Search results for ""europa editions (uk) ltd""

Motherless and 16, Marigold is the headmaster's daughter at a private all-boys school, where she hurdles headlong out of her own head and into the seething cauldron of adolescence: impossible crushes, intimidating girls, and a fair share of awkwardness.

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Justine is 21 years old and has lived with her grandparents and cousin Jules since the death of her parents. She works as a carer at a retirement home and spends her days listening to her residents' stories.After bonding with Hélène, an almost 100-year-old resident, the two women slowly reveal their stories to one another. Whilst Justine helps Hélène to relive her memories of love and war, Hélène encourages Justine to confront the secrets of her own past, and the loss she has buried deep within.One day, trouble arrives in the form of a mysterious phone call that shakes the retirement home to its core and uncovers a shocking revelation. At once humorous and melancholic, Valérie Perrin's debut novel is a story of how the past can shape our present, and the scars of undeclared love.

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Eighty years ago, at the end of a devastating fratricidal war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, completely dependent on the United States for security and development. Today it's the tenth economy in the world, dynamic and innovative, a lively and participatory democracy that sits at the table of the great powers. Hallyu the Korean wave of contemporary entertainment has reached every corner of the world.This rapid, astonishing transformation inevitably brought with it rifts and contradictions. If global youth look at Korea as previous generations looked at Hollywood and New York, young Koreans, on the other hand, view it as Hell Joseon: an aging country, an economic system dominated by powerful families, with a fiercely competitive education system, a wide generational gap, and, at the centre of it all, the role of women - one of the keys that The Passenger has chosen to decipher a complex, fascinating country, central to the dynamics of the contemporary

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Ravishing and provocative.Olivia Laing *** Stunning and powerful.André AcimanThe example of the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who lived a dog's life, sleeping, teaching, having sex in the public square, sets the tone for this extraordinary, genre-bending memoir. Posing crucial questions about what drives certain individuals to risk physical suffering in the name of freedom, Bite Your Friends also asks what we ourselves might learn from such examples to become braver, more authentic individuals.From a Roman amphitheatre in the 4th century, where martyrs are fed to wild beasts, to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s and the programmatic defiance of groups like Pussy Riot, this sinuous and illuminating mix of memoir and social history explores the lives of uncommonly brave men and womensaints, philosophers, artistswho have used their own wounded or stigmatized bodies to challenge society's mores and entrenched power structures. Running through her narrati

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In October 1502 the powerful Cesare Borgia was preparing to invade the Florentine Republic. Niccolò Machiavelli, an official of the Republic, is sent to Borgia's court to spy on him. 33 years old, he has a nice pen, but he's not famous. He cheats on his wife avidly, and he''s deep into debts. He''s seen as trusted and useful, but he''s kept on the sidelines.A complex relationship is created between Machiavelli and Borgia. The Duke needs someone to write a biography to respond to the many slanders circulating about him and he chooses Niccolò to do it. And so Machiavelli not only gains wider access to Borgia's secrets, but also those of Dianora Mambelli, a young woman forced by the Borgias to stay by his side. Attending to both executioner and victim, listening to the Duke's reflections and discovering the hidden truths that Dianora reveals to him, transform Machiavelli and give him the insight that will allow him to become a great writer. And put his own life at risk.

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Welcome to the School of Here, an unsettling and peculiar place that is nonetheless familiar to us all. A place full of codes and unspoken rules that are passed down from year to year. At Here, society is highly stratified: the pairs, friend groups, and outcasts are all ruled by a godlike prince. This year—as all other years—things are not at all as they seem. A self-effacing first-year student vanishes into thin air. A persecuted outsider delivers himself into permanent exile. A tyrannical upperclassman meets his match. A newly-minted prophetess tests her powers. And, behind the scenes, a cabal of students conducts a top-secret investigation into the unexplained phenomenon at the heart of it all. With Here, and Only Here, Christelle Dabos – author of the international sensation The Mirror Visitor Quartet – gives readers an intriguing and penetrating novel that explores the difficulties of fitting in, and the private, individual choices that make up the sometimes abhorrent, always unpredictable collective.

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IN THIS VOLUME: The Sea Between Lands by David Abulalfia; The Liquid Road by Leïla Slimani; The Cold One, the Hot One, the Mad One, and the Angry One by Nick Hunt • plus: the sounds and smells of the Mediterranean; the invention of the Mediterranean diet; and more… The word “Mediterranean” evokes something larger than geography, and has historically marked a distinct cultural space, one where different people have met, traded, and clashed. Today the Mediterranean appears to be in crisis, neglected by the EU, and at the centre of one of the greatest migrations in history. While millions of tourists flock to its shores, hundreds of thousands of people face a dramatic journey in the opposite direction—to escape wars, persecutions, and poverty. The liquid road, as Homer called it, is increasingly militarized, trafficked, and polluted—as well as overheated and overfished. But the Mediterranean remains a source of wonder and fascination—a space not entirely colonized by modernity, where time flows differently, and where multiple cultures and languages are in very close contact and dialogue.

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A gripping, illuminating novel about recent Russian aggressions and the humans caught in the crossfire. One evening in 2015, journalist Pavel Vladimirovich and his wife Tatyana are at home when the news breaks that there has been a terrorist attack. Over a hundred people have been taken hostage in the Church of the Epiphany in the village of Nikolskoye near Moscow. As they watch, on the TV screen appears the face of one of the terrorists: Vadim Petrovich Seryegin, an old friend of Pavel’s. The friendship between the two men evolved through periods of conflict, war, peace, emigration, and isolation. Pavel may be one of Vadim’s only friends, and when others realize this, he is asked to negotiate with Vadim. The Church is horrifyingly silent when Pavel enters. Vadim welcomes Pavel but refuses to capitulate. As the stakes get higher and higher, Vadim’s story including his connection to the wars in Chechnya and the Ukraine is revealed and it becomes clear that the first meeting between the two men was not all it first seemed to be to Pavel. Back in the church, Pavel learns that the terrorists have one and only one demand, and that it concerns the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

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The debut novel from the author of My Brilliant Friend in a brand-new edition Following her mother’s untimely death, Delia sets off on a breath-taking odyssey through the chaotic, suffocating streets of her native Naples in search of the truth about her family. Reality is buried in the fertile soil of memory, and Delia digs deep to reconcile the past with the mysterious events leading up to her mother’s death. Spurred by a series of anonymous phone calls, Delia reconstructs her mother’s final days and with every new discovery must face the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia believed her to be. To learn the truth and to untangle the knot of lies, passions and memories that bind mother and daughter, Delia must return to the Naples of her childhood.

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Adrien, Etienne and Nina are 10 years old when they meet at school and become inseparable. Years later, a car is pulled up from the bottom of a lake, with a body inside. Virginie, a local journalist with an enigmatic past, follows the case. Step by step she reveals the extraordinary bonds that unite the three childhood friends. How is the car wreck connected to their story? Why did their friendship fall apart? Three is a compelling story of love and loss, hope and grief, and of the distance that comes with the passing of time. A masterly crafted story full of suspense and unexpected plot twists. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: “This book owns my soul.” Booksnpenguins – 5* "Valérie Perrin is always a delight." Alexandra Jundler – 5* "A stellar read that I highly recommend." Paromjit Hayers – 5* "I flew threw the pages with Olympic speed!" Michelle Coates – 5* “Three is a totally consuming book that makes it hard to come up for air while reading it.” Jill – 5* "Such a great book, that I found very hard to put down." Mel – 5* "One of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read." Alison – 5* “I’m so dumbstruck by this novel.” June Schwartz – 5*

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We often speak of doctors as heroes, martyrs, or victims. Drawing from forty years of experience on an emergency psychiatric ward, Paolo Milone offers a more complex—and more compelling—picture. He transports us inside Ward 77, where mental illness coexists with the ordinary lives of those who, at the end of their shifts, take their white coats off. In this unsettling, absorbing, and transformative memoir Milone challenges many of our assumptions about mental health, as we follow nurses, doctors, and patients along the hospital corridors, and we enter the shattered lives of those living on both sides of the invisible, arbitrary boundary, that separates the healthy from the sick. Told with humour and compassion, Paolo Milone’s English language debut is a work of striking humanity that conjures lasting beauty out of the darkness.

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An award-winning urban thriller full of rage and raw emotion In a small town just like any other, a police identity check goes wrong. The victim, Saïd, was fifteen years old. And now he is dead. Mattia is just eleven years old, and witnesses the hatred and sadness felt by those around him. While he didn’t know Saïd, his face can be seen all over the neighbourhood, graffitied on walls in red paint, demanding “Justice”. Mattia decides to pull together the pieces of the puzzle, to try to understand what happened. Because even the dead don’t stay buried forever, and nothing is lost, ever.

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The dazzling finale of the international bestselling series: The Mirror Visitor “The Mirror Visitor stands on the same shelf as Harry Potter.”—Elle Magazine. “Strange and compelling.”—The Guardian “World-building on an epic scale.”—The Bookseller “Thrilling, unpredictable and disconcerting. This dense finale will leave no reader indifferent.”—Master Edition Strasbourg In the closing volume of her thrilling saga, Christelle Dabos transports us back to her wonderful fantasy world. Readers will be gripped by the all too human trials and tribulations of the protagonists. Ophelia and Thorn brave a complex universe fraught with allegories, in their quest to uncover the truth. As the walls of mistrust that stood between them lay in ruins, Ophelia and Thorn fall in love. However, they must keep their love a secret and continue their investigation into God’s code and the mysterious figure called the Other, and its devastating powers of destruction. But how will they find it, without even knowing what it looks like? More united than ever Ophelia and Thorn arrive at the Deviations Observatory. Here, behind an apparently benign façade, is a laboratory where terrifying, cruel experiments are conducted. Will the lovers discover the truth they’ve been searching for, and will they be able to bring balance back to the world of the Arcs?

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"Timeless, vivid and utterly essential." Fergal Keane, author of The Madness AN AWARD WINNING NOVEL FOLLOWING THREE GENERATIONS TORN APART BY THE TUTSI GENOCIDE Blanche returns to Rwanda after building a life in Bordeaux with her husband and young son, Stokely. Reuniting with her mother Immaculata, old wounds are reopened for both mother and daughter while Stokely, caught between two countries, tries to understand where he comes from and where he belongs. Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse’s unforgettable debut novel follows three generations torn apart by the genocide against the Tutsis, as they try to reconnect with one another, rebuild broken links and find their place in today’s world. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING "Beautiful and breath-taking." Lizzy on Netgalley "This is a book to read and re-read." Jo Ann on Goodreads "This book was intense and filled me with emotion... Truly memorable and lyrical." Rachel on Netgalley "Raw, heartfelt and full of pain [with] so many poetic and spine tingling quotes." Sharmila on Netgalley "A literary feat through and through." Thomas on Goodreads "I just can't recommend it enough." Kacey on Netgalley "A beautiful and heartbreaking book." Elizabeth on Goodreads

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An urgent, stirring reflection on violence and morality. “Recalcati explores the most fundamental of questions—for Cain, Abel, and every human being: can we believe in love?”—La Stampa What lies at the foundation of human history and life in a society? According to Massimo Recalcati, it is not the sentiment of love for one’s neighbour preached by Jesus in the Gospels but the brutal hatred and violence depicted in the story of Cain and Abel. As timely as it is brilliant, this essay examines Cain’s murderous act through the lens of psychoanalysis, showing how delusions of self-sufficiency and individual perfection lie at the deepest roots of fear and violence in our societies. True completeness can only be achieved through others—not despite them. This, argues Recalcati, is the lesson of Cain, one that resonates powerfully in our time. Praise for Recalcati’s A Night in Gethsemane: “A book that reads in less than two hours but stays with you forever.”—Il Foglio “Lively and sharp . . . An invitation to look positively at the loneliness of human experience.”—Lettera

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“Schulman delivers the known world in startling new sounds, colours, tastes and smells.”—New York Times Sunday Book Review It is 1965 and Cora, a deaf young woman, buys a one-way ticket to the island of St Thomas, where she discovers four dolphins held in captivity, part of an experiment led by an obsessive Dr Bloom. Drawn by a strong connection to the dolphins, untrained Cora falls in with the scientists to protect the animals. Recognising Cora's knack for communication, Bloom uses her for what will turn into one of the most fascinating experiments in modern science: an attempt to teach the dolphins human language. As the experiment progresses, Cora forges a remarkable bond with the creatures that leads to a clash with the male-dominated world of science, threatening to engulf the experiment as Cora’s fight to save the dolphins becomes a battle to save herself. For fans of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

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Clash of Civilisations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio tells the story of the immigrant tenants of a building in Rome, who offer skewed accounts of a murder. In this award-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author Amara Lakhous, each character takes his or her turn centre-stage, “giving evidence,” recounting his or her story―the dramas of emigration, the daily equivocations of immigration, the fears and misunderstandings of a life spent on society’s margins, abused by mainstream culture’s fears and indifference, preconceptions and insensitivity. What emerges is a touching story that is common to us all, whether we live in Rome, London or in Los Angeles. "The author's real subject is the heave and crush of modern, polyglot Rome, and he renders the jabs of everyday speech with such precision that the novel feels exclaimed rather than written."―THE NEW YORKER

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SHORTLISTED: THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLISTED: WOMENS' PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 A NOVEL OF DEVASTATING BEAUTY SET IN BUCHENWALD DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR "A powerful and disturbing study in terrible lies and the human need to believe them." ANNIE PROULX Moving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn’t nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind and life in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them is the looming presence of a work camp. Frau Hahn’s husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has been assigned as the camp’s administrator. When Frau Hahn’s poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber, her naïve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged. A decade earlier, Dr Weber had invented a machine believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might save a life. A tour de force about the evils of obliviousness, Remote Sympathy compels us to question our continuing and wilful ability to look the other way in a world that is in thrall to the idea that everything–even facts and morals–is relative.

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“Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, De Gregorio takes a true story and reveals what life cannot. Extraordinary.”–Grazia Irina’s life with her husband and her twin daughters is orderly. An Italian living in Switzerland, she works as a lawyer. One day, something breaks. The marriage ends without apparent trauma, but on a weekend seemingly like any other, the girls’ father takes Alessia and Livia away with him. They disappear. A few days later the man takes his own life. Of the girls, there is no trace. Concita De Gregorio takes the unadorned, terrible facts of this true story and embodies the protagonist’s voice. In a narrative that is fast and urgent, she unravels these traumatic events to tell the story of a mother bereft of her children – a state for which there is no word. An urgently told story and a fierce portrait of a woman in all her frailty and courage, The Missing Word delves deep into Irina’s thoughts and memories as she grasps at the shreds of truth and, piece by piece, stitches her life back together.

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***LONGLISTED: THE HWA GOLD CROWN 2021*** ***A Sunday Times BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021: "An ambitious, epic debut."*** ***A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*** A Times BOOK OF THE MONTH: "Beautifully written and profoundly insightful." “A memorable tapestry of politics, religion and conflicting human desires.” —The Sunday Times “Cathedral is a masterpiece, one of the best historical novels I’ve read in a long time. Spellbinding and so evocative of place and time. A triumph.”—Dan Jones "Fascinating, fun, and gripping to the very end."—Roddy Doyle A sweeping story about obsession, mysticism, art, and earthly desire. At the centre of this story, is the Cathedral. Its design and construction in the 12th and 13th centuries in the fictional town of Hagenburg unites a vast array of unforgettable characters whose fortunes are inseparable from the shifting political factions and economic interests vying for supremacy. From the bishop to his treasurer to local merchants and lowly stonecutters, everyone, even the town’s Jewish denizens, is implicated and affected by the slow rise of Hagenburg’s Cathedral, which in no way enforces morality or charity. Around this narrative core, Ben Hopkins has constructed his own monumental edifice, a choral novel that is rich with the vicissitudes of mercantilism, politics, religion, and human enterprise. Ambitious, immersive, a remarkable feat of imagination, Cathedral deftly combines historical fiction, the literary novel of ideas, and a tale of adventure and intrigue. Fans of authors like Umberto Eco, Elif Shafak, Hilary Mantel, Ken Follett and Jose Saramago will delight at the atmosphere, the beautiful prose, and the vivid characters of Ben Hopkins’s Cathedral.

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***A TIME MAGAZINE, LITHUB, WHITE REVIEW BEST BOOK OF 2021*** "200 pages of serious entertainment." ―The Times The Life of the Mind opens with Dorothy sitting on a library toilet, checking her phone and examining the “thick, curdled knots of string” coming out of her body. No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s had a miscarriage, not even her therapists–Dorothy has two of them. An adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy’s stuck, unable to envision the future or cut ties with the past. “What did you call it,” she asks herself, “when a life stopped developing, but it didn’t end?” Christine Smallwood’s debut is a campus novel like no other. Piercingly intelligent and darkly hilarious, it moves from a classroom to an underwater puppet show, from a conference in Las Vegas to a karaoke party. It is a discomforting glimpse into the head of a brilliant woman on the edge, it is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies.

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The true story of an incredible journey and the master-apprentice relationship. Moving and inspiring. This is the extraordinary account of a “magical” but also very real encounter between a young boy and a martial arts teacher. Their meeting becomes the starting point of a life studded with dramatic fights, spiritual enlightenment, friendship and betrayal, victories and defeats. At the end of the sixties in old Genoa an Italian child meets an old Chinese man working as a carpenter. Behind his craft, the man hides a life of conflict, escapes and mystery. Sensing little Paolo’s determination and talent, he subjects him to arduous training to temper his character and teach him the path to inner balance. Still a young man, Paolo travels to China, a country then still very much closed off to Westerners. There he will overcome demanding trials, face battles in which he will risk his life, and overcome tough physical and spiritual tests. Young Paolo will also gain amazing experiences, forge invaluable friendships, and eventually become one of the best-known martial arts teachers today.

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A SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In a disturbingly familiar parallel world, a small population of tiny, semi-aquatic humans known as lambdas has quietly lived in the capital for decades. When a school bombing is claimed by an unknown faction of their community, everything changes. Meet Cara Gray, anarchist-turned-surveillance officer, who is trialling an application that will render her life as a novel. Experience a world of government agents made of slime mould protein, dubious quantum computers, and sentient toothbrushes.

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SHORTLISTED: THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLISTED: WOMENS' PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 A NOVEL OF DEVASTATING BEAUTY SET IN BUCHENWALD DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR "A powerful and disturbing study in terrible lies and the human need to believe them." ANNIE PROULX Moving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn’t nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind and life in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them is the looming presence of a work camp. Frau Hahn’s husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has been assigned as the camp’s administrator. When Frau Hahn’s poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber, her naïve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged. A decade earlier, Dr Weber had invented a machine believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might save a life. A tour de force about the evils of obliviousness, Remote Sympathy compels us to question our continuing and wilful ability to look the other way in a world that is in thrall to the idea that everything–even facts and morals–is relative.

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Absolutely gripping from start to finish… a really stunning book. —Victoria Hislop Ties is the story of a marriage. Like many marriages, this one has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in Vanda and Aldo's marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. Their marriage is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact. Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award The Strega.

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When our heroine Ophelia is promoted to Vice-storyteller by Farouk, the ancestral Spirit of Pole, she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight. Now that her powers—and the threat they present to the secretive denizens of this new world—are known to all, she is forced to reveal the nefarious plots that have been brewing beneath the golden rafters of Citaceleste and to throw herself into the political machinations of the Pole. In this perilous situation, the only person she may be able to trust is Thorn, her enigmatic fiancé. As one after another influential courtier vanishes in suspicious circumstances, Ophelia again finds herself unintentionally implicated in an investigation that will lead her to see beyond Pole’s many illusions to the heart of the formidable truth.

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18M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide “Stunning… the raging, torrential voice of the author is something rare.” — The New York Times THE BREAK-OUT NOVEL BY THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman’s headlong descent into what she calls an “absence of sense” after being abandoned by her husband. Olga’s “days of abandonment” become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. When she finds herself trapped inside the four walls of her apartment in the middle of a summer heat wave, Olga is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal again.“Ferrante puts hammer to flesh and invites her reader to penetrate the page.” — Financial Times“Extraordinary.” — The London Review of Books

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October 1812, Napoleon enters Moscow. The Russians have set fire to the city, soon it will be reduced to a pile of ash. The Emperor equivocates, decides to turn back. This is the beginning of the retreat from Russia, a page of history that has become legendary for its degree of suffering and horror, but also for the heroic acts that took place.Two hundred years later, Sylvain Tesson, accompanied by four friends (two Russians and two French), decides to follow the route of the retreat. Perched on two Soviet Ural sidecar motorcycles, they will rejoin Paris from Moscow, guided only by the spectres of the two hundred thousand soldiers who died through cold, starvation, and in battle. Twenty five hundred miles travelled in a wild escapade to salute the ghosts of history, across the white plains of Russia.

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“It is to the Greeks that we turn when we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of our own age.”—Virginia WoolfDiscover a new passion for a very old language, a language that can express what can’t be said in any other, and thrillingly relevant to our lives today. A language that rewards desire by giving its own modal verb; bequeaths lovers a special case beyond singular and plural; prioritises mindfulness and dynamic presence through its very own grammar. A language that can transform our relationship to time and to those around us.A love song to the language of the greatest poets, philosophers, adventurers, lovers, and generals that ever lived. In Marcolongo’s words: “Greek has been the longest and most beautiful romance of my life.” Whether or not readers are familiar with ancient Greek, they will find Marcolongo’s boundless enthusiasm for her subject utterly infectious.

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Volume 1 of The Mirror Visitor Quartet

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“Massimo Cuomo’s writing, not the protagonist’s beauty, is what’s truly wonderful about this book.” - Coooperazione “Intense, engaging, psychologically deep. Beautiful lives up to its title.” - Ex Libris “With this Márquezian novel Massimo Cuomo outdid himself.” - Corriere del Veneto A magical tale of love and rivalry between two brothers. Miguel is beautiful. His beauty is so rare and miraculous that it has made him the object of cult-like devotion in the city. Santiago, his older brother, watches with a mix of admiration and disquiet the prodigious effect that Miguel’s looks have on his mother and father, on passersby, their neighbours, and the droves of female suitors that follow him everywhere. With Miguel constantly under the spotlight, Santiago is left to inhabit darker, hidden places, from where he will finally learn that life is not easy for anyone, even his prodigiously handsome brother. Set in Mexico, this story shines at every turn with the colours and mythical light of magical realism. The conflict between brothers, the role of the parents, the loves, the violence, the journeys are presented with realism and deep psychological insight yet possess an aura of legend. Disappointments, flights, regrets, reunions, goodbyes, epiphanies make up this story, as we follow the two brothers, and the people around them—all forever marked, each in their own way, by their extraordinary encounter with Beauty. “In contemporary Italian literature, never has the theme of the close-knit yet ambivalent relationship between two brothers been addressed with such clarity, depth, and ability to bring to light the conflict raging within each soul.” - Avvenire

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***SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD (2022), ILLUSTRATED TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR*** The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, and reportage from around the world. Its aim, to break down barriers and introduce the essence of the place. Packed with essays and investigative journalism; original photography and illustrations; charts, and unusual facts and observations, each volume offers a unique insight into a different culture, and how history has shaped the place into what it is today. Brimming with intricate research and enduring wonder, The Passenger is a love-letter to global travel. IN THIS VOLUME, Arundhati Roy, Prem Shankar Jha, Tishani Doshi explore the contradictory, terrible and joyful chaos that lies at the heart of India. From its very first contact with the West, India has been subject to great mystification as the survival of ancient rituals, and its variety of languages and cultures, continues to fascinate the world. This narrative is intertwined with a newer one that sees the frenetic change of a society at the forefront of innovation. Success stories coexist alongside stories of daily struggle. A large slice of the population still does not have access to drinking water, and agriculture (still the main source of livelihood for most of the 1.3 billion people who live there) is threatened by climate change. India is a country that does not know how to eradicate one of the most infamous forms of classism/racism: the caste system. From the resistance of the Kashmiri people to that of atheists – hated by all religious communities – from the dances of the ‘hijra’ in Koovagam to the success of the female wrestler Vinesh Phogat, learn about the contradictory, terrible and joyful chaos that lies at the heart of India.

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OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE The Story of a New Name, the second book of the Neapolitan Quartet, picks up the story where My Brilliant Friend left off. Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighbourhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.

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Shadowplay by New York Times best-selling author, Joseph OâConnor, is set during the golden age of West End theater in a London shaken by the crimes of Jack the Ripper.

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Imagine a child, a daydreamer, always gazing out of the window.His grandmother, busy in the kitchen, keeps an eye on him.The child stares at a balcony on the opposite building, watching the black-haired girl as she dances her reckless dance. For a love like this, a child can push himself to extreme feats. He can turn into explorer or cabin boy, cowboy or castaway; he can fight duels to the death, or even master an unfamiliar language.His grandmother is not articulate, but does not lack imagination, and her love for the boy is immeasurable. She tells him about the entrance to the underworld, engraving indelible images in her nephew's mind.An irresistible book, as sharp as the swords of fantasy hidden under the bed, as precious as a family jewel, in which the discovery of love and the discovery of death follow each other, marking the end of childhood.

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"Only Ms. Kashimada can create this kind of world."—Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police (on Touring the Land of the Dead) A housewife finds herself haunted by visions of a mushroom cloud. She abruptly leaves her husband and son to travel alone to the city of Nagasaki, where she soon begins an affair with a young Russian-Japanese man. Inspired by Marguerite Duras’s screenplay for “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” this novel is an undeniable demonstration of Kashimada’s distinctive voice, the polish and precision of her literary style, and her dedication to plumbing the depths of her characters’ psychology. Thrilling and poised in equal measure, dealing with the travails of history, with gendered identity, and with the tension between private and public selves, Love at Six Thousand Degrees is a literary highwire act by one of the most unique voices in contemporary Japanese fiction.

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A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - VOGUE, BuzzFeed, LitHub "A bold, promising debut." MARY GAITSKILL *** "Thoughtful, savage" RAVEN LEILANI *** "Radical, daring and bracing" SHEILA HETI If sex is a truth-teller, Eve—a young, queer woman in Brooklyn—is looking for answers. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia, the charismatic Nathan—and soon the three begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her. As each act of the affair unfolds, Eve is left to ask: to whom is she responsible? And to what extent do our desires determine who we are? In the way that only great fiction can, Acts of Service takes between its teeth the contradictions written all over our ideas of sex and sexuality. As incisive as it is exhilarating, this novel asks us to face our ideas about desire and power: what sex means to us, the forces that shape it, and how we find—or lose—ourselves in intimacy. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, it might be the most thought-provoking book you read all year.

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The Republic of the Congo, 1964. A young man is facing a firing squad, preparing for his last moment on Earth. He reflects on his childhood with a distant mother, and the moments which have led to him finding himself staring death in the face. Patrick Nothomb is a young diplomat, aged 28, when he is taken hostage with thousands of others in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) by rebels. Over the course of four months, Nothomb has negotiated with his captors each and every day, saving the lives of 1500 citizens. Inspired by the life of her father, who died at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, Amélie Nothomb slips into his shoes to give voice to his story.

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“These books are so rich and engrossing that it is rewarding to read them even when one is stuck at home.” –The TLS “[The Passenger] has a strong focus on storytelling, with pages given over to a mix of essays, playlists and sideways glances at subcultures and thorny urban issues.” –MONOCLE “Half-magazine, half-book . . . think of [The Passenger] as an erudite and literary travel equivalent to National Geographic, with stunning photography and illustration and fascinating writing about place.” –Independent.ie (Best series of the year – 2021) The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, and reportage from around the world. Its aim, to break down barriers and introduce the essence of the place. Packed with essays and investigative journalism; original photography and illustrations; charts, and unusual facts and observations, each volume offers a unique insight into a different culture, and how history has shaped the place into what it is today. IN THIS VOLUME: Lovestruck in Barcelona by Enrique Vila-Matas • Supermanza 503 by Gabi Martinez • The Great Barcelona Novel by Miqui Otero • and more Thirty years after the 1992 Olympics, which redefined the city’s contemporary identity and changed its destiny, The Passenger travels to Barcelona to understand the history and future of one of the cradles of political, cultural, and urban change in Europe. From the debate about the impact of mass tourism to the search of new and sustainable models of economic and social development; from the eternal rivalry with Madrid to the rediscovery of the city’s rich tradition of political activism: this volume of The Passenger offers a panoramic view of a city striving to trace a new path forward out of the current crisis, and find a way of life centred on the well-being of its citizens.

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“Captivating and entertaining.”—Sololibri “Alan Gillot tells the universal story of a new beginning.”—La Repubblica “A novel that shows how when life comes knocking, it cannot be ignored.”—ThrillerNord Antoine is a script doctor: a high-flying consultant hired to cut the script of a movie before it’s green-lighted. Called to a film set on the Côte d'Azur, he casually cancels the role young hopeful Emma was cast in. When she confronts him, her words – and actions – impart a few home-truths. Antoine chases after Emma to apologise. Little does he know that from then on, he won’t be able to return to his old colourless life. At Emma’s side, Antoine embarks on an unexpected journey through a provincial France he’s never seen before, right into the bizarre, exciting world of her eccentric family and the itinerant theatre company she belongs to. A love story and a road movie, this charming tale proclaims the need to overcome our fears and reach out to others.

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