Search results for ""Author Shaun Whiteside""

In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores and Restif de la Bretonne provides an eye-witness account of the Revolution. From the 1800s, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola offer fascinating portraits of the city's teeming humanity; the Goncourt brothers chronicle the explosion of artistic talent; Huysmans describes an evening at the Folies Bergère. Colette chronicles the pitfalls for a young girl in the decadent city of the early twentieth century; F. Scott Fitzgerald revels in the city's glamour; Jean Rhys's lost heroines wander from café to café; James Baldwin celebrates its sexual freedoms; and Raymond Queneau gleefully reinvents the language of the street. In our time, Michel Tournier's North African immigrant walks a camel along the boulevards, while Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano brilliantly maps the city's many arrondissements. The alluring power of Paris has never dimmed and it is richly captured in all its facets in these compelling and seductive tales.

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It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet's wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, right up until the day that she hears a snatch of Bach being played on a violin by a busker. Transfixed by the sweet melody, she emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument. Lea's all-consuming passion is matched by talent, and she becomes one of the finest players in the country - but as her fame blossoms, her relationship with her father only withers. Desperate to hold on to Lea, Martijn is driven to commit an act that threatens to destroy both him and his daughter.

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After a four-day deluge, Naples is flooded. Buildings collapse, sinkholes appear. Strange events spread across the city: ghostly voices emanate from a medieval castle and five-lire coins begin to play music, but only to ten-year-old children. A melancholy journalist searches for meaning as the narrative takes us into the minds of those who have suffered in the floods. Despite phenomenal initial success, the novel was withdrawn from publication at the author's request, and not reissued until after his death in 2012. Now translated into English for the first time, Malacqua remains a timely critique and a richly peopled portrait of a much-mythologised city.

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Ends with one of the most reverberating shocks in modern crime fiction' The Sunday Times 'A dazzling, unexpected and haunting masterpiece' Daily Mail 'A work of genius... Stunning' Daily Express Jérôme Morval has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens at Giverny, where Monet did his famous paintings. In Jérôme's pocket is a postcard of Monet's 'Water Lilies' with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, the seductive village schoolteacher and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about Jérôme's death? And what is the connection to the mysterious 'Black Water Lilies', a rumoured masterpiece by Monet that has never been found?MICHEL BUSSI: THE MASTER OF THE KILLER TWIST ''A novel so extraordinary that it reminded me of reading Stieg Larsson for the very first time' The Sunday Times on After the Crash'Inventive, original and incredibly entertaining' Sunday Mirror on Don't Let Go 'Combines an extraordinarily inventive plot with characters haunted by long-ago events - and demonstrates why he has such a hold on readers' The Times on Time Is A Killer

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At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science and technology to improve, extend and protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher's terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to any European in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the world war. How Auschwitz grew and mutated into an entire dreadful city, how both those who managed it and those who were killed by it came to be in Poland in the 1940s, and how it was allowed to happen, is something everyone needs to understand.

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'His artistry is supreme' John Banville While at this time the previous day he had never heard of the Martons, the train set specialist was beginning to haunt his thoughts, and so was the elegant young woman who, he admitted, had boldly stood up to him when he had done everything he could to unsettle her.When a salesman from a Paris department store confides his secret fears to Maigret, the Inspector soon becomes caught up in a treacherous feud between husband and wife that is not as clear cut as it seems.This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret Has Scruples.'A unique teller of tales' Observer'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian

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'One of the most exquisite debuts I've read' Daily Telegraph'Affecting and haunting' ObserverAfter the death of his wife, a father in a forgotten corner of France raises his two sons alone. But their town is not one of opportunity, and the boys are heading down different paths. Gillou sets his sights on university in Paris while Fus falls in with the local far-right group, searching for meaning and belonging with dangerous friends.How can a father and son find common ground when everything seems set to break them apart? A sudden act of violence will force them to find an answer.Tense, sharp and ultimately heartbreaking, Laurent Petitmangin's first novel, What You Need From The Night, asks what acts can truly be forgiven.'A tragedy of unconditional love' - L'Obs'Heartbreaking . . . haunts you long after you've put it down'- Libération'As sublime as it is painful' - Le Parisien

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'The father of contemporary European detective fiction' Ann Cleeves'Leaning on the banisters, Madame Maigret watched her husband going heavily downstairs . . . what the newspapers didn't know was how much energy he put into trying to understand, how much he concentrated during certain investigations. It was as if he identified with the people he was hunting and suffered the same torments as they did.'A young man is found dead, clutching his tape recorder, just streets away from Maigret's home, leading the inspector on a disturbing trail into the mind of a killer. 'His artistry is supreme' John Banville'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian

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'A wonderful rediscovery. . . human, suspenseful, shot through with hard-earned wisdom' - Lee ChildOne of the first bestsellers in Germany after the Second World War, Berlin Finale is a breathtaking novel of resistance set against the downfall of the Third ReichApril 1945, the last days of the Nazi regime. While bombs are falling on Berlin, the Gestapo still search for traitors, resistance fighters and deserters. People mistrust each other more than ever. In the midst of chaos, a disparate group - a disillusioned young soldier; a trade unionist and saboteur; a doctor helping refugees - continues to fight back. And in Oskar Klose's pub, the resistance plan their next move, hunted at every step by the SS. Published in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Berlin Finale is an unforgettable portrait of life in a city devastated by war.Translated by Shaun Whiteside

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'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 'The palm trees around the railway station were motionless, fixed in a Saharan sun . . . It really felt as if they were stepping into another world, and they were embarrassed to be entering it in the dark clothes that had been suited to the rainy streets of Paris the evening before.'An officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret's methods when a call from an island off the Côte d'Azure sends the two men off to an isolated community to investigate its eccentric inhabitants.Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations.'His artistry is supreme' John Banville'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

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AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth centuryThe year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe's wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl's phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade the lives and thought of this quartet will converge and intertwine, as each gains world-historical significance, between them remaking philosophy.Time of the Magicians brings to life this miraculous burst of intellectual creativity, unparalleled in philosophy's history, and with it an entire era, from post-war exuberance to economic crisis and the emergence of National Socialism. With great art, Wolfram Eilenberger traces the paths of these titanic figures through the tumult. He captures their personalities as well as their achievements, and illuminates with singular clarity the philosophies each embodied as well as espoused. It becomes an intellectual adventure story, a captivating journey through the greatest revolution in Western thought told through its four protagonists, each with their own penetrating gaze and answer to the question which has animated philosophy from the very beginning: What are we?

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Set in Reformation Europe, Q begins with Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg. Q traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters: an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects and the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer, on their thrilling journey across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional example of historical fiction, Q is the stuff of which cults are made.

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Joschi Molnar is an enigma: father, Holocaust survivor, wit, and fabulous liar. After his death his three surviving children are left with contrasting versions of his life, yet corresponding attitudes to their childhood: thirty years since Joschi Molnar died, his lasting legacy is one of confusion, unanswered questions, and irrevocable differences. On what would have been their father's 100th birthday, the Molnar children - along with Joschi's sixteen-year-old grand-daughter, Lily - stage a reunion: but in a lively Italian restaurant, as they remember the man that none of them really knew, their shared history dissolves into tall tales, fights, confessions and laughter.

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THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION******SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE******SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE***A Book of the YearThe Times * Sunday Times * Telegraph * New Statesman * Financial Times * Irish Independent * Daily Mail'A masterpiece' SPECTATOR'Exemplary [and] important... This is the kind of book few writers possess the clarity of vision to write' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES'Magnificent... There are great lessons in the nature of humanity to be learnt here' TELEGRAPHGermany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans. The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust.Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.

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Swansong 1945 chronicles four significant days in the last three weeks of WWII: 20 April, Hitler's last birthday; 25 April, when American and Soviet troops first met at the Elbe; 30 April, the day Hitler committed suicide; and 8 May, the day of the German surrender. Side by side in these pages, we encounter the voices of civilians fleeing on foot to the west, British and American POWs dreaming of home, concentration camp survivors, loyal soldiers from both sides of the conflict and national leaders including Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini. A monumental account of survival, suffering, hope and despair, Swansong 1945 brings vividly to life a conflict whose repercussions are felt today.

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'The question Eilenberger sets out to answer in this ambitious, enthralling book: what use is philosophy in the middle of a war?' The Sunday TimesThe year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her adoptive nation. Simone Weil, disenchanted with the revolution's course in Russia, devotes her entire being to the plight of the oppressed. Over the next decade, one of the darkest in Europe's history, these four philosophers will conceive in parallel ideas that would circle the globe in the second half of the century, reshaping it. The Visionaries follows in its protagonists' footsteps from Leningrad to New York, Spain at civil war to France under occupation, as each is uprooted by totalitarianism's ascendence. It shows them facing the injustices, unfreedom and unfathomable violence of their time as women, refugees, activists, resistance fighters - but above all as thinkers. Wolfram Eilenberger expertly distils the radical philosophies each lived as well as created, showing the two to be part of the same story, all testament to the redemptive power of thought.

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A prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia also move on their own axes, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child Alice's overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognises a kindred spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found.These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia's lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But then a chance sighting of a woman who could be Mattia's sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface. A meditation on loneliness and love, The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever truly be whole when we're in love with another?

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'The father of contemporary European detective fiction' Ann Cleeves She wasn't an ordinary supplicant. She didn't lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers.'If you don't agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful legal error...'Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder. But their well-kept shop, the sleepy community and its raging river all hide their own mysteries.This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Flemish Shop.'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

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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.Georges Simenon's brilliant pipe-smoking detective, Jules Maigret, is one of the most beloved literary creations of the twentieth century. In this adventure, an officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret's methods when a call from an island off the Côte d'Azure sends the two men off to an isolated community to investigate its eccentric inhabitants.

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A Sunday Telegraph, Irish Times and Glasgow Herald Book of the Year "Tender, acute and utterly absorbing" Anna Funder, author of Stasiland "A wry and unheroic witness... an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists" Julian Barnes "Beautiful and supremely touching" Keith Lowe, Sunday Telegraph "Compelling ... [Leo] is terrific at elucidating the slow, incremental steps by which people come to lie to themselves... Guile, guilt and disappointment drip from these pages and Red Love is all the more affecting for it" New Statesman Growing up in East Berlin, Maxim Leo knew not to ask questions. All he knew was that his rebellious parents, Wolf and Anne, with their dyed hair, leather jackets and insistence he call them by their first names, were a bit embarrassing. That there were some places you couldn't play; certain things you didn't say. Now, married with two children and the Wall a distant memory, Maxim decides to find the answers to the questions he couldn't ask. Why did his parents, once passionately in love, grow apart? Why did his father become so angry, and his mother quit her career in journalism? And why did his grandfather Gerhard, the Socialist war hero, turn into a stranger? The story he unearths is, like his country's past, one of hopes, lies, cruelties, betrayals but also love. In Red Love he captures, with warmth and unflinching honesty, why so many dreamed the GDR would be a new world and why, in the end, it fell apart. "Tender, acute and utterly absorbing. In fine portraits of his family members Leo takes us through three generations of his family, showing how they adopt, reject and survive the fierce, uplifting and ultimately catastrophic ideologies of 20th-century Europe. We are taken on an intimate journey from the exhilaration and extreme courage of the French Resistance to the uncomfortable moral accommodations of passive resistance in the GDR. "He describes these 'ordinary lies' and contradictions, and the way human beings have to negotiate their way through them, with great clarity, humour and truthfulness, for which the jury of the European Book Prize is delighted to honour Red Love. His personal memoir serves as an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists... He is a wry and unheroic witness to the distorting impact - sometimes frightening, sometimes merely absurd - that ideology has upon the daily life of the individual: citizens only allowed to dance in couples, journalists unable to mention car tyres or washing machines for reasons of state." Julian Barnes, European Book Prize With wonderful insight Leo shows how the human need to believe and to belong to a cause greater than ourselves can inspire a person to acts of heroism, but can then ossify into loyalty to a cause that long ago betrayed its people." Anna Funder, author of Stasiland >>"Leo uses the intimate scope of his family to explore the turbulent political history of East Germany from a perspective that has not been seen before. The result is an absorbing and personal account that gives outsiders an insight into life in the GDR" Shortlist "Affectionate, insightful... Red Love is a fascinating tale... beautifully written and translated" Bookoxygen Maxim Leo was born in 1970 in East Berlin. He studied Political Science at the Free University in Berlin and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. Since 1997 he is Editor of the Berliner Zeitung. In 2002 he was nominated for the Egon-Erwin-Kisch Prize, and in the same year won the German-French Journalism Prize. He won the Theodor Wolff Prize in 2006. He lives in Berlin.

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The New York Times Bestseller - Revised and Expanded "[An] earth-shaking exposé of clerical corruption" - National Catholic Reporter The arrival of Frédéric Martel’s In the Closet of the Vatican, published worldwide in eight languages, sent shockwaves through the religious and secular world. The book’s revelations of clericalism, hypocrisy, cover-ups and widespread homosexuality in the highest echelons of the Vatican provoked questions that the most senior Vatican officials--and the Pope himself--were forced to act upon; it would go on to become a New York Times bestseller. Now, almost a year after the book’s first publication, Frédéric Martel reflects in a new foreword on the effect the book has had and the events that have come to light since it was first released. In the Closet of the Vatican describes the double lives of priests--including the cardinals living with their young "assistants" in luxurious apartments whilst professing humility and chastity--the cover-up of numerous cases of sexual abuse; sinister scheming in the Vatican; political conspiracy overseas in Argentina and Chile, and the resignation of Benedict XVI. From his unique position as a respected journalist with uninhibited access to some of the Vatican’s most influential people and private spaces, Martel presents a shattering account of a system rotten to its very core.

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'Exquisitely written... haunting... Few books, I think, capture so well the sense of a life broken for ever by trauma and guilt' Sunday Times 'An unsparing, honest and insightful memoir, that shows how private failure becomes national disaster' Hilary MantelTwenty years after the end of the war, Horst Krüger attempted to make sense of his childhood. He had grown up in a quiet Berlin suburb. Here, people lived ordinary lives, believed in God, obeyed the law, and were gradually seduced by the promises of Nazism. He had been 'the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work'. With tragic inevitability, this world of respectability, order and duty began to crumble.Written in accomplished prose of lingering beauty, The Broken House is a moving coming-of-age story that provides a searing portrait of life under the Nazis.

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'The father of contemporary European detective fiction' Ann Cleeves'Florentin pulled one of those faces which had once amused his classmates so much and disarmed the teachers . . . Maigret didn't dare to ask why he had come to see him. He studied him, struggling to believe that so many years had passed . . .He was so used to acting the fool that his face automatically assumed comical expressions. But his face was still greyish, his eyes anxious.' A visit from a long-lost schoolmate who has fallen on hard times forces Maigret to unpick a seedy tangle of love affairs in Montmartre, and to confront the tragedy of a wasted life.This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret's Boyhood Friend. 'His artistry is supreme' John Banville'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian

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'His artistry is supreme' John Banville'He had seldom been so perplexed by human beings. Would a psychiatrist, a teacher or a novelist...have been better placed to understand characters who had suddenly materialized from another century?'Maigret is called to the home of Armand de Saint-Hilaire, a highly respected official who has been found shot dead in his study by his housekeeper. After interviewing everyone concerned Maigret is at a loss to the identity of the perpetrator until he comes across a series of letters from the past fifty years between the victim and a recently widowed woman. As Maigret uncovers the details behind the two's relationship he gets closer to discovering the tragic truth behind the official's demise.This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret in Society.'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian

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The astonishing, true account of one man's quest to immerse himself in nature and live with wild deer for seven years.'Haunting, remarkable and ultimately very moving' Sunday Times'A story of extraordinary power and tenderness' Charles Foster'A startling portrait of an animal that is both familiar to us and yet shockingly misunderstood' GuardianGeoffroy Delorme never felt he fitted into the human world. He would often disappear into the woods, drawn to the rhythms of animal life and away from the rules of a society he did not understand. One night, an encounter with a deer changed his life: from then on, he knew he wanted to live among them. In Deer Man, Delorme describes becoming a creature of the forest, working to blend in with the deer and witnessing their births and deaths, loves and battles, ostracism and friendship. In his seventh year in the forest, Delorme meets a woman walking through the trees. He knows he can stay in the forest and die with his friends - or he can leave, and speak their truth to a human world that desperately needs to hear it.

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Igor Levit ranks among the greatest pianists of his generation, described by The New York Times as ‘one of the essential artists of our time’. But his influence reaches far beyond music: he uses his public platform to speak out against racism, antisemitism and all forms of intolerance and prejudice. Convinced of the duty of the musician to remain an engaged citizen, he is recognized and admired for his willingness to take a stand on some of the great issues of our day, even though it has come at considerable personal cost. When the pandemic broke out and Levit was unable to give live concerts, he switched his piano recitals from concert halls to his living room and gained a huge international following. This book opens a window onto Levit’s life during the 2019–2020 concert season, charting the transition from his whirlwind life of back-to-back live concerts in packed concert halls to the eerie stillness of lockdown and the innovative series of house concerts livestreamed over Twitter. A year in which Levit spoke out against hate and received death threats in response. A year in which he found his voice and found himself – as an artist and as a person.

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This is the true story of Totò Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who rose from nothing to become the most powerful man in Sicily. The picture emerges of a bloodthirsty, power-hungry monster who, despite his lowly beginnings, is able to outmanoeuvre the other Mafia chiefs and take control of the organisation. However, the story is not just that of Riina, but also of Sicily itself. D'Avanzo and Bolzoni have transformed a complex series of events spanning several decades into a gripping narrative.In prison for 18 years now, Totò Riina still remains the dictator of the Cosa Nostra. This book tells the haunting and disturbing tale, with thorough investigation and testimony of the Sicilian Corleone.

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After two years of nonstop negotiations with the Russian authorities, Jean-Christophe Brisard and Lana Parshina were granted access to secret files detailing the Soviets' incredible hunt to recover Hitler's body: the layout of the bunker, plans for escaping, eyewitness accounts of the Führer's final days, and human remains-a bit of skull with traces of the lethal bullet and a fragment of jaw bone. For the first time, the skull, teeth and other elements were analysed by a medical examiner with cutting edge forensics equipment. The authors use these never before seen documents and research to reconstruct the events in fascinating new detail.

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In the early hours of an August morning a gunfight broke out in an Italian restaurant in Duisburg; in less than five minutes over seventy shots were fired into the bodies of six men. Both victims and assassins were members of the 'Ndrangheta crime organization; Calabria's Mafia had extended the savage tentacle of its influence outside Italy for the first time. For the men of the 'Ndrangheta, time is still measured in hour-glasses and honour may only be washed with blood.Petra Reski dispels the Hollywood romance surrounding the Mafia to reveal the huge and menacing force lurking everywhere - from street corner to parliament offices, construction site to corporate headquarters - and involved in everything from petty extortion to the disposal of nuclear waste. Reski's searing portrait of the criminals who have come to control not only Italy but vast swathes of Europe, is a journalistic tour de force.

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Winner of the HWA Sharpe Gold Crown for Best Historical Novel.An international bestseller, To Die in Spring is a beautiful and devastating novel of a friendship tragically interrupted by war, by German author Ralf Rothmann.Walter Urban and Friedrich 'Fiete' Caroli work side by side as hands on a dairy farm in northern Germany. By 1945, it seems the War's worst atrocities are over. When they are forced to 'volunteer' for the SS, they find themselves embroiled in a conflict which is drawing to a desperate, bloody close. Walter is put to work as a driver for a supply unit of the Waffen-SS, while Fiete is sent to the front. When the senseless bloodshed leads Fiete to desert, only to be captured and sentenced to death, the friends are reunited under catastrophic circumstances.In a few days the war will be over, millions of innocents will be dead, and the survivors must find a way to live with its legacy.'To Die in Spring holds its own against Günter Grass and Erich Maria Remarque; it is an excellent work, and one deserving of its wide readership' – Guardian

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The Heysel Stadium, Brussels, May 1985. Jeff and Tonino, two Parisian football fans with serious drinking habits, are on their way to the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. So too are newlyweds Tana and Francesco; troubled young couple Gabriel and Virginie; and Liverpool supporter Geoff Andrewson, travelling with his brothers.As these four groups of characters cross paths, and as the excitement of the build-up gives way to horrific tragedy, their lives and relationships are changed forever.

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'The father of contemporary European detective fiction' Ann Cleeves Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee. Then, stepping inside the church, a blast of heat, soft light; the smell of candles and incense.The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth was for his father's funeral. Now an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls' Day mass draws him back there, where troubling memories resurface and hidden vices are revealed. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret Goes Home.'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian

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LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020 A powerful criticism of modern life by one of the most provocative and prophetic writers of our ageFlorent-Claude Labrouste is dying of sadness. Despised by his girlfriend and on the brink of career failure, his last hope for relief comes in the form of a newly available antidepressant that alters the brain's release of serotonin.When he returns to the Normandy countryside in search of serenity, he instead finds a rural community left behind by globalisation and red-tape agricultural policies, with local farmers longing for an impossible return towhat they remember as a golden age.'Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves' Rachel Kushner Michel Houellebecq has good claim to be the most interesting novelist of our times. . . Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable' Evening Standard

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‘This book’s power lies in its depiction of civilians trying to lead ordinary lives during the horror of war . . . It is shattering stuff, but Rothmann is tender towards his characters and this book is as memorable as his last.’ - The Times, ‘Historical Fiction Book of the Month’As the Second World War enters its final stages, millions in Germany are forced from their homes by bombing, compelled to seek shelter in the countryside where there are barely the resources to feed them.Twelve-year-old Luisa, her mother, and her older sister Billie have escaped the devastation of the city for the relative safety of a dairy farm. But even here the power struggles of the war play out: the family depend on the goodwill of Luisa’s brother-in-law, an SS officer, who in expectation of payment turns his attention away from his wife and towards Billie. Luisa immerses herself in books, but even she notices the Allied bombers flying east above them, the gauntness of the prisoners at the camp nearby, the disappearance of fresh-faced boys from the milk shed – hastily shipped off to a war that’s already lost.Living on the farm teaches Luisa about life and death, but it’s man’s capacity for violence that provides the ultimate lesson, that robs her of her innocent ignorance. When, at a birthday celebration, her worst fears are realized, Luisa collapses under the weight of the inexplicable.Ralf Rothmann’s previous novel, To Die in Spring, described the horror of war and the damage done on the battlefield. The God of that Summer tells the devastating story of civilians caught up in the chaos of defeat, of events that might lead a twelve-year-old child to justifiably say: ‘I have experienced everything.’

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'Compelling, remorseless, brilliant' John Gray 'What he thought he had discovered, in place of the joyful candour that she usually displayed, was an irony which was neither less cheerful nor less childish, but which troubled him ... He wondered now if his exultation wasn't down to the fact that she was playing a part, not just to deceive him, not just to hide something from him, but for the pleasure of acting a part'When one of his best inspectors is shot, Maigret decides to book himself into Mademoiselle Clément's well-kept Paris boarding house nearby in order to find the culprit. 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'The most brilliant and fascinating book I have read in my entire life' Dan Snow'A huge contribution... remarkable' Antony Beevor, BBC RADIO 4'Extremely interesting ... a serious piece of scholarship, very well researched' Ian KershawThe Nazis presented themselves as warriors against moral degeneracy. Yet, as Norman Ohler's gripping bestseller reveals, the entire Third Reich was permeated with drugs: cocaine, heroin, morphine and, most of all, methamphetamines, or crystal meth, used by everyone from factory workers to housewives, and crucial to troops' resilience - even partly explaining German victory in 1940.The promiscuous use of drugs at the very highest levels also impaired and confused decision-making, with Hitler and his entourage taking refuge in potentially lethal cocktails of stimulants administered by the physician Dr Morell as the war turned against Germany. While drugs cannot on their own explain the events of the Second World War or its outcome, Ohler shows, they change our understanding of it. Blitzed forms a crucial missing piece of the story.

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Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in lifeThis landmark work of criticism is fuelled by Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner, to whom the book was dedicated. Nietzsche outlined a distinction between two central forces in art: the Apolline, representing beauty and order, and the Dionysiac, a primal or ecstatic reaction to the sublime. He believed the combination of these states produced the highest forms of music and tragic drama, which not only reveal the truth about suffering in life, but also provide a consolation for it. Impassioned and exhilarating in its conviction, The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture.Translated by Shaun WhitesideEdited by Michael Tanner

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____________________________ 'The last surviving eyewitness to the Nazi power apparatus … Her memories are remarkable given her age. Yet this book is also notable for what is not recalled … These gaps result not from memory’s decay, but from willful denial … An effective warning' - Gerard DeGroot, The Times 'Whatever Pomsel's degree of guilt, her choice of words and actions raise important questions about coercion and complicity ... Reading this book we must hope that we can learn from history in a way that she could not' - Daily Telegraph ____________________________ I know no one ever believes us nowadays – everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing. It was all a well-kept secret. We believed it. We swallowed it. It seemed entirely plausible. Brunhilde Pomsel described herself as an ‘apolitical girl’ and a ‘figure on the margins’. How are we to reconcile this description with her chosen profession? Employed as a typist during the Second World War, she worked closely with one of the worst criminals in world history: Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. She was one of the oldest surviving eyewitnesses to the internal workings of the Nazi power apparatus until her death in 2017. Her life, mirroring all the major breaks and continuities of the twentieth century, illustrates how far-right politics, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships can rise, and how political apathy can erode democracy. Compelling and unnerving, The Work I Did gives us intimate insight into political complexity at society’s highest levels – at one of history’s darkest moments. ____________________________ 'Not only one of the most important contributions to analyses of the Holocaust, but in light of today’s political situation, it is a long overdue, timeless warning to today’s generation and those yet to come' - Daniel Chanoch, Holocaust Survivor

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A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever. The stuffy conventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first boutique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocaine usher in an age of decadence. Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.

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