granta books london united kingdom (448 results)

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 'A breathtakingly ambitious mystery. As beautiful as it is triumphant' Daily Mail An astonishing, epic story of promise, deceit and desperation in New Zealand's gold rush. 'What brings a fellow down here, you know, to the ends of the earth - what sparks a man?' It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction, both a ghost story and a gripping mystery. Set amidst the promise, deceit and desperation of the mid-19th century goldrush, the lives of its rich, complex cast unspool through a labyrinthine, celestial pattern. Fiendishly clever, vividly rendered and made into a major BBC TV series, The Luminaries established Catton as one of the brightest stars in the firmament. 'A book to curl up with and devour, intricately plotted and extravagantly described, a pastiche of the Victorian sensation novel in the same smart yet playful vein as Sarah Waters' Guardian. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Good. Deep in rural Wales, a farmer is struggling through lambing season when he becomes aware that his land is being stalked by a badger-baiter who brings with him the stark threat of violence. Built of the interlocking fates of these two solitary men, this is a searing story of isolation and loss, from a writer of uncommon gifts. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany - she meets Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary "Mik Jegger" of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to "no longer to exist". The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Q: What do the following have in common? Frank Sinatra and 50 Cent; Michael Jackson and Vladimir Lenin; Eminem and Malcolm X, Al Capone and Martin Luther King; Sid Vicious and Joseph Stalin; the Kommandant of Auschwitz and Bill Gates.A: Their faces have all been recorded in police mugshots. In "Under Arrest", Giacomo Papi has assembled some 350 mugshots which tell an alternative history of the twentieth century, a compelling mosaic of the faces and the stories of those who have ended up on the wrong side of the law. Some mugshots record the faces of the innocent, the wrongfully imprisoned; others show hardened criminals, renegades, and psychopaths; still others show firebrands, revolutionaries and dictators-in-waiting. From the bleary-eyed celebrity drunk apprehended behind the wheel of his car to the mass-murder's chilling stare, this book invites you to visit a bizarre portrait gallery unlike any you have seen, in which actors rub shoulders with mob bosses, assassins with 'sixties icons, and terrorists with pop stars. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Alphabetical Dance, an ancient irrigator, hands down "the art of floating land" to his young son Will in 19th-century Wiltshire. Years later, at a Bath spa, Will meets an actress and the couple embarks on a voyage that sees their romance bifurcate and their lives fatefully intertwine with others. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake.' As a boy growing up in New York, the narrator's parents' memories of their Czech homeland seem to belong to another world, as distant and unreal as the fairy tales his father tells him. It is only as an adult, when he makes his own journey to Prague, that he is finally able to piece together the truth of his parents' past: what they did, whom his mother loved, and why they were never able to forget. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Laura was seven years old when her parents' political sympathies began to draw the attention of the dictator's regime. Before long, her father was imprisoned and Laura and her mother were forced to leave their apartment in the capital of Buenos Aires to go into hiding in a small, run-down house on the outskirts. This is the rabbit house where the resistance movement is building a secret printing press, and setting up a rabbit farm to conceal their activities. Laura now finds herself living a clandestine existence - crouching beneath a blanket in the car on her way to school, forbidden from talking to friends or neighbours, and only half understanding the conversations she overhears between the adults in the house. Intensely remembered and powerfully portrayed, this is a compelling account of growing up under a dictatorship, depicting a world hedged in by secrecy and the danger of discovery, where bonds of trust are forged and then violently betrayed. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Paul and Elaine have two boys and a beautiful home, yet they find themselves thoroughly, inexplicably stuck. Obsessed with 'making things good again', they spin the quiet terrors of family life into a fantastical frenzy that careers well and truly out of control. As A.M. Homes's incendiary novel unfolds, the technicolour hues of the American good life become nearly hallucinogenic: from a strange and hilarious encounter on the floor of the pantry with a Stepford Wife neighbour, to a house-cleaning team in space suits, to a hostage situation at the school. Homes lays bare the foundations of marriage and family life and creates characters outrageously flawed, deeply human and entirely believable. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. ADAPTED INTO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING JIM BROADBENT "A painful, funny, frightening, moving, marvellous book . everybody should read it" - Nick Hornby And when did you last see your father? Was it when they burnt the coffin? Put the lid on it? When he exhaled his last breath? When he last sat up and said something? When he last recognized me? When he last smiled? Blake Morrison's memoir is a candid, profoundly moving reflection on his relationship with his father, Arthur. Following Arthur's cancer diagnosis, Blake witnesses the slow erosion of the man he once knew. As his father's battle with the disease unfurls, Blake reflects on growing up with Arthur in Yorkshire and their relationship in the years since he left home. From Arthur's penchant for saving money - and the lengths he'd go to do so - to his wayward behavior on family holidays, Blake's fearless account resists an unwavering celebration of his father, showing him to be outlandish and recalcitrant, as well as capturing his humorous and caring qualities. The result is a rich, nuanced portrait of their relationship, capturing the accommodations and resentments that lie cloistered within familial love. And When Did You Last See Your Father? is a classic of the confessional memoir genre; a raw and shimmering interrogation of father-son relationships, masculinity, selfhood and pride. "This luminous tribute to a beloved dad made me laugh until I cried and cry till my nostrils were raw. A masterpiece - one of those books that you treasure forever" - Val Hennessy. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. "A poignant tale about guilt, blame and love in a time of tragedy" Stylist It is an early spring evening in 1943 when the air-raid sirens wail out over the East End of London. From every corner of Bethnal Green, people emerge from pubs, cinemas and houses and set off for the shelter of the tube station. But at the entrance steps, something goes badly wrong, the crowd panics, and 173 people are crushed to death. When an enquiry is called for, it falls to the local magistrate, Laurence Dunne, to find out what happened during those few, fatally confused minutes. But as Dunne gathers testimony from the guilt-stricken warden of the shelter, the priest struggling to bring comfort to his congregation, and the grieving mother who has lost her youngest daughter, the picture grows ever murkier. The more questions Dunne asks, the more difficult it becomes to disentangle truth from rumour, and to decide just how much truth the damaged community can actually bear. It is only decades later, when the case is reopened by one of the children who survived, that the facts can finally be brought to light. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A compelling, compact novel about a woman who walks out of her life and washes up in an out-of-season seaside town - from a powerful new Canadian-British voice After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy coastal town. Mired in her grief, Mara's first few days are spent alone, surviving on what scraps of food she can find, and swimming at night in the ocean. When her money runs out and the tourist season comes to a close, Mara finds a job in a local wine store and meets its owner, Simon, a man whose loneliness she immediately recognises as a mirror to her own. As Mara dances around her growing attraction to Simon, she is forced to reckon with both her present desires and her past errors, and with the compulsion she feels to both make and unmake herself. Tides is a spare, visceral portrait of a woman nearly pulled under by loss and desire. It is an unforgettable introduction to a debut writer of uncommon literary power. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Fine. SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. 'The Sisters Brothers confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers around' Sunday Times Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and who he does it for. Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier. It beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, through a tale of two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love. 'Superb. deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore' Sunday Telegraph NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JOHN C. REILLY AND JOAQUIN PHOENIX.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'This summer's Must-Read novel. a darkly funny, tartly feminist look at the tender state of our bodies and souls' Vogue 'An unsettling, whip-smart meditation on love' Independent 'A clever, gripping read. the dystopian take on dating that everyone will be reading this year' Stylist Mary is out of options. Estranged from her family, plagued by debt and beset by chronic pain, she signs up for 'The Girlfriend Experiment' - a mysterious project masterminded by a famous Hollywood actor, who, frustrated by his romantic and creative failure, hires a collection of women to fulfil the different roles of a relationship. Mary is to play the Emotional Girlfriend, alongside a Maternal Girlfriend, a Mundane Girlfriend, an Anger Girlfriend and, of course, an Intimacy Team. Each woman has her debts and her difficulties, her past loves and her secrets. As Mary and the actor are drawn ever closer together, the nature of the experiment changes, and the Girlfriends find themselves exposed to new perils, foremost among them, love. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This selection brings together new and previously unpublished poems by Blake Morrison. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Peter Singer's examination of Bush's ethics asks whether they are anything more than self-serving - an important question, since the actions which follow the rhetoric affect the lives of everyone on the planet. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'I wake up and I have to make the right choice,' he said. Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged. From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Ben Marcus is the great chronicler of the contemporary uncanny and the peculiar future. Piece by piece, he takes us apart. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Several years ago, Diana Athill accepted that she could no longer live entirely independently, and moved to a retirement home in Highgate. There, she found herself released from the daily anxieties of caring for her own property, and free to settle into her remaining years. From this vantage point, she reflects on what it feels like to be very old, and on the moments in her long life that have risen to the surface and which sustain her in these last years. What really matters in the end? And after a long life, which memories stand out? As she approaches her 100th year, Athill recalls in sparkling, precise detail the exact layout of the garden of her childhood, a vast and beautiful park attached to a large house; relates with humour, clarity and honesty her experiences of the First and Second World Wars and her trips to Europe as a young woman; and in the remarkable title chapter, describes her pregnancy at the age of forty-three, losing the baby and almost losing her life - and her gratitude and joy on discovering that she had survived. With vivid memories of the past mingled with candid, wise and often very funny reflections on what it's like to be very old, Alive, Alive Oh! reminds us what really matters, and of the joy to be found at every stage of life. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Reeve, Katharine; Bolter, Miranda (illustrator). This guide celebrates Athens as it really is: a wonderful, complex city which has lived with the contradictions of its extraordinary heritage for 2500 years. Athens, invigorated by the prospect of hosting the Olympics, has never looked better; its spirits have never been higher. This guide explores the pleasures and curiosities of this most fascinating of destinations: the courtyards and lanes of Plaka and old Anafiotika and the bazaars and food markets of Monastiraki; tiny tucked-away Byzantine churches and unfamiliar gems of antiquity; and the peaceful cemetery at Keramikos and converted warehouses in increasingly fashionable Psirri and Thisio. From resinous amber shops or 1930s patisseries, to one of Europe's outstanding museums and its most beautiful underground station, Athens has it all. This timely guide for both first-time visitor and long-established Hellenophile includes an up-to-date selection of cafes, restaurants and hotels which reflect the best Athens has to offer the visitor. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Franklin Hata, Korean by birth but raised in Japan, is an outsider in American society, but he embodies the values of the town he calls his own - he is polite and keeps himself to himself. Franklin deflects everyone with courtesy and impenetrable decorum, and becomes a respected elder of his small, prosperous American town. 'You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness,' Sunny tells her adoptive father. But as Sunny tries to unpick her father's scrupulous self-control, the story he has repressed emerges: his life as a medic in the Japanese Army and his love for a Korean woman forced into sexual service for the troops. This is a compelling novel, told in Franklin's own careful, measured words as he struggles to reconcile the propriety of his current life with the tragedies of the past. Building on the success of the award-winning Native Speaker, A Gesture Life established Lee as a unique and powerful voice in American fiction. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Historian John E. Wills presents a picture of the world over just one year, a time when only a few travellers and merchants were aware of societies beyond their own. The book reflects the variety, splendour and strangeness of the human condition. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. An electrifying debut novel about a young woman and her desire for sleaze, whose idyllic summer on a remote Alaskan homestead takes a disturbing turn. "Sexy and dark and strange and absolutely perfect." Carmen Maria Machado "Puppy love meets jaded lust to dance their death spiral inside a young woman's head . I ate it up." Nell Zink Tourists arrive all summer, by boat or seaplane, at Stu and Maureen Jenkins's Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge in the Kodiak Archipelago, expecting adventure. But the spontaneity of their authentic Alaskan wilderness experience is meticulously scripted, except when real danger rears its head. Stu and Maureen's lodge is failing, as is their marriage. Mira has been hired for the season as the lodge's baker and housekeeper. But she's also busy gleefully nursing twin obsessions: building a working theory of what constitutes 'sleaze' and pursuing a young fisherman she deems the embodiment of all things deliciously sleazy. Her plans become more perverse and elaborate, even as life on Lavender Island starts to unravel. By midseason, it becomes clear that Stu, the jovial, predatory patriarch of the lodge, has turned his sexual attentions to another young employee. As the mood of the lodge spirals into chaos, the inhabitants realize just how isolated Lavender Island really is. Hilarious, sensual, and charged with menace, The Seaplane on Final Approach brilliantly illuminates the mirage-thin line between the artificial and the feral. In this daring and psychologically razor-sharp debut, Rukeyser's characters tear aside the facade of good manners to reveal all of our deepest needs and naked desires. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. When Eva's mother abandons her on Iris's front porch, the girls don't seem to have much in common - except, they soon discover, a father. Thrown together with no mothers to care for them and a father who could not be considered a parent, Iris and Eva become one another's family. Iris wants to be a movie star; Eva is her sidekick. Together, they journey across 1940s America from scandal in Hollywood to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island, stumbling, cheating and loving their way through a landscape of war, betrayals and big dreams. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. John le Carre When is easy. Why never is. It is always possible to say when it happens: that crucial moment, in committing a transgression, when the deed is done. Before it, you are not an adulterer. Afterwards, you are. Before it, you are not a criminal or a traitor. Or a spy. Afterwards. But why is much more difficult. Why did Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire, a military judge, a commander in the Swiss Army, seek the friendship of Colonel Vassily Denissenko of the Soviety Embassy? And why did he do it in the way that he did? Why did he give him so much? The files, confidential documents, the wife. On 17 June 1977, Jean-Louise Jeanmaire, denounced as the 'traitor of the century', was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He was sixty-seven years old; he was expected to die behind bars. But he didn't. And, on his release, he needed to tell his story. John le Carre is the world's greatest writer of spy fiction. In 'The Unbearable Peace', he turns to fact and to a story that, like his novels, is about more than spying. It is a story about the Swiss, about money and democracy, and about our own unbearable peace. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Four years ago, Paul Gascoigne was an athlete of promise, but not a lot more. He had his distinctive features: he was gifted and entertaining and a bit goofy - one of the lads. But, apart from a few million English males, who knew about him really? After the summer of 1990, that hot, sticky summer when England lost to Germany in the World Cup, Paul Gascoigne was no longer Paul Gascoigne. The blubbery, wet, wrinkled face witnessed on the television sets of most of the world's population had changed that. He was Gazza now, as famous as the famous can ever become. What would it be like to be Gazza? What are the pressures? How do you cope with possessing 'this gift' - this ability to perform so exceptionally in an athletic contest (but one that you know will peak and then disintegrate)? Ian Hamilton is a poet and biographer. He is also a Tottenham Hotspur supporter - and a Gazza fan. And this is a fan's account: of a player's life and of the fan's obsession, of a sport celebrity and of our apparent need to have one. It is the story of Gazza: at play, on show, in the press, in pain, in distress - of Gazza, more sinned against than sinning, agonistes. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Diana Athill will be ninety in December, 2007. "Somewhere Towards the End" tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive - and how one faces the inevitable fact of death. Athill has lost none of her skill or candour as a writer, her love of the intimate detail. Her book is filled with stories, events and people, and the kind of honest, intelligent reflection that has been a hallmark of her writing throughout her long career. 'We rarely did anything together except make ourselves a pleasant little supper and go to bed, because we had very little in common apart from liking sex,' she writes of her last affair, when she was in her late sixties. 'We also shared painful feet, which was almost as important as liking sex, because when you start feeling your age it is comforting to be with someone in the same condition.'Diana's previous books are: "Instead of a Letter", "After a Funeral", and "Stet", her much praised memoir of her life as a book editor (many said the best in London) with Andre Deutsch. She describes her books as 'documentaries' and her early work prefigured the modern taste for memoir. As she writes in "Somewhere Towards the End", 'I believed, and still believe, that there is no point describing experience unless one tries to get it as near to what it really was as you can make it, but that belief does come into conflict with a central teaching of my upbringing: do not think yourself important.'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Set in Romania at the height of Ceausescu's reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city. It is a profound illustration of a totalitarian state which comes to inhabit every aspect of life; to the extent that everyone, event the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors or resist them and perish. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Adrift in lives of possibility and limitation, the flawed, struggling and sympathetic characters of these desperate, eerie stories seek refuge from meaninglessness and boredom in love, art, friendship, drugs, and sex. A journalist is either the guest or captive of a reclusive former tennis star at his mansion in the French hills; a terrible storm forces a man and a woman, who may be his therapist, to flee New York together; the artistic ambitions of a banker are laid bare when he comes under the influence of two strange sisters. Unflinching, funny and profound, Prodigals maps the degradations of contemporary life - from the deification of celebrity, to the impotence of violence, to the psychological debts of privilege, to the loss of grand narratives - with unusual insight, sincerity, and passion. It is a fiercely honest and heartfelt look at what we have become, the comedy of our foibles, and our longing for home. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. After returning from a pleasant holiday with his wife, Astrid, and their two children, Thomas walks out the front door. Thomas walks up the street. Thomas keeps walking. Astrid gradually realizes that her husband has not just gotten up early to go to work. She waits for as long as she can and then puts as much energy as she can into trying to find him - coming to understand, along the way, that there is little she can do if Thomas is striving to stay lost. In precise and hypnotic prose that cuts as cleanly as a scalpel, To the Back of Beyond is a novel that takes away the safe foundations of a marriage and a lifestyle to ask deeper questions about identity, connection and how free we are to change our lives. It is a graceful and resonant work from one of Europe's most important writers. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Sweden was an affluent, egalitarian country envied around the world. Refugees were welcomed, even misfit young Englishmen could find a place there. Andrew Brown spent part of his childhood in Sweden during the 1960s. In the 1970s he married a Swedish woman and worked in a timber mill while helping to raise their small son. Fishing became his passion and his escape. In the mid-1980s his marriage and the country fell apart. The Prime Minister was assassinated. The welfare system crumbled along with the industries that had supported it. Twenty years later, Andrew Brown travelled the length of Sweden in search of the country he had loved, and then hated, and now found he loved again. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Noah, an orphan with no past, has run a community centre for the past twenty years, but faced with immiment closure, he begins to image the story of the man he would have liked to have been - the charismatic and magical Mr George whose impact on the town in the 1930s is the stuff of local legend. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.