Search results for ""author charlotte collins""

A blistering, timely and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centring around an all-male dining club for the privileged and wealthy.Hans Stichler's uncomplicated German childhood ends abruptly when his aunt invites him to study at Cambridge, where she teaches. She will ensure his application is accepted, but in return he must help her investigate an elite university society, the Pitt Club, which has existed for centuries, its long legacy of tradition and privilege largely unquestioned. But there are secrets in the club's history, as well as in its present, and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of an increasingly dangerous institution, forced to grapple with the notion that sometimes one must do wrong to do right.

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Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize.Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII – where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus – and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven . . .'It is at once heart-rending and heart-warming. A Whole Life, for all its gentleness, is a very powerful book.' - Jim Crace, author of Harvest

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THE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart' New York TimesOlga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era's dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.This is the story of that love, of Olga's devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.

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If the dead could speak, what would they say to the living? From their graves in the field, the oldest part of Paulstadt’s cemetery, the town’s late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall just a moment, perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one that they now realize shaped their life for ever. Some remember all the people they’ve been with, or the only person they ever loved. These voices together – young, old, rich, poor – build a picture of a community, as viewed from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given shape and meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned and died there. From the author of the Booker International-shortlisted A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler’s The Field is about what happens at the end. It is a book of human lives – each one different, yet connected to countless others – that ultimately shows how life, for all its fleetingness, still has meaning.

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'Set at a time of lengthening shadows, this is a novel about the sparks that illuminate the dark: of wisdom, compassion, defiance and courage. It is wry, piercing and also, fittingly, radiant.' Daily MailFrom Robert Seethaler, the author of the Man Booker International shortlisted A Whole Life, comes a deeply moving story of ordinary lives profoundly affected by the Third Reich, in the tradition of novels such as Fred Uhlman's classic Reunion, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room.When seventeen-year-old Franz exchanges his home in the idyllic beauty of the Austrian lake district for the bustle of Vienna, his homesickness quickly dissolves amidst the thrum of the city. In his role as apprentice to the elderly tobacconist Otto Trsnyek, he will soon be supplying the great and good of Vienna with their newspapers and cigarettes. Among the regulars is a Professor Freud, whose predilection for cigars and occasional willingness to dispense romantic advice will forge a bond between him and young Franz.It is 1937. In a matter of months Germany will annex Austria and the storm that has been threatening to engulf the little tobacconist will descend, leaving the lives of Franz, Otto and Professor Freud irredeemably changed.

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It is 1988, the year before the Berlin Wall came down. Jonathan Fabrizius, a journalist living in West Germany, is asked to travel to the contested lands of former East Prussia - where the Nazi legacy lives on in buildings and fortifications - to write about the route for a car rally. It's a plum job, but his interest is piqued by a personal connection. Here, among the refugees fleeing the advancing Russians in 1945, he was born. Homeland is a nuanced work from one of the great modern European storytellers, in which an everyday German comes face to face with his painful family history, and devastating questions about ordinary Germans' complicity in the war.

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A blistering, timely and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centring around an all-male dining club for the privileged and wealthy.Hans Stichler's uncomplicated German childhood ends abruptly when his aunt invites him to study at Cambridge, where she teaches. She will ensure his application is accepted, but in return he must help her investigate an elite university society, the Pitt Club, which has existed for centuries, its long legacy of tradition and privilege largely unquestioned. But there are secrets in the club's history, as well as in its present, and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of an increasingly dangerous institution, forced to grapple with the notion that sometimes one must do wrong to do right.

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'An exquisitely wrought and utterly absorbing meditation upon life, loss and love' Ian McEwanWinner of the European Union Prize for Literature 'Original and captivating . . . its quiet charm in straightforward prose belies its sharp insight into the human condition' Stylist***************I've known Death a long time but now Death knows me.When their idyllic childhood is shattered by the sudden death of their parents, siblings Marty, Liz and Jules are sent to a bleak state boarding school. Once there, the orphans' lives change tracks: Marty throws himself into academic life; Liz is drawn to dark forms of escapism; and Jules transforms from a vivacious child to a withdrawn teenager. The only one who can bring him out of his shell is his mysterious classmate Alva, who hides a dark past of her own, but despite their obvious love for one another, the two leave school on separate paths. Years later, just as it seems that they can make amends for time wasted, the past catches up with them, and fate - or chance - will once again alter the course of a life.***************'It is impossible to look away from it' Guardian'Beautifully rendered: moving and wise, occasionally timeless . . . when Wells most needs to be sophisticated, he is' Irish Times'Dazzling' John Irving

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‘A beautifully written, complex love story … the modern twists and complexities are so interesting and told with forthright energy and compassion.’ Platinum Magazine ‘It’s deep, thought provoking, and it sparked multiple emotions whilst reading.’ Reader review ‘The beauty in the rawness, bluntness and gritty emotions that are uncovered throughout. The comfortable and the uncomfortable. The breaking of identity.’ Reader review By the internationally bestselling author of The Eighth Life. Two families, one devastating secret, and an epic story of forbidden love. Eight years have passed since Stella last saw Ivo, but when he returns, the reunion of their unconventional family will change the course of her ordinary life. As children, Stella and Ivo grew close as their parents embarked on an affair that would shatter both families. Later, as teenagers, their own relationship would be the cause of further scandal. Now, as adults, they set out on an odyssey to uncover the truth about another family’s past, and to understand their own. My Soul Twin is an intense love story about forbidden desire, the ties that bind us, and whether we can ever truly forget what we leave behind.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE AND WINNER OF THE WARWICK PRIZE FOR WOMEN IN TRANSLATION AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR The bestselling sensation that UK booksellers are calling this generation’s War and Peace. Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century. At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers, thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers. But this chocolate carries a bitter — some say cursed — aftertaste … Tumbling through the years, across vast expanses of longing and loss, witness generation after generation of this remarkable family as they struggle and thrive, divide and reunite, and live and die in the red century.

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