Search results for ""Author Julian Evans""

The Pacific Ocean calls to mind a world of fabulous kingdoms and noble savages, guilt free sex and gin-clear lagoons, and a perfect idleness fed by lush fruits and fish-rich seas. Ever since Captain Cook first went to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, this dream of the Pacific has not lost its force. But Julian Evans's journey through the island archipelagos of the Great Ocean was also informed by a quest into our more modern myths - such as Peacekeeper missiles and nuclear bombs being tested by the US Army. With humour and vivid imagery, honesty and a wickedly sardonic wit, Evans uncovers the reality of these two Pacific dreams: a brave new ocean where the islanders have money and booze, military coups and cold-war politics, atomic explosions and rising sea levels, but where, in the remotest atolls, beyond all our modernity and rationality, the old dream of islands continues to assert itself.

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It has become increasingly more popular to own a small wood or be able to help look after one. This title has all you need to know about the basics. It is written by experts committed to the care and stewardship of our woodland resources and provides practical advice and guidance for those coming to woodland management for the first time.

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Described as 'deeply affecting' by The Guardian, Yasmina Khadra provides us with a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the most complex and controversial figures of recent history in this gripping imagining of the last hours of President Gaddafi. 'Khadra’s prose is gentle and precise' The New Yorker People say I am a megalomaniac. It is not true. I am an exceptional being, providence incarnate, envied by the gods, able to make a faith of his cause. October 2011. In the dying days of the Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi is hiding out in his home town of Sirte along with his closest advisors. They await a convoy that will take them south, away from encroaching rebel forces and NATO aerial attacks. The mood is sombre. In what will be his final night, Gaddafi reflects on an extraordinary life, whilst still raging against the West, his fellow Arab nations and the ingratitude of the Libyan people.

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The sequel to The Foundling Boy sees Jean learning to make his way in a world of murky allegiances after the French defeat of 1940. 'A delight' Independent on Sunday In the aftermath of French defeat in July 1940, twenty-year-old Jean Arnaud and his ally, the charming conman Palfy, are hiding out at a brothel in Clermont-Ferrand, having narrowly escaped a firing squad. At a military parade, Jean falls for a beautiful stranger, Claude, who will help him forget his adolescent heartbreak but bring far more serious troubles of her own. Having safely reached occupied Paris, the friends mingle with art smugglers and forgers, social climbers, showbiz starlets, bluffers, swindlers and profiteers, French and German, as Jean learns to make his way in a world of murky allegiances. But beyond the social whirl, the war cannot stay away forever... In this sequel to the acclaimed novel The Foundling Boy, Michel Deon's hero comes to manhood not through combat but by discovering truths about desire and possession, sex and love, and the nuances that lie between crudely drawn battle lines.

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Set in the 1890s, Andre Gide's famous satire centres around a group of ingenious fraudsters ('The Millipede') who convince their wealthy victims that the pontiff has been imprisoned in the Vatican cellars, and a false Pope has been enthroned in his place. Posing as clergy, they con money by promising to obtain the true Pope's release and restoration. The book features one of Gide's most memorable creations: the amoral Lafcadio, who in pushing a man from a moving train commits the ultimate motiveless crime. Unavailable in the UK for 25 years, this scandalous, funny and highly original novel has been re-translated to mark the centenary of its publication. Supported by English PEN.

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A poignant novel of political-religious awakening by one of Germany's literary starsAn anonymous phone call, an unattended bag discovered in the station of a small Austrian town, a piece of paper saying, "Repent!" and "Next time it will be for real!" A C.C.T.V. image of a young man. What was it that made the teacher think it was his old student, Daniel?Ten years earlier Daniel had spent time with the teacher in his remote house by the river. The town had talked. Anton had recently returned from two years teaching in Istanbul - he was unsettled, subversive, solitary. Daniel was on the brink of adulthood - idealistic, unrequitedly in love with Judith, vulnerable to influence. Those summer weeks by the river were an idyll. But did they also sow the seeds of Daniel's later obsessiveness, his biblical attitudes, his political dogmatism? As the bomb threat excites the community with all the tension of a witch hunt, and Anton himself becomes a focus for suspicion and gossip, he anatomises his memories of the preceding decade. What went wrong for Daniel, and could he have stopped it?

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It is 1919. On a summer's night in Normandy, a new-born baby is left in a basket outside the home of Albert and Jeanne Arnaud. The childless couple take the foundling in, name him Jean, and decide to raise him as their own, though his parentage remains a mystery. Though Jean's life is never dull, he grows up knowing little of what lies beyond his local area. Until the day he sets off on his bicycle to discover the world, and encounters a Europe on the threshold of interesting times...

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'You can't possibly remember. You weren't even a year old...' Edouard looks back on his 1920s childhood spent in Paris and Monte Carlo. Within a bourgeois yet unconventional upbringing, 'Teddy', an observant and sensitive boy, must deal with not just the universal trials of growing up, but also the sudden tragedy that strikes at the heart of his family.

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A deserting soldier treks through the torn-up countryside and abandoned villages, trying to distance himself from the atrocities of war.An elderly man sits beneath lime trees, remembering his first sexual encounter one summer night with a female stranger who whispered another man's name.A young woman takes up a job in a care home, spending monotonous days scrubbing floors and yearning to dance at the local nightclub.The artist Franz Marc lives on in an imagined life as a patient at an asylum, before falling victim to Hitler's policy of Gnadentod.Finally, a young Jewish girl, the life she once knew destroyed, holds her memories close as she finds refuge in wreckage of her homeland.And throughout there is the shadowy presence of Viktor - one man or many? A looming figure in Germany's own reckoning with its past.Through these five interconnected stories, Philippe Claudel reflects on Germany's complex history and the experiences of its people, dismantling the idea of "a nation" or "a people" and exploring the malleability of memory.

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The sequel to The Foundling Boy sees Jean learning to make his way in a world of murky allegiances after the French defeat of 1940. 'A delight' Independent on Sunday In the aftermath of French defeat in July 1940, twenty-year-old Jean Arnaud and his ally, the charming conman Palfy, are hiding out at a brothel in Clermont-Ferrand, having narrowly escaped a firing squad. At a military parade, Jean falls for a beautiful stranger, Claude, who will help him forget his adolescent heartbreak but bring far more serious troubles of her own. Having safely reached occupied Paris, the friends mingle with art smugglers and forgers, social climbers, showbiz starlets, bluffers, swindlers and profiteers, French and German, as Jean learns to make his way in a world of murky allegiances. But beyond the social whirl, the war cannot stay away forever... In this sequel to the acclaimed novel The Foundling Boy, Michel Deon's hero comes to manhood not through combat but by discovering truths about desire and possession, sex and love, and the nuances that lie between crudely drawn battle lines.

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Planted forests, although only seven per cent of the world's forest resources, have superseded naturally regenerating forests as the principal source of industrial wood products. Lessening the pressure for wood production, tree planting has released natural forests to be managed for other purposes - carbon sinks, soil and water protection, conservation of biological diversity, recreation and amenity. Representing a complement, but not an alternative, to natural forests, planted forests have become increasingly important for reducing worldwide deforestation, loss of forest ecosystems and forest degradation. Examining the significance of this rapidly emerging world resource, chapters consider the strengths and weaknesses of planted forests, management objectives for their use and aspects of ownership and policy. Data from key production countries are used to evaluate the implications and sustainability of planted forests as a source of forest products as well as social and ecological issues.

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