—a dozen in all, wrapped in brightly colored silk—which may hold clues to the missing funds. Yet when her father dies before they can locate the money, Dulcy falls under suspicion. Petrified of being forced to spend the rest of her life with her ex–love, Dulcy decides to disappear from the train bringing her father's body home. Is it possible to disappear from your old life and create another? Dulcy travels the West reading stories about her presumed death and settles into a small Montana town where she is reborn as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow with no burden of family. But her old life won't let go so easily, and soon her ex–fiancé is on her trail, threatening the new life she is so eager to create. The Widow Nash is a riveting narrative, filled with a colorful cast of characters, rich historical details, and epic set pieces. Europe in summer. New York in fall. Africa in winter. The lively, unforgettable town of Livingston, Montana. And in Dulcy, Jamie Harrison has created an indelible heroine sure to capture the hearts of readers everywhere.Sweeping and richly hued . . . features a character set loose to wander the American West at the turn of the 20th century, a woman whose early experiences seem drawn from the worldly peregrinations of the era of Henry James . . . Harrison has rendered her imagined world anachronistically, but Henry James might still have approved. ―The New York Times Book Review
£12.99
Counterpoint It Needs To Look Like We Tried: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Improvement: A Novel
Book SynopsisThe national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them from one of America's most gifted writers of fiction, our own country's Alice Munro (The Washington Post). Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three–month stint at Rikers Island, their bond grows tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honorable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a cigarette smuggling scheme, across state lines, where he could risk violating probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four–year–old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.A novel that examines conviction, connection, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us. The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber: No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power. Improvement is Silber’s most shining achievement yet. Without fuss or flourishes, Joan Silber weaves a remarkably patterned tapestry connecting strangers from around the world to a central tragic car accident. The writing here is funny and down–to–earth, the characters are recognizably fallible, and the message is quietly profound: We are not ever really alone, however lonely we feel. —The Wall Street Journal
£12.34
Counterpoint Still In Love: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Prince Of Monkeys: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Summer of My Amazing Luck: A Novel
Book Synopsis[A] memorable portrait of a struggling young person who finds unexpected resilience and peace . . . Hilarious, heartbreaking, and poignant. —BooklistFrom the author of Women Talking—now an Academy Award-winning film starring Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, and Jessie BuckleyMiriam Toews welcomes her readers to the Have–a–Life housing project (better known as Half–a–Life). The welfare regulations are endless and the rate–fink neighbors won't mind their own business. Lucy Von Alstyne sends fictitious letters to her friend Alicia, pretending to be the father of Alicia's twins. When the two mothers and their five children set off on a journey to find him, facing along the way the complications of living in poverty and raising fatherless children, Lucy discovers this just may be the summer of her amazing luck.
£12.34
Counterpoint Inhabitation: A Novel
Book SynopsisA living lizard nailed to a pillar and a young man bound by a family misfortune—a tale that poses questions about life, death, and karma by one of Japan's most beloved living writersIn 1970s Osaka, college student Tetsuyuki moves into a shabby apartment to evade his late father’s creditors. But the apartment’s electricity hasn’t been reconnected yet, and Tetsuyuki spends his first night in darkness. Wanting to hang up a tennis cap from his girlfriend, Yōko, he fumbles about in the dark and drives a nail into a pillar. The next day he discovers that he has pierced the body of a lizard, which is still alive. He decides to keep it alive, giving it food and water and naming it Kin. Inhabitation unfolds from there, following the complications in Tetsuyuki’s relationship with Yōko, a friendship with his supervisor who hides his heart disease at work, and his father’s creditors, always close on his heels. Daunted, Tetsuyuki speaks to Kin night after night, and Kin’s peculiarly tortured situation reflects the mingled pain, love, and guilt that infuses Tetsuyuki’s human relationships. Those who read this novel even once will never forget Tetsuyuki's intensity. I am one of them. Vulnerable, vigorous, the raw sparkle of youth burning with agony. The entire story is crystallized in the image of Kin-chan, who wants to move but can't. Brilliant is the only word to describe Inhabitation. —Banana Yoshimoto, author of Moshi Moshi
£15.82
Counterpoint Hard Mouth: A Novel
Book SynopsisPlayfully, poetically unstable . . . What compels a woman to turn to the wilderness? What brings one, after a decade of caregiving, to exchange a terminal parent’s final vigil for the company of strangers? Goldblatt poses these questions with great assurance. —Lisa Locascio, The New York Times Book ReviewDenny works nights as a tech in a labyrinthine facility outside of D.C., readying fruit flies for experimentation. Her life’s routine is straightforward, limited. But when her father announces that he won’t be treating his recurrent, terminal cancer, she responds by quietly dismantling her life. She constructs in its place the fantasy of perfect detachment. Unsure whether her impulse is monastic or suicidal, she rents a secluded cabin in the mountains. Without saying goodbye, she leaves her parents behind and enters a new, solitary world. It’s not without disruption: her blowsy trash bag of an imaginary pal is still lingering. And then a house cat appears out of nowhere. And after a bad storm rips through the mountainside, someone else shows up, too. Her time in the wilderness isn’t the perfect detachment she was expecting. Denny is forced to reckon with this failure while confronting a new life with its own set of pleasures and dangerous incursions.Morbidly funny, subversive, and startling, Hard Mouth, the debut novel from 2018 NEA Creative Writing Fellow Amanda Goldblatt, unpacks what it means to live while others are dying.The novel begins existential (think: Camus as an intersectional feminist), and ends with a gut punch that somehow manages a deeply felt sympathy for its characters. —Rebekah Frumkin, NYLON
£12.34
Counterpoint Death And The Butterfly: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories
Book Synopsis[A] searing debut. —i>O, The Oprah MagazineIn her powerful collection, first published in 2016 and now featuring new stories, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a shifting America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters span both worlds but belong to none, illustrating the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. This all-new edition of Deceit and Other Possibilities marks the emergence of a remarkable writer.
£12.34
Counterpoint A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do: A Novel
£12.34
Counterpoint China Dream
Book SynopsisBlending fact and fiction, this darkly comic fable “may be the purest distillation yet of Mr. Ma’s talent for probing the country’s darkest corners and exposing what he regards as the Communist Party’s moral failings” (Mike Ives, The New York Times).Called “Red Guards meet Kurt Vonnegut . . . powerful! by Margaret Atwood on Twitter, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people's private dreams with President Xi Jinping's great China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a mass golden wedding anniversary celebration, his sanity begins to unravel. Suddenly plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, Ma Daode's nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.Exposing the damage inflicted on a nation's soul when authoritarian regimes, driven by an insatiable hunger for power, seek to erase memory, rewrite history, and falsify the truth, China Dream is a dystopian vision of repression, violence, and state-imposed amnesia that is set not in the future, but in China today.
£12.34
Counterpoint Speaking of Summer: A Novel
Book Synopsis“Powerful.” —The Washington Post “Fiercely astute.” —Tayari Jones, O, The Oprah Magazine “A voice for the invisible.” —Essence A sister seeks to uncover the truth about her twin’s disappearance in this critically acclaimed novel hailed as “a powerful song about what it means to survive as a woman in America” (Jesmyn Ward, National Book Award winner)On a cold December evening, Autumn Spencer’s twin sister, Summer, walks to the roof of their shared Harlem brownstone and is never seen again. The door to the roof is locked, and the snow holds only one set of footprints. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing Black woman, Autumn must pursue the search for her sister all on her own.With her friends and neighbors, Autumn pretends to hold up through the crisis. But the loss becomes too great, the mystery too inexplicable, and Autumn starts to unravel, all the while becoming obsessed with the various murders of local women and the men who kill them, thinking their stories and society’s complacency toward them might shed light on what really happened to her sister.In Speaking of Summer, critically acclaimed author Kalisha Buckhanon has created a fast–paced story of urban peril and victim invisibility, and the fight to discover the complicated truths at the heart of every family.
£12.34
Counterpoint The Disaster Tourist: A Novel
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£12.34
Counterpoint The Revisioners: A Novel
Book SynopsisThis New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year from the author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, On the Rooftop, is a powerful tale of racial tensions across generations (People) that explores the depths of women’s relationships—influential women and marginalized women, healers, and survivors.In 1924, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine’s family.Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine’s descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays Ava to be her companion. But Martha’s behavior soon becomes erratic, then threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine’s converge.The Revisioners explores the depths of women’s relationships—powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between mothers and their children, the dangers that upend those bonds. At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.[A] stunning new novel . . . Sexton’s writing is clear and uncluttered, the dialogue authentic, with all the cadences of real speech . . . This is a novel about the women, the mothers. ―The New York Times Book Review
£12.34
Counterpoint Oligarchy: A Novel
Book SynopsisFrom the author of The Seed Collectors comes a darkly comic take on power, privilege, and the pressure put on young women to fit in—and be thin—at their all-girls boarding schoolIt's already the second week of term when Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives at a vast English country house for her first day of boarding school. She soon discovers that the headmaster gives special treatment to the skinniest girls, and Tash finds herself thrown into the school's unfamiliar, moneyed world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst.The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraits—featuring a hypnotizing black diamond—hang everywhere and whose ghost is said to haunt the dorms. It's said that she fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake. But the girls don't really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about one another. When Tash's friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, the routines of the school seem darker and more alien than ever before. Tash must try to stay alive—and sane—while she uncovers what's really going on.Darkly hilarious, Oligarchy is Heathers for the digital age, a Prep populated with the teenage children of the European elite, exploring youth, power, and affluence. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of these privileged young women, in all their triviality and magnitude, seeking acceptance and control in a manipulative world.
£14.41
Counterpoint This Town Sleeps
Book SynopsisA “tender, suspenseful, irresistible first novel” that explores Indigenous legend, queer relationship, and the power of landscape and lineage to shape our lives (Louise Erdrich, author of The Round House). An unsolved murder becomes the fixation of an Indigenous American man living in far northern Minnesota as he grapples with his relationship with a closeted white man. On an Ojibwe reservation called Languille Lake, within the small town of Geshig at the hub of the rez, two men enter into a secret romance. Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties gay Ojibwe man, begins a relationship with his former classmate Shannon, a heavily closeted white man. While Marion is far more open about his sexuality, neither is immune to the realities of the lives of gay men in small towns and closed societies. Then one night, while roaming the dark streets of Geshig, Marion unknowingly brings to life the spirit of a dog from beneath the elementary school playground. The mysterious revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered at the age of seventeen and whose presence still lingers in the memories of the townsfolk. While investigating the fallen hero’s death, Marion discovers family connections and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the secret to unraveling the mystery he has found himself in. “Elegant and gritty, angry and funny . . . emotional without being sentimental.” —Tommy Orange, author of There, There
£14.41
Counterpoint The Center of Everything: A Novel
Book SynopsisSet against the wild beauty of Montana as a woman attempts to heal from a devastating accident, this generational saga from the award-winning author of The Widow Nash is a heartfelt examination of how the deep bonds of family echo throughout our lives.For Polly, the small town of Livingston, Montana, is a land charmed by raw, natural beauty and a network of family that extends back generations. But the summer of 2002 finds Polly at a crossroads: a recent head injury has scattered her perception of the present, bringing to the surface events from thirty years ago and half a country away. As Polly''s many relatives arrive for a family reunion during the Fourth of July holiday, a beloved friend goes missing on the Yellowstone River, dredging up strange memories for a family well acquainted with tragedy. Search parties comb the river as carefully as Polly combs her mind, and over the course of one fateful week, Polly arrives at a deeper understanding of herself and her larger-than-life relatives. Weaving together the past and the present, from the shores of Long Island Sound to the landscape of Montana, The Center of Everything examines with profound insight the nature of the human condition: the memories and touchstones that make up a life, and the loves and losses we must endure along the way.
£15.26
Paraclete Press Chasing Rome
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£19.95
Soho Press Inc Lady Joker, Volume 2
Book Synopsis“A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts.”—Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory PoliceThis second half of Lady Joker, by Kaoru Takamura, the Grand Dame of Japanese crime fiction, concludes the breathtaking saga introduced in Volume I. Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the professionals we have watched try to fight their way through this crisis will lose everything—some even their lives. Will the culprits ever be brought to justice? More importantly—what is justice?
£17.06
Algonquin Books Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?
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£14.36
Algonquin Books Creatures
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£13.56
Algonquin Books Big Girl, Small Town
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£14.41
Algonquin Books Silence Is a Sense
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£14.41
Algonquin Books Hot Stew
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£14.41
Workman Publishing The Museum of Failures
Book SynopsisAuthor of Reese's Book Club pick Honor and the bestselling The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar returns with a powerful new story about family secrets, a mother's power, and the importance of forgiveness. Remy left India for the United States long ago, taking his resentment for his mother with him. He has now returned with his wife to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl -- and to see his elderly mother for the first time in many years. Discovering that she is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life, he is struck with guilt for not realizing just how sick she has been and for not seeing to her care. His return and assiduous attention brings her back to life, and Remy is able to settle her back at home. In the process, he finds a note from his late, adored father, opening the door to shocking long-held family secrets which he is only now able to unravel, thus finding a path of empathy towards his mother and a new vision of the father he had idolized. As his mother begins to communicate again, Remy must re-evaluate his entire childhood, his relationship to his parents, and his harsh judgment on the decisions and events long hidden from him, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. But even more, he must learn to forgive others for their failures. In a heart wrenching story of family secrets and how we move beyond them in order to heal, Umrigar reminds us that no matter how things appear, forgiveness comes from realizing that the people we love are fallible and are usually trying to do their best, in the most difficult situations.
£19.80
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Farewell, Ghosts
Book SynopsisThis award-winning novel about a woman facing her past introduces Terranova to English-speaking audiences. Translated by Ann Goldstein, translator of Elena Ferrante''s Neapolitan quartet.Finalist, Premio Strega, 2019 Winner, Premio Alassio Centolibri Selected among the 10 Best Italian Books of 2018 by Corriere della SeraIda is a married woman in her late thirties, who lives in Rome and works at a radio station. Her mother wants to renovate the family apartment in Messina, to put it up for sale and asks her daughter to sort through her things--to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Surrounded by the objects of her past, Ida is forced to deal with the trauma she experienced as a girl, twenty-three years earlier, when her father left one morning, never to return. The fierce silences between mother and daughter, the unbalanced friendships that leave her emotionally drained, the sense of an identity based on anomaly, even the relationship with her husband, everything revolves around the figure of her absent father. Mirroring herself in that absence, Ida has grown up into a woman dominated by fear, suspicious of any form of desire. However, as her childhood home besieges her with its ghosts, Ida will have to find a way to break the spiral and let go of her father finally. Beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein, who also translated Elena Ferrante''s Neapolitan quartet, Farewell, Ghosts is a poetic and intimate novel about what it means to build one''s own identity.
£16.11
Graywolf Press She Would Be King
Book SynopsisA novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and historya dazzling retelling of Liberia's formationWayétu Moore's powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia's early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.Moore's intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. If she was not a woman, the wind says of Gbessa, she would be king. In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.
£14.40
Graywolf Press,U.S. Space Invaders: A Novel
Book SynopsisSpace Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella’s braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella’s father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of Estrella after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friends - from her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Riquelme - were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it. They could control only the stories they told one another and the “ghostly green bullets” they fired in the video game they played obsessively. One of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, Nona Fernández effortlessly builds a choral voice and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.
£999.99
Graywolf Press,U.S. The Colonel's Wife: A Novel
Book SynopsisAt once complex and hideous, sexually liberated and sympathetic to the darkest of political movements, the narrator describes her childhood as the daughter of a member of the right-wing Finnish Whites before World War II, and the way she became involved with and eventually married the Colonel, who was thirty years her senior. During the war, he came and went as they fraternized with the Nazi elite and retreated together into the deepest northern wilds. As both the marriage and the war turn increasingly dark and destructive, Rosa Liksom renders a complex and unsavory character in a prose style that is striking in its paradoxical beauty. The Colonel’s Wife is both a brilliant portrayal of an individual psychology and a stark warning about the perils of nationalism.
£12.34
Graywolf Press Little Constructions
Book SynopsisThe darkly comic second novel from the author of the Man Booker Prize winner Milkman, now available in the United StatesIn the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard, the Doe clan, a close-knit family of criminals and victims, has the run of the place. Yet there are signs that patriarch John Doe's reign may be coming to an end. When Jetty Doe breaks into a gun store and makes off with a Kalashnikov, the stage is set for a violent confrontation. But while Jetty is making her way across town in a taxi, an elusive, chatty narrator takes us on a wild journey, zooming in and out on various members of the Doe clan with long, digressive riffs that chase down the causes and repercussions of Jetty's act.Before Milkman took the world by storm after winning the Man Booker Prize, Anna Burns had already honed her distinctive voice. In her second novel, Little Constructions, she exhibits the same linguistic brio, coruscating wit, and scintillating insight into men, women, and the roots of violence. A wickedly funny novel that swoops and spirals as it examines the long shadow of abuse and violent crime, Little Constructions explores what transpires when unspeakable realities, long hidden from view, can no longer be denied.
£14.40
Graywolf Press Tropic of Violence
Book SynopsisA potent novel about lost youth and migration by the author of The Last Brother and Waiting for TomorrowMarie, a nurse in Mayotte, a far-flung, tropical department of France in the Indian Ocean, adopts a baby abandoned at birth by his mother, a refugee from Comoros. She names him Moise and raises him as her own-and she avoids his increasing questions about his origins as he grows up. When Marie suddenly dies, thirteen-year-old Moise is left completely alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil. In a state of panic, he runs away from home, and sets himself on a collision course with the gangs of Gaza, the largest and most infamous slum on the island.Nathacha Appanah has deftly assembled a small chorus of voices who narrate the heartbreak, violence, and injustice of life in Mayotte. To Marie's and Moise's perspectives she adds those of Bruce, a terrifying gang leader; Olivier, a police officer fighting a losing battle; and Stephane, the naive aid worker whose efforts to help Moise only make him more vulnerable.Tropic of Violence shines a powerful light on the particular deprivation and isolation in this forgotten and neglected part of France. At the same time, it is a moving portrayal of the desperation and inequality that are driving refugee crises across the world, and of the innocent children whose lives are being torn apart in their wake. This is a remarkable, unsettling new novel from one of the most exciting voices in world literature.
£13.60
Graywolf Press The Fallen
Book SynopsisA vibrant and meticulously constructed debut novel about familial and cultural breakdownA powerful, unsettling portrait of family life in Cuba, Carlos Manuel Álvarez?s first novel 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 as he endures compulsory military service. Mariana, the mother, is unwell, prone to mysterious seizures, and forced to relinquish control over the household to her daughter, Maria, who has left school and is working as a chambermaid in a state-owned tourist hotel. The father, Armando, is a committed revolutionary, a die-hard Fidelista who is sickened by the corruption he perceives all around him. As each member of the family narrates seemingly quotidian and overlapping events, they grow increasingly at odds for reasons that remain elusive to them?each of them holding and concealing their own secrets.In meticulously charting the disintegration of a single 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. This is a startling and incisive debut by a radiant new voice in Latin American literature.
£13.60
Graywolf Press The Silk Road
Book SynopsisA spellbinding novel about transience and mortality, by one of the most original voices in American literatureThe Silk Road begins on a mat in yoga class, deep within a labyrinth on a settlement somewhere in the icy north, under the canny guidance of Jee Moon. When someone fails to arise from corpse pose, the Astronomer, the Archivist, the Botanist, the Keeper, the Topologist, the Geographer, the Iceman, and the Cook remember the paths that brought them therepaths on which they still seem to be traveling.The Silk Road also begins in rivalrous skirmishing for favor, in the protected Eden of childhood, and it ends in the harrowing democracy of mortality, in sickness and loss and death. Kathryn Davis's sleight of hand brings the past, present, and future forward into brilliant coexistence; in an endlessly shifting landscape, her characters make their way through ruptures, grief, and apocalypse, from existence to nonexistence, from embodiment to pure spirit.Since the beginning of her extraordinary career, Davis has been fascinated by journeys. Her books have been shaped around road trips, walking tours, hegiras, exiles: and now, in this triumphant novel, a pilgrimage. The Silk Road is her most explicitly allegorical novel and also her most profound vehicle; supple and mesmerizing, the journey here is not undertaken by a single protagonist but by a community of separate soulsa family, a yoga class, a generation. Its revelations are ravishing and desolating.
£13.60
Graywolf Press Silence Is My Mother Tongue
Book SynopsisA sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political FictionOn a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos.For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice.With this cast of complex, beautifully drawn characters, Sulaiman Addonia details the textures and rhythms of everyday life in a refugee camp, and questions what it means to be an individual when one has lost all that makes a home or a future. Intimate and subversive, Silence Is My Mother Tongue dissects the ways society wages war on women and explores the stories we must tell to survive in a broken, inhospitable environment.
£14.40
Graywolf Press The Discomfort of Evening
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEA stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literatureTen-year-old Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world: her face soft like cheese under her mother?s hands; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of ?blush words? that aren?t in the Bible.One icy morning, the disciplined rhythm of her family?s life is ruptured by a tragic accident, and Jas is convinced she is to blame. As her parents? suffering makes them increasingly distant, Jas and her siblings develop a curiosity about death that leads them into disturbing rituals and fantasies. Cocooned in her red winter coat, Jas dreams of ?the other side? and of salvation, not knowing where this dreaming will finally lead her.A bestseller in the Netherlands, Lucas Rijneveld?s radical debut novel The Discomfort of Evening offers readers a rare vision of rural and religious life in the Netherlands. In it, he asks: In the absence of comfort and care, what can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when that is not enough? With stunning psychological acuity and images of haunting, violent beauty, Rijneveld has created a captivating world of language unlike any other.
£14.40
Graywolf Press,U.S. Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories
Book SynopsisIn this madcap, insatiably inventive, bravura story collection, Julián Herbert brings to vivid life people who struggle to retain a measure of sanity in an insane world. Here we become acquainted with a vengeful "personal memories coach" who tries to get even with his delinquent clients; a former journalist with a cocaine habit who travels through northern Mexico impersonating a famous author of Westerns; the ghost of Juan Rulfo; a man who discovers music in his teeth; and, in the deliriously pulpy title story, a drug lord who looks just like Quentin Tarantino, who kidnaps a mopey film critic to discuss Tarantino's films while he sends his goons to find and kill the doppelgänger that has colonized his consciousness. Herbert's astute observations about human nature in extremis feel like the reader's own revelations. The antic and often dire stories in Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino depict the violence and corruption that plague Mexico today, but they are also deeply ruminative and layered explorations of the narrative impulse and the ethics of art making. Herbert asks: Where are the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person (and a country) take? The stories in this explosive collection showcase the fevered imagination of a significant contemporary writer.
£14.40
Graywolf Press Wild Swims: Stories
Book Synopsis
£13.50
