Search results for ""Author Russell Hoban""

'Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of mysteries, profound and simple' GuardianIt is 1097 and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation.'A dark treatise on the mysterious nature of things ... The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch, pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel' The New York Times Book Review'A strange and beautiful work' Evening Standard

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'Sparkles with classical allusions and a wisecracking humour ... it is pure joy' Daily TelegraphIt all begins the night a leaflet comes through the door of unsuccessful novelist Herman Orff, promising a magical cure for writer's block. The strange treatment plunges him into a hallucinatory London dreamworld populated by figures mythical and real: a severed talking head, Vermeer's girl with a pearl earring, his lost love Luise and, beneath it all, the Kraken awaiting. As Herman will discover, creating art is a tough business.'One of his most accessibly entertaining books' The Times'Short, smart and fizzy, the novel seeks out the roots of creativity with none of the solemnity that phrase implies' New Statesman

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'Recalls Orwell's 1984 and Wells's The Time Machine ... a revelation' GuardianOn 4 November 2052, Fremder Gorn is discovered drifting in deep space. He has no spacesuit, no helmet, no oxygen, but he is still alive: the sole survivor from the mysteriously vanished ship Clever Daughter. How did he get here? To find out, Fremder must search through memory, dream and the unknowable fragments of his own mind. 'A wildly imaginative piece of science fiction' The Times'Unputdownable, moving, ingenious ... it will remain in my head with troubling images and scenes for a long time' A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

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Funny, thought-provoking and moving, this much loved story is a true classic.'What are we, Papa?' the toy mouse child asked his father. 'I don't know,' the father answered. 'We must wait and see.'So begins the story of a tin father and son who dance under a Christmas tree until they break the ancient clockwork rules and are themselves broken. Thrown away, then rescued from a dustbin and repaired by a tramp, they set out on a dangerous quest for a family and a place of their own - the magnificent doll's house, the plush elephant and the tin seal they had once know in the toy shop.'Hugely funny, provocative, pathetic and heroic.' TLS'Brilliantly plotted . . . a spellbinder . . . it has a style that glows and crackles.' Spectator

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'Wonderful, life-saving ... places Russell Hoban among the greatest, timeless novelists' The TimesBorn to swim thousands of miles in the ocean, the giant sea turtles are now trapped in a tank of golden-green water at London Zoo. But not for much longer. Two lonely people, a bookseller and a children's illustrator, have begun thinking turtle thoughts. As they come together to hatch a plan to release the turtles into the sea, their diaries reveal how they find their own lives changing in imperceptible and quite unintended ways.'Crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony' Time'This lovely human fable seems to me one of the best things of its kind - a fine and touching achievement' John Fowles

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'This is what literature is meant to be' Anthony Burgess'O what we ben! And what we come to...' Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.'Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer'A timeless portrayal of the human condition ... frightening and uncanny' Will Self'A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things' Max Porter

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'A piece of invention as original as any of Tolkien's or C.S. Lewis's' New Statesman'I have gone to look for a lion.' In a world where lions have become extinct, the map-maker Jachin-Boaz nevertheless abandons his wife and son to find one, leaving just this note. But his decision has unexpected consequences. He will be pursued by his son, Boaz-Jachin, and by something else: a tawny-skinned, amber-eyed beast from another place and time, a bringer of life and death.'Magic at work ... Funny as well as beautiful' Irish Times'Hoban is unclassifiable, thank goodness. His narrative is so minutely and compellingly realistic that after a time you cease to notice that he has stood reality on its head' Sunday Times

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'Russell Hoban's imagination knows no bounds ... darkly funny and profound' The Times'You want to buy my death for a million pounds!' Piccadilly Circus tube station is an unlikely location for a pact with the Devil, but this is where Jonathan Fitch first meets Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Devastated after his girlfriend Serafina has left him, Jonathan agrees that this mysterious stranger will pay him a million pounds for a year, if he agrees to die at the end of it. What could possibly go wrong?'A poignant and engaging fable of ownership and surrender' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday'Nothing is accidental or optional in this jewelled clockwork egg of a book ... Hoban is a hugely skilled, moving and endlessly entertaining writer' The Times Literary Supplement

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'An original ... a delight to read' The TimesOn an ordinary day in a strangely unfamiliar London, Kleinzeit is fired from his advertising job and told he must go to hospital with a skewed hypotenuse. There on Ward A4, he falls in love with the divine, rosy-cheeked Sister and is sent spinning into a quest involving, among other things, a glockenspiel, sheets of yellow paper, Orpheus, the Underground and that dirty chimpanzee, Death.'Kleinzeit, is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force ... entirely delightful' Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard

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“There is,” said the marzipan pig, “such sweetness in me!”From the inimitable team of Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, the pair behind Captain Najork and The Twenty Elephant Restaurant, comes an enchanting story of a little pig made of marzipan. Fallen behind the sofa, nobody hears the lost marzipan pig’s cries for help. And, after many months, a mouse discovers him and eats him up, having never known such sweetness. But a longing to be loved passes from the marzipan pig to the mouse … and so begins a curious chain of events featuring a dancing owl, a glowing taxi meter, a buzzing bee and a pinky-orange hibiscus flower – all triggered by the little lost marzipan pig. Each encounter more wonderful and more romantic than the last, just how far will the marzipan’s sweetness travel?

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Tom is happy with his new Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet who is delighted to be asked to join him in his latest invention, a jam-powered frog. When the frog hops past Captain Najork's window, Tom does not expect to be chased by a pedal powered snake, complete with the Captain and his hired sportsmen, bent on revenge. As Tom, the Captain and Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork all converge on a nearby girls' boarding school, the tables are suddenly turned with the Captain finding himself in a very precarious situation...

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Charlie the Beaver wants to be a tramp when he grows up. "Tramps don't have to learn how to chop down trees and how to roll logs and how to build dams. Tramps just tramp around and have a good time. Tramps carry sticks with little bundles tied to them. They sleep in a field when the weather is nice, and when it rains they sleep in a barn." Charlie sets off with his bundle. But when he hears water trickling, he can't get to sleep. Will he be able to resist the urge to make it stop? As Grandfather Beaver says, "You never know when a tramp will turn out to be a beaver." Winner of the Boys Club of America Junior Book Award, 1968

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For big sisters and little brothers in dens, burrows, and houses everywhere. "Mildred," said Father Muskrat, "it is true that Harvey is selfish and inconsiderate, but he is not stupid and no-good. Mildred is loudmouthed and bossy," Father said to Harvey, "but she is not mean and rotten." When Mildred goes off to a big party where little brothers are not invited, Harvey finds a secret club in a secret place where big sisters are not allowed to be members. But when Harvey's lonesomeness overpowers his stubbornness, he discovers that a secret club with two members is much better.

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