Search results for ""author anthea bell""

Another classic title from world-renowned cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, this illustrated children's book, originally published in French in 1969, tells the story of Martin Pebble, a little boy who has something unusual the matter with him: he keeps blushing all the time for no particular reason. When he meets another little boy who sneezes all the time for no particular reason, it's the beginning of a life-long friendship. Featuring the inimitable drawings and perfectly-judged text of Jean-Jacques Sempé, this funny and charming book will be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

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Stefan's Zweig's posthumously-published Journey into the Past (Widerstand der Wirklichkeit) is a beautiful meditation on the effect of time on passion-one of the most intense and compelling works from a master of the novella form. Published by Pushkin Press with a cover designed by David Pearson and Clare Skeats as part of a new range of Stefan Zweig paperbacks. Kept away for nine years by the First World War Ludwig has finally returned home, reunited at last with the woman he had so passionately loved, and who had promised to wait for him. Previously divided by wealth and class, both are now married and much changed by their experiences. Confronted with an uncertain future, and still haunted by the past, they discover whether their love has survived hardships, betrayals, and the lapse of time. Zweig's long-lost final novella- recently discovered in manuscript form-is a poignant examination of the angst of nostalgia and the fragility of love.. 'Journey into the Past is vintage Stefan Zweig lucid, tender, powerful and compelling.' — Chris Schuler, Independent 'Zweig belongs with three very different masters who each perfected the challenging art of the short story and the novella: Maupassant, Turgenev and Chekhov.' — Paul Bailey Translated from the German by Anthea Bell, Stefan Zweig's Journey into the Past is published by Pushkin Press. Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he moved to London, where he wrote his only novel Beware of Pity. He later moved on to Bath, taking British citizenship after the outbreak of the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 Zweig left Britain for New York, before settling in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

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A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul's Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer - and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man's mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer's motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures. Rafik Schami's dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.

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Fifth mystery featuring Kemal Kayankaya Valerie de Chavannes, a financier's daughter, summons private investigator Kemal Kayankaya to her villa in Frankfurt's diplomatic quarter and commissions him to find her missing sixteen-year-old daughter Marieke. She is alleged to be with an older man who is posing as an artist. To Kayankaya, it seems like a simple case: an upper class girl with a thirst for adventure. Then another case turns up: The Maier Publishing House believes it needs to protect author Malik Rashid from attacks by religious fanatics at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Rashid has written a novel about, amongst other things, attitudes towards homosexuality in an Arabic country. Kayankaya is hired to be Rashid's bodyguard for three days. The two cases seem to be straightforward, but together they lead to murder, rape and abduction, and even Kayankaya comes under suspicion of being a contract killer for hire.

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With the Eurozone engulfed in an unprecedented crisis, one political figure looms largest of all, Angela Merkel, the leader of its most powerful economy. While foreign affairs have become the central issues of her chancellorship in this crucial election year, the entire world is anxiously looking to Germany to play its part in Europe's rescue. This authorized biography sheds light on the person behind the politician - from her youthful days of hitchhiking in Tbilisi to being the guest of honour at a White House state dinner - and examines how a girl from East Germany rose to the highest echelons of European power. As well as explaining how Angela Merkel's world view was shaped and influenced by her background and ideology, Stefan Kornelius's lively account discusses her personal relations with international counterparts such as David Cameron, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin, as well as her attitude towards the countries and cultures over which they rule.

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The second book in the new Penguin Maigret series: Georges Simenon's devastating tale of misfortune, betrayal and the weakness of family ties, in a new translation by Anthea Bell.Instead of the detail filling itself in and becoming clearer, it seemed to escape him. The face of the man in the ill-fitting coat just misted up so that it hardly looked human. In theory this mental portrait was good enough, but now it was replaced by fleeting images which should have added up to one and the same man but which refused to get themselves into focus.The circumstances of Monsieur Gallet's death all seem fake: the name the deceased was travelling under and his presumed profession, and more worryingly, his family's grief. Their haughtiness seems to hide ambiguous feelings about the hapless man. In this haunting story, Maigret discovers the appalling truth and the real crime hidden behind the surface of lies.Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret Stonewalled and The Death of Monsieur Gallet.'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

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A visitor from Georgia, a country torn apart by civil war, ends the peaceful existence of a school teacher's family in Germany. Christian Kestner has all but forgotten his stay in Tbilisi seven years before. He begins to worry when he receives a letter from David Ninochvili announcing his visit to Germany. Why is David coming? To seek revenge from Christian, guilty of flirting at the time with David's wife? What are the ties of this unwelcome guest to the different factions now vying for the control of Georgia? Christian becomes intensely suspicious of David's secretive ways, of his attraction to Christian's wife and even to his teenage son. Fear turns into panic, so corrosive that it can transform even the most rational individual into a monster.

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This is a beautifully crafted thriller set in a European world of small-town hypocrisy. Erika, an attractive local heiress, is married to Wallmann. When she falls to her death near their lakeside villa, the police conclude it as a tragic accident. Scholten, a long time employee of Erika's, knows a thing or two about the true state of her marriage. He suspects an almost perfect crime. Scholten's maverick investigation soon buys him a ticket for a most dangerous ride.

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'Zweig's fictional masterpiece' GUARDIAN 'An intoxicating, morally shaking read... A real reminder of what fiction can do best' ALI SMITH 'It's just a masterpiece. When I read it I thought, how is it that I don't already know about this?' WES ANDERSON _______________ The only novel written by one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century In 1913, young second lieutenant Hofmiller discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance-so begins a series of visits, motivated by pity, which relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope. Stefan Zweig's unforgettable novel is a devastating depiction of the betrayal of both honour and love, amid the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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A memoir of brutality, heroism and personal discovery from Europe's dark heart, revealing one of the most extraordinary untold stories of the Second World WarIn the spring of 1945, at Rechnitz on the Austrian-Hungarian border, not far from the front lines of the advancing Red Army, Countess Margit Batthyany gave a party in her mansion. The war was almost over, and the German aristocrats and SS officers dancing and drinking knew it was lost. Late that night, they walked down to the village, where 180 enslaved Jewish labourers waited, made them strip naked, and shot them all, before returning to the bright lights of the party. It remained a secret for decades, until Sacha Batthyany, who remembered his great-aunt Margit only vaguely from his childhood as a stern, distant woman, began to ask questions about it.A Crime in the Family is Sacha Batthyany's memoir of confronting these questions, and of the answers he found. It is one of the last untold stories of Europe's nightmare century,spanning not just the massacre at Rechnitz, the inhumanity of Auschwitz, the chaos of wartime Budapest and the brutalities of Soviet occupation and Stalin's gulags, but also the silent crimes of complicity and cover-up, and the damaged generations they leave behind. Told partly through the surviving journals of others from the author's family and the vanished world of Rechnitz, A Crime in the Family is a moving and revelatory memoir in the vein of The Hare with the Amber Eyes and The House by the Lake. It uncovers barbarity and tragedy but also a measure of peace and reconciliation. Ultimately,Batthyany discovers that although his inheritance might be that of monsters, he does not bear it alone.

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In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig's short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. A knock on a door that forces a whole community to take flight, an aging womaniser who meets his match, a love soured into awful cruelty-these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell

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Bavaria, Germany, 1947. At the end of the war, Afra Zauner returns to her parents' cottage on the edge of Mauther Forest. Unmarried, and pregnant. As she struggles to raise her child, her father's shame, her mother's fury and the loud whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh upon her. She doesn't believe in her sin. But everyone else does. And someone brings judgement down upon her. Many years later, Hermann Müller is throwing a drunk out of his tavern. A traveller, who won't stop ranting about a murder left unsolved, about police who never investigated. Out of curiousity, the file is reopened. And in the cold light of hindsight, a chilling realisation creeps upon the community. No-one ever atoned for Afra's death. But her story is waiting to be told. Andrea Maria Schenkel returns to the form of her groundbreaking The Murder Farm, narrating through suspects, victims and investigators to lead the reader to their own awful understanding.

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Young lawyer Alex Zabel defends industrialist Herbert Klofft in a case for wrongful dismissal being brought against him by his former employee and mistress. She is thirty-four, he seventy-eight, a despot, now wheelchair bound and dying of cancer. Alex must deal with a hopeless case, his growing empathy with a repulsive client and his sexual attraction to Klofft's elderly wife.

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The Baron, bored on holiday, begins a flirtation with a beautiful woman via her twelve-year-old son. He befriends the child and charms him, all the while attempting to seduce the mother - but he cannot begin to imagine the effect he is having on the boy's life... Burning Secret is a witty, potent look at innocence, adult attraction and childhood passion.

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Roland, a young student at a new university, meets an inspirational teacher who sweeps him into his world of literature and learning. When the boy moves into the same building as the teacher and his wife, he becomes ever closer to this remarkable man, though he also senses his mentor pulling away from him - sometimes even seeming to hate him. But the truth about these feelings is something that will shape both men for the rest of their lives.

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There is nothing like the love of a parent for a child. But what happens when that love falters?Deprived of his parents' love as a child, Antoine is determined to give his son and daughter the perfect childhood he never had. He is a dreamer, an optimist, a man who fell in love at first sight and who believes that he has found the secret to living a happy life. But when tragedy strikes he becomes someone even he does not recognise. Taken to his lowest point, he performs an act of desperation. But can he find a way back? And what does happiness actually mean?Provocative, unpredictable, heartbreaking and heartwarming, We Only Saw Happiness is a story about families, the choices we make, and the people we become.

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'Already hailed as a Cold War classic.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year'Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe.' Anna Funder, author of StasilandInternational bestseller and Winner of the German Book PrizeA sweeping story of one family over four generations in East Germany: the intertwining of love, life and politics under the GDR regime.

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Scientist Nelly Senff is desperate to escape her life in East Berlin. The father of her two children has supposedly committed suicide, and she wants to leave behind the prying eyes of the Stasi.But the West is not all she hoped for. Nelly and her children are held in Marienfelde, a refugee processing centre and no-man’s-land between East and West. There she meets Krystyna, a Polish woman who hopes that medical treatment in the West will save her dying brother; Hans, a troubled actor released from prison in the East; and John, a CIA man monitoring the refugees for possible Stasi spies. All lives cross here, in this gateway to a new life.Now an award-winning film

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Depicting a young woman's life in Nazi Germany, a masterpiece from the author of Child of All Nations'I cannot think of anything else that conjures up so powerfully the atmosphere of a nation turned insane' Sunday TelegraphNineteen-year-old Sanna just wants to drink her beer in peace, but that's difficult when Hitler has come to town and his motorcade is blocking the streets of Frankfurt. What's more, her best friend Gerti is in love with a Jewish boy, her brother writes books that have been blacklisted and her own aunt may denounce her to the authorities at any moment, as Germany teeters on the edge of the abyss. Written after she had fled the Nazi regime, Irmgard Keun's masterly novel captures the feverish hysteria and horror of the era with devastating perceptiveness and humour.Translated by Anthea Bell

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It all began with a favour. Kayankaya and Slibulsky had wanted to help out Romario, the owner of a small Brazilian restaurant, when he is threatened by extortionists. Then suddenly there were two bodies on the floor of Romario's restaurant, their faces caked in white powder. Kayankaya is troubled by these deaths and decides to find out who the men are, until he himself is pursued by a mafia organisation about whom nothing appears to be known. Gradually it becomes clear to Kayankaya that he is facing the most brutal and dangerous group of gangsters to have run Frankfurt's station quarter. And then a new assignment comes in: he is to find a woman he has seen in a video film, and who he is convinced was looking at him from the screen. Kismet is a brilliant novel about organised crime, the fallout from the Balkan wars, and the madness of nationalism from one of Europe's finest crime writers.

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Provoked by the events of 9/11 and the US reaction, Jakob Arjouni's clever and satiric novel exposes the workings of mass hysteria. 2064 - Securely fenced off from the rest of the world, life in Euroasia, except for a handful of suicide bombings and border disputes, is constantly improving. On the other side of the fence, countries are being exploited and wracked by regression, dictatorship, and religious fanaticism. People live in poverty and misery. Max Schwartzwald is the owner of Chez Max, a smart Parisian restaurant, but he is also an Ashcroft agent, a member of a secret government organisation whose mission is to promptly identify and weed out anything that may threaten the political status quo. Schwartzwald's biggest problem is his Ashcroft partner, Chen Wu, a self-righteous loudmouth, who leaves no taboo unbroken, attacks every human weakness and takes liberties at will - all because of the spectacular successes he has achieved within the organisation. But is Chen a double agent who is bringing illegal immigrants into the Euroasian world and is this the opportunity for Max to get rid of his partner once and for all?

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'Completely enchanting . . . a gentle and unexpected love story whose characters are drawn with tenderness and touching honesty. I loved it.' Ruth Hogan, author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGSMarguerite had been living a comfortable but dull existence in a suburban town with her straitlaced lawyer husband. When he dies, she realises that life has passed her by.Marcel had been in a loving relationship with Nora since they left Algeria sixty years before. Now that he has lost her, he has lost his way. Marguerite and Marcel live in two very different worlds - one rich, one poor. They never should have met. And yet their paths cross at a retreat, and a connection forms...But will they manage to overcome the disapproval of their friends and families, as well as their own misgivings? Or have they left it too late to really follow their hearts' desires?Now Let's Dance is an uplifting, life-affirming novel about following your heart's desire...

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Emma lives alone in a big farmhouse with her animals for company: she talks to her chickens, cuddles up to her pigs in the sty and caresses her cows. But she also must make a living from her livestock, selling meat and making sausages. For Emma, it's all part of a natural process, and she does her best to give the pigs a short and sweet death, having developed her very own way of killing her pigs most tenderly.For all her happiness on the farm, there are two things in Emma's life she desperately wants: money to save her farm, which is deeply in debt, and a man. One night, she is woken by a crash. In her field, she finds a wrecked Ferrari. and in it, an unconscious man - with an enormous amount of cash.It looks like Emma's prayers have been answered - but have they? Will the mysterious Max adapt to rural life, or will his past come back to haunt them?

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Stefan's Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories, appearing in English for the first time. A famous author receives a letter on his forty-first birthday. He doesn't know the sender, but still the letter concerns him intimately. Its story is earnest, even piteous: the story of a life lived in service to an unannounced, unnoticed love. In the other stories in this collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves for her sister; two erstwhile lovers meet after an age spent apart; and a married woman repays a debt of gratitude. All four tales, newly translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, are among Zweig's most celebrated and compelling work-expertly paced, laced with empathy and an unwaveringly acute sense of psychological detail. Contents Letter from an Unknown Woman (Brief einer Unbekannten) A Story Told in Twilight (Geschichte in der Dämmerung) The Debt Paid Late (Die spät bezahlte Schuld) Forgotten Dreams (Vergessene Träume) 'Stefan Zweig's time of oblivion is over for good... it's good to have him back ' — Salman Rushdie, The New York Times 'One hardly knows where to begin in praising Zweig's work.' — Ali Smith, TLS Book of the Year 2008 Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he moved to London, where he wrote his only novel Beware of Pity. He later moved on to Bath, taking British citizenship after the outbreak of the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 Zweig left Britain for New York, before settling in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

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'Masterful ... a breathtaking panorama of Roman politics at a crucial turning point in history' Simon J. V. Malloch, Literary ReviewHe was named son and heir by a murdered dictator. He came to Rome with nothing, surrounded by ruthless enemies. Yet Augustus would become the first Roman Emperor, transforming the Republic into the greatest empire the world had seen. This is the definitive biography of the man who changed Western history.'An unequalled biography' Harry Mount, Spectator'Jochen Bleicken's biography of Rome's first emperor is excellent on the young Octavian and his wheeling and dealing' Natalie Haynes, Independent'A superb account ... It should become standard reading for everyone interested in the foundations of the Roman empire' Peter Jones, BBC History Magazine

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SOON TO BE THE MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES, TOTENFRAUKILL BILL meets DEXTER via THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, WOMAN OF THE DEAD is a wild ride of a thriller where the first stage of grief is revenge. And revenge is a dish best served bloody.How far would you go to avenge the one you love? Blum has a secret buried deep in her past.She thought she'd left the past behind.But then Mark, the man she loves, dies.His death looks like a hit-and-run. It isn't a hit-and-run. Mark has been killed by the men he was investigating. And then, suddenly, Blum rediscovers what she's capable of...'An ironclad guarantee of sleepless nights' Barry Forshaw, Independent'Fast, edgy and gripping ... full of quirks, with a conflicted heroine as killer at its heart. Do not miss it' Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

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Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-SmithCelebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger in the crowd - a man who will risk everything to win. Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of obsession and the price of the past.

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Campo Santo is a collection of essays by W. G. SebaldWhen W.G. Sebald died tragically in 2001 a unique voice was silenced. Campo Santo is a collection of the pieces he left behind - none of them previously published in book form - which provide a powerful insight into the themes that came to dominate his life. Four pieces pay tribute to Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present. Sebald also examines the works of writers such as Kafka, Nabokov, and Günter Grass, showing both how literature can provide restitution for the injustices of the world and how such literature came to have so great an influence on him. Campo Santo is a fitting memorial to W.G. Sebald, who himself studied the shifting nature of memory and time with such sensitivity.'A precious addition to the canon' Independent'Will come to be seen as indispensable to an understanding of his work' Sunday Times'Full of a sense of liberation and lightness ... these [pieces] abound in energy and work the authentic Sebaldian magic' Literary Review'We have become suspicious, rightly, of claims for literary greatness, but in Sebald's case the claim was triumphantly justified. He was, he is, the real thing' John Banville, Guardian'Sebald was probably the greatest intellect and voice of the late twentieth century' Anthony Beevor, The Times'A writer whose explorations of time and memory make him arguably the closest author modern European letters has to rival Borges' Sunday TimesW . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, For Years Now and A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.

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'... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!'A group of passengers on a cruise ship challenge the world chess champion to a match. At first, they crumble, until they are helped by whispered advice from a stranger in the crowd - a man who will risk everything to win. Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of obsession and the price of genius.

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A brilliantly evocative, atmospheric novel about the delusion and indecision of a wealthy family in the last days of the Third Reich as the Russians advance from the east In January 1945, the German army is retreating from the Russian advance. Germans are fleeing the occupied territories in their thousands, in cars and carts and on foot. But in a rural East Prussian manor house, the wealthy von Globig family seals itself off from the world. Protected from the deprivation and chaos around them, they make no preparations to leave until a decision to harbour a stranger for the night begins their undoing. Finally joining the great trek west, the remaining members of the family face at last the catastrophic consequences of the war. Profoundly evocative of the period, sympathetic yet painfully honest about the motivations of its characters, All for Nothing is a devastating portrait of the complicities and denials of the German people as the Third Reich comes to an end.

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Munich, in the late thirties, the first years of fascism - the last before the war: Kathie is desperate to leave her sheltered village life and sets out for the city, determined that she'll get by, one way or another. She is dark-haired, buxom and pretty, like the women who recently disappeared without a trace. Young women are being found around Munich, abused and murdered. Josef Kalteis has been arrested, but is he really responsible for all those misdeeds? Did they execute the wrong one while the murderer is still on the loose? Spellbound by the magnetizing story of the dead women, the reader follows young Kathie. Somewhere in between her naive search for luck and existential concerns, occasional prostitution and the desire for true love, she is in grave danger. Andrea Maria Schenkel has again created a novel based on real events, in which the story is told through several voices and documentation, including interrogation logs, witness statements and the dark thoughts within the murderer's mind.

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One voice is the weapon against tyranny in this powerful hymn to courage and freedom.Four teenagers escape from their prison-like boarding schools to take up the fight against the tyrannical government that murdered their parents fifteen years earlier. Fleeing across icy mountains from a pack of terrifying dog-men sent to hunt them down, only three of the friends make it safely to Jahn’s Restaurant, the headquarters of a secret resistance movement. It is here they learn about courage, freedom and love, and discover the astonishing power of one voice as the battle begins – to free a depressed and terrified nation from a generation of cruelty, and to save their captured friend, forced to fight to the death in a barbaric ancient game.

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Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction explores German writers' silence about a moment of mass destructionIn the last years of World War II, a million tons of bombs were dropped by the Allies on one hundred and thirty-one German towns and cities. Six hundred thousand civilians died, and three and a half million homes were destroyed. When it has cast such a very dark shadow over his life and work, Sebald asks, how have so many writers allowed themselves to write it out of their experience and avoid articulating the horror? W.G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction sparked a wide-ranging debate in the German press.'Sebald makes exquisite art out of vile history' Boyd Tonkin, Independent'One of the most important writers of our time' A.S. Byatt, New Statesman 'Demands to be read for its grand emotional power ... it absorbs and horrifies and illuminates' Scotsman'Brilliant and disturbing' Antony Beevor, The TimesW . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, For Years Now and A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.

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A casual introduction, a challenge to a simple game of chess, a lovers' reunion, a meaningless infidelity: from such small seeds Zweig brings forth five startlingly tense tales-meditations on the fragility of love, the limits of obsession, the combustibility of secrets and betrayal. To read anything by Zweig is to risk addiction; in this collection the power of his writing-which, with its unabashed intensity and narrative drive, made him one of the bestselling and most acclaimed authors in the world-is clear and irresistible. Each of these stories is a bolt of experience, unforgettable and unique.

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'Walter Trier's deceptively innocent drawings are as classic as Kästner's words; I never tire of them' Quentin Blake Martin's school is no ordinary school. There are snowball fights, kidnappings, cakes, a parachute jump, a mysterious man called 'No-Smoking' who lives in a railway carriage and a play about a flying classroom. As the Christmas holidays draw near, Martin and his friends - nervous Uli, cynical Sebastian, Johnny, who was rescued by a sea captain, and Matthias, who is always hungry (particularly after a meal) - are preparing for the end-of-term festivities. But there are surprises, sadness and trouble on the way - and a secret that changes everything. The Flying Classroom is a magical, thrilling and bittersweet story about friendship, fun and being brave when you are at your most scared. (It also features a calf called Eduard, but you will have to read it to find out why.) Erich Kästner, writer, poet and journalist, was born in Dresden in 1899. His first children's book, Emil and the Detectives, was published in 1929 and has since sold millions of copies around the world and been translated into around 60 languages. After the Nazis took power in Germany, Kästner's books were burnt and he was excluded from the writers' guild. He won many awards, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960. He died in 1974. Walter Trier was born in Prague in 1880. In 1910 he moved to Berlin, where he would later be introduced to Kästner, and began his career drawing cartoons for the Berliner Illustrated. He also contributed to the satirical weekly Simplicissimus, where during the 1920s, despite great personal risk, he ridiculed Hitler and the Nazi Party in a series of cartoons. In 1936 he fled to London, where he was involved in producing anti-Nazi leaflets and political propaganda drawings. He would go on to have a rich career, producing around 150 covers for the humorous magazine Lilliput. He died in 1951 in Ontario, Canada. Anthea Bell is an award-winning translator. Having studied English at Oxford University, she has had a long and successful career, translating works from French, German and Danish. She is best known for her translations of the much-loved Asterix books, Stefan Zweig and W.G. Sebald.

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'Gadzooks!' said Dot ... 'The things that boy can do!' Dot loves play-acting, dressing up her pet dachshund Piefke and making up words like 'splentastic'. Her best friend is Anton, who lives in a little apartment and looks after his mother. They share a secret - every night, when their parents think they are asleep, they sell matches and shoelaces on the streets of Berlin with Dot's grumpy governess. But why? The answers involve a villain called 'Robert the Devil', a club-wielding maid, a wobbly tooth, a pair of silver shoes and a policeman dancing the tango, as Dot and Anton get into all sorts of scrapes and even solve a crime in this delightful, touching and hilarious adventure story.

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'I had never heard of Zweig until six or seven years ago, as allthe books began to come back into print, and I more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I immediately lovedthis book, his one, big, great novel-and suddenly there weredozens more in front of me waiting to read.' Wes Anderson The Society of the Crossed Keys contains Wes Anderson's selections from the writings of the great Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel. A CONVERSATION WITH WES ANDERSON Wes Anderson discusses Zweig's life and work with Zweig biographer George Prochnik. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY Selected extracts from Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, an unrivalled evocation of bygone Europe. BEWARE OF PITY An extract from Zweig's only novel, a devastating depictionof the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN THE LIFE OF A WOMAN One of Stefan Zweig's best-loved stories in full-a passionate tale of gambling, love and death, played out against the stylish backdrop of the French Riviera in the 1920s. "I defy anyone to read these tasters of Zweig's work without being compelled to read on. Pushkin might as well do their readers all a favour and sell The Society of the Crossed Keys with a complete Zweig back catalogue." Independent 'The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed.' -- David Hare 'Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor 'One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories.'--Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and, between the wars was an international bestselling author. With the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath, New York and Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Wes Anderson's films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

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'I very soon had an opportunity to interpret Dora's nervous coughing as the outcome of a fantasized sexual situation.' A Case of Hysteria, popularly known as the Dora Case, affords a rare insight into how Freud dealt with patients and interpreted what they told him. The 18-year-old 'Dora' was sent for psychoanalysis by her father after threatening suicide; as Freud's enquiries deepened, he uncovered a remarkably unhappy and conflict-ridden family, with several competing versions of their story. The narrative became a crucial text in the evolution of his theories, combining his studies on hysteria and his new theory of dream-interpretation with early insights into the development of sexuality. The unwitting preconceptions and prejudices with which Freud approached his patient reveal his blindness and the broader attitudes of turn-of-the-century Viennese society, while his account of 'Dora's' emotional travails is as gripping as a modern novel. This new translation is accompanied by a substantial introduction which sets the work in its biographical, historical, and intellectual context, and offers a close and critical analysis of the text itself. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe.In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before. Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece.'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times'Greatness in literature is still possible' John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year'A work of obvious genius' Literary Review'A fusion of the mystical and the solid ... His art is a form of justice - there can be, I think, no higher aim' Evening Standard'Spellbindingly accomplished; a work of art' The Times Literary Supplement 'I have never read a book that provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis' Observer'A great book by a great writer' Boyd Tonkin, IndependentW . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.

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