Search results for ""Europa Editions""

"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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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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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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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, Peter Schneider, Cees Nooteboom, Vincenzo Latronico among other German writers tell of a youthful city that doesn’t cling to its “poor but sexy” past. “Berlin is too big for Berlin” is the curious title of a book by the flaneur Hanns Zischler, who joked about the low population density of a city so spread-out and polycentric—one of the reasons why it still inspires feelings of freedom and space. But the phrase also carries a symbolic, broader meaning: how can a single city encompass and sustain such a weighty mythology as that of contemporary Berlin, “the capital of cool”? In order to find out, it is necessary to go back to the origins of today’s Berlin, when time seemed to have stopped. The scars of a century of war were still visible everywhere: coal stoves, crumbling buildings, desolate minimarts, not a working buzzer or elevator. To visit the city then was a hallucinatory experience, a simultaneous journey into the past and into the future. The city’s youth seemed to have appropriated—and turned into a positive—the famous phrase pronounced by Karl Scheffler at the beginning of the 20th century: “Berlin is a place doomed to always become, never be.”

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Grief is universal and eternal, yet how we deal with itâor how it deals with usâdepends on who is grieving, when, and with whom.

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Daniel queer is a journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meagre. He has no relationships outside of sexual ones, and can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly father, Daniel returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father's death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man's will: he will only inherit his half of his father's estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn't seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel's inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever.S J Naudé's masterful novel is many things at once: a li

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Luci LaBang is a star: for decades this flamboyant drag artist has cast a spell over screen and stage. Now she's the leading lady in a smash hit pantomime.When Luci's co-star meets with a mysterious accident, a new ingenue shimmers onto the scene, and Luci is immediately smitten with the fantastically beautiful Luda and her sinister charm.Luda begs Luci to share the secrets of her stardom and to reveal the hidden tricks of her trade. For Luci LaBang is a mistress of the Glamour, an arcane discipline that draws on sex, drugs, and the occult for its trancelike, transformative effects.But as Luci tutors her young protégée, their fellow actors and crew members begin meeting with untimely ends. Now Luci wonders if Luda has mastered the Glamour all too well.What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the

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One day in late spring, Andrea Marcolongo walks into an outdoor store in Paris to buy a camp bed, a sleeping bag, and a flashlight. Her destination, not a forest or mountain peak, but the deserted halls of one of the most famous museums in the world, the Acropolis of Athens.But it's hard to be truly alone when you're surrounded by the scarred beauty of the Parthenon, lit only by the moon and summoning shadows from the past.Amog them, Lord Elgin, the English diplomat who in the early 19th century orchestrated the controversial transportation of the Parthenon marbles from Ottoman Greece to London, where they remain today.As the night goes by, the empty space left by the missing statues starts evoking other, more personal absences. Marcolongo reflects on the ever-changing relationship between present and past, and on the choices that make us who we are.A powerful book that crosses time and space to remind us we cannot live in isolation but are continuously connecte

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A must-read for Murakami fans.HotlistMatsui is the driver of a taxi the colour of the night sky. Every night between the hours of 1 am and 4.30 am, Matsui guides his taxi around the streets of Tokyo, collecting passengers and their stories.Seen through the eyes of a cast of colourful characters, Goodnight Tokyo takes the reader on an intimate journey around Tokyo after dark, when Tokyo's eccentrics and insomniacs emerge, and a small grain of madness begins to germinate in the city's night air. Confessions of intimacy and loneliness merge with the surreal: the funeral of an old telephone, the flea-market in which objects are bartered for that don't actually exist.Told over a number of nights and punctuated by Matsui's dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs Yoshida weaves a web of stories that prove to be intimately cand compellingly connected.

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Luci LaBang is a star: for decades this flamboyant drag artist has cast a spell over screen and stage. Now she’s the leading lady in a smash hit pantomime. When Luci’s co-star meets with a mysterious accident, a new ingenue shimmers onto the scene, and Luci is immediately smitten with the fantastically beautiful Luda and her sinister charm. Luda begs Luci to share the secrets of her stardom and to reveal the hidden tricks of her trade. For Luci LaBang is a mistress of the Glamour, an arcane discipline that draws on sex, drugs, and the occult for its trancelike, transformative effects. But as Luci tutors her young protégée, their fellow actors and crew members begin meeting with untimely ends. Now Luci wonders if Luda has mastered the Glamour all too well. What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the brightest star of them all.

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DOG is a novel full of deft humour and escalating tenderness a tale about misfits, human and canine, and the currents of hope and courage that bring them together. Ross Raisin, author of God''s Own CountryWhen 18-year-old Benjamin Glass goes to look at a dead whale that has washed up on the beach, he meets an unfamiliar dog who follows him home to his caravan. Benjamin isn't equipped to take care of a dog he has a chronic fear of germs, and is currently living alone while his grandmother is in hospital.But when a delivery driver recognises the dog as The Mighty Gary, the fastest greyhound in the country, and tells Benjamin about his unsavoury owners, Benjamin is forced to trust the stranger on his doorstep and devise a plan to keep Gary safe. As Benjamin becomes more attached to the dog, it becomes clear that his trust in the delivery driver may well have been misplaced. He will have to leave his comfort zone, take some unhygienic r

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Noam is a young man when the Flood wreaks havoc on the world, destroying the peaceful lakeside village he called home, and turning his whole life upside down. Destined to live forever as an immortal, Noam travels through the centuries in search of the meaning of life, and the events which shaped who we have become today.Paradises Lost is the first installment of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's monumental project of recounting the history of humanity, the fruits of more than thirty years of research. The first in a series, and in the form of a stylistic novel much like Yuval Noah Harari crossed with Alexandre Dumas. Schmitt combines his scientific, religious and philosophical research to propel readers from one world to another, and from pre-history to today.

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Mei is a forty-two year-old editor living in Barcelona. After years of unsuccessfully trying to become pregnant, and having grown apart from her husband, she decides to escape her crude reality when she’s made redundant from her job at a publishing house. When she moves to the cottage where she grew up, hidden in a remote forest of Catalunya, she believes this to be the perfect opportunity to finish the novel she’s been obsessing over. But as she begins writing, or trying to, tragedy hits her and solitude possesses her, forcing her to face her past, an unsolicited present and a future that is adrift. As Mei’s chance encounters and new relationships with figures from her childhood seem to keep her grounded, the forest and its inhabitants take over her as she fights to finish her novel and attempt to escape solitude unscathed.

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A man’s quest to bring new life to a desolate world “In this radiantly beautiful book, Sandrine Collette achieves a perfect balance between horror and beauty, finding poetry even in the dust.”—ELLE Nobody wanted Corentin. His father left him, his mother dreams of getting rid of him. Dragged from home to home, his childhood is an aimless pilgrimage, until the day his mother leaves him with old Augustine. Life begins anew for him. Deep into the remote, verdant Valley of the Forests, Corentin finds the care and love he’s been missing. When he grows up and moves to the city, Corentin immerses himself in the dazzling pleasures and distractions of urban life. But all around him, the world is on fire. Temperatures rise, rivers dry up, trees shed their leaves in June: a catastrophe is brewing. The night the worst happens, Corentin survives, hidden in the depths of the city’s catacombs. When he emerges, he finds a devastated landscape devoid of life. Human, tree, or beast: nothing is left. But Corentin, armed only with hope, sets off on a journey to find Augustine.

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An impassioned novel on the consequences of sexual exploitation and the dead ends of forgiveness 13-year-old Cléo lives a drab existence with her parents in a suburb of Paris. Her life changes when she is offered the chance to obtain a scholarship – issued by a mysterious Foundation - to realise her dream and become a modern jazz dancer. But there is more to the Foundation and their suave representative than meets the eye. Soon Cléo finds a trap has closed in on her, and she’s fallen prey to a sinister system in which she’ll eventually become complicit. Over 30 years later, a cache of images surfaces on the internet and exposes the Foundation’s exploitative, hidden purposes. The police put out a call for witnesses, and Cléo, now with a successful career as a dancer behind her, comes to realise the past has come back to haunt her. As her sense of self diffracts into multiple, contrasting images, there’s no way out but to confront her double burden as victim and predator.

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FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF A GIRL RETURNED, COMES A MOVING NEW NOVEL ABOUT SISTERHOOD, THE PAST AND ITS INDELIBLE MARKS * NATALIE PORTMAN'S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR JULY 2022* *A Strega Prize 2021 finalist * It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.

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An emblematic story of the shipwreck of the Arab Spring At his father’s funeral, to the great consternation of all present, Abdel Nasser beats the imam who is celebrating the funeral rite. The narrator, a childhood friend of the protagonist, retraces the story of “the Italian” from his days as a free and rebellious adolescent spirit to the leader of a student movement and then affirmed journalist. Those were crucial years in Tunisia, years of great tension, change, and repression. Against this background full of revolutionary ferments stands the tormented love story between Abdel Nasser and Zeina, a brilliant and beautiful philosophy student. Their dreams will unfortunately end up being wrecked under the ruthless gears of a corrupt and chauvinist society. Abdel Nasser’s transformation from a young idealist with high hopes to a successful, but disillusioned and tired journalist is masterfully narrated in a stream of stories, digressions and flashbacks in which the narrative tension is always high. Winner of the 2015 International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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A FINANCIAL TIMES 'BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK' CHOICE A sharp, breath-taking exploration of love and relationships. Pietro and Teresa’s love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they’ve never told another person, something they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain intimately connected forever. A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out? Trust asks how much we are willing to bend to show the world our best side, knowing full well that when we are at our most vulnerable we are also at our most dangerous.

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A MOVING STORY OF LIBERATION THAT SHATTERS TIRED PREJUDICES ABOUT WOMANHOOD, SEX AND SOCIETY Josephine teaches in a high school in a suburb of Paris. Her life is a balancing act between Xanax and Tupperware lunches in the staff room until she walks into a Champs-Elysée’s strip club. There she learns a secret nocturnal code of conduct; she discovers camaraderie and the joys of female company, and she thrills at the sensation of men’s desire directed toward her. Josephine, a teacher by day, begins to lead a secret existence by night that ultimately allows her to regain control of her life. This delicate balance is shattered one evening by an unexpected visitor to the club where she dances. A heartrending reflection on a woman’s image of herself, and the way others see her, Ketty Rouf’s extraordinary debut novel No Touching won the prestigious French literary prize Prix du Premier Roman 2020 (First Novel award)

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***A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR***  The Bastards face their hardest challenge yet Sometimes it takes facing a formidable adversary to truly know one’s worth. The Bastards of Pizzofalcone may have found just that: when the brutal murder of a baker rattles the city, they are ready to investigate. There’s nothing they wouldn’t do to prove themselves to their community. But this time the police are divided: for the special anti-mob branch, the local mafia is doubtlessly responsible for the crime, but the Bastards are not so sure and think there may be another reason for the murder of the renowned artisan, whose traditionally baked bread attracted customers from far and wide. A rivalry between the policeman and the magistrate is formed, one that, in the end, will extend to more than just their work lives.

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The impact of the digital world and its algorithms on human beings and societyWe read all sorts of things about AI, as the promise of a future happiness or as a threat capable of putting an end to humanity. While we cannot be "for" or "against" AI – it’s already here, and not likely to disappear any time soon - the question we face is how to exist as human beings - individually, socially, collectively - in a world governed by algorithms. Since the dawn of humanity, technological objects have intersected with the human mind: it is we who have shaped them; but as we use them, they in turn shape our brain. With the development of new technologies, this hybridization is becoming more and more apparent, and machines now threaten to colonize us, if we use them badly. AI allows us to make many kinds of work easier, but these benefits often come at the cost of reducing a person to a set of micro-data, far removed from the human characteristics that define him. Worse yet: the whole economy is now subject to the "decisions" suggested by machines. We have entered an era of algorithmic governmentality, in which leaders have deliberately delegated their decision-making to AI.How, then, can we still talk about democracy? And consequently, how can we organize collective action, confronted by a power that is based on the supposed infallibility of machines? Benasayag gives his considered answers in this short but illuminating book, a hybrid of essay and interview.

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SHORTLISTED: DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION 2022 What would you do if one day you found out the person who raised you is a monster? Laura disappeared into thin air in 1999, at eight years old. She was found in a metal container, fourteen years later. Luca is having dinner with his father dinner when they are interrupted by a visit from the carabinieri, who take his father away. Luca can only watch the scene unfold, helpless. The charges brought against esteemed anthropologist Carlo Maria Balestri are extremely grave: multiple counts of abduction, torture, murder, and concealing his victims’ bodies. What would you do if one day you found out that the person who raised you was a monster? Oxygen is a story of the aftermath of such evil. Balestri’s capture does not end the hell he created. The professor’s perverse experiment continues: he may no longer be able to imprison children in iron boxes, but the legacy of his crimes still reverberates through the lives of all those close to him and his victims. The question that continues to ring out is: who locked up who?

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A timeless story between foundational tale and myth When Salina dies, it falls to her youngest son to tell her story, a story of violence and suffering, vengeance and passion. Exiled three times, the first time as a new–born abandoned outside a village by a mysterious horseman, Salina was taken in and raised by a clan that only ever saw her as a stranger and an enemy to be defeated. Three times a mother, her children born from strife, Salina never knew love, and revenge became her reason to live. For her to gain admittance to the cemetery, to a place of peace at last, Salina’s son must face up and tell the tale of Salina’s ordeals—her rape the most harrowing—in minute detail. He has no choice but to give voice to all the hardship that for years fed into Salina’s rage. With this short novel set in an ancestral world, Laurent Gaudé explores a narrative space where time flows to rhythmic rituals, where fate blurs to legend, and secrets become myth.

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A haunting novel about a lineage of women possessed by their land Emilienne’s life is Paradise, her isolated farm at the end of a winding path. After the sudden death of her daughter and son-in-law, this is where she farms alone, with her courage and her land as her only resources, along with her two little grandchildren: Blanche and Gabriel. As seasons pass, Blanche grows older and develops an even stronger connection to her home and the generations of women who have guarded it, like her mother and grandmother before her. When she meets Alexandre, Blanche falls into a devastatingly deep love from which she can never recover. Alexandre, devoured by his ambition, wishes to move to the city to make a name for himself, while the passion Blanche dedicates to Paradise dominates her completely. Almost immediately, their differences become irreconcilable, tearing their worlds apart. Years later, when Alexandre shows up once again on her doorstep, ingratiating himself back into her life, Blanche believes that now she can finally be happy again. But all is not what it seems when there is darkness lurking at every corner—and Blanche would do anything to protect Paradise.

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As the Gospels tell us, after the Last Supper Jesus retreats to a small field just outside the city of Jerusalem: Gethsemane, the olive grove. His prayers are interrupted when Judas arrives with a group of armed men, and kisses him. The kiss, given to point Jesus out to the guards, has become a powerful symbol of the wrenching experience of betrayal, and abandonment. Betrayed by his disciples, even by Peter, the most faithful of them all, Jesus is forsaken. His sin, to have drawn God closer to man. In The Night in Gethsemane, Massimo Recalcati, one of Italy’s highest regarded psychoanalysts, traces the relationship between biblical text and psychoanalytical theory, revealing human life in all its fragility and its agony.

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*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020* *THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in Chinatown and enters the Golden Palace restaurant where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he's ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but also the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet. Goodreads 10 Books that 'Disrupted' the Literary Status Quo WHAT READERS ARE SAYING “What a clever, clever book this is!”–Regina on Goodreads “Truly unique.”–Kevin on Amazon “*inhales sharply* *screams* This book makes me feel seen.”–Sofia on Goodreads “Thoughtful, moving, and just hilarious.”–Charles on Netgalley “Absolutely loved this book.”–Andres on Amazon “An emotional roller coaster.”–Ellen on Amazon

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A breathless criminal investigation against the bloody canvas of the French RevolutionThe Paris Commune’s “bloody week” sees the climax of the savagery of the clashes between the Communards and the French Armed Forces loyal to Versailles. Amid the shrapnel and the chaos, while the entire west side of Paris is a field of ruins, a photographer fascinated by the suffering of young women takes “suggestive” photos to sell to a particular clientele. Young women begin disappearing, and when Caroline, a seamstress who volunteers at a first aid station, is counted among the missing, her fiancé Nicolas, a member of the Commune’s National Guard, and Communal security officer Antoine, sets off independently in search of her. Their race against the clock to find her takes them through the shell-shocked streets of Paris, and introduces them to a cast of fascinating characters.

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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, Elif Batuman, Burhan Sönmez, Elif Shafak among other Turkish writers, many of them in self-imposed exile, explore a fascinating yet maddening country. The birth of the “New Turkey,” as the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called his own creation, is an exemplary story of the rise of “illiberal democracies” through the erosion of civil liberties, press freedom, and the independence of the judicial system. Turkey was a complex country long before the rise of its new sultan: born out of the ashes of a vast multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire, Turkey has grappled through its relatively short history with the definition of its own identity. Poised between competing ideologies, secularism and piousness, a militaristic nationalism and exceptional openness to foreigners, Turkey defies easy labels and categories. Through the voices of some of its best writers and journalists, The Passenger analyses how it got to where it is today and finds the bright spots of hope that allow its always resourceful, often frustrated population to continue living, and thriving.

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