pushkin press united kingdom london (109 results)

Paperback. Condition: Good. A major classic of 1930s literature, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight is the fantastically moving and darkly funny story of a bourgeois businessman torn between duty and desire. 'On the train, everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice .' Mihaly has dreamt of Italy all his life. When he finally travels there, on his honeymoon with Erszi, he soon abandon his new wife in order to find himself, haunted by old friends from his turbulent teenage days: beautiful, kind Tamas, brash and wicked Janos, and the sexless yet unforgettable Eva. Journeying from Venice to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, Mihaly loses himself in Venetian back alleys and in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, driven by an irresistible desire to resurrect his lost youth among Hungary's Bright Young Things, and knowing that he must soon decide whether to return to the ambiguous promise of a placid adult life, or allow himself to be seduced into a life of scandalous adventure. Journey by Moonlight is an undoubted masterpiece of Modernist literature, a darkly comic novel cut through by sex and death, which traces the effects of a socially and sexually claustrophobic world on the life of one man. Translated from the Hungarian by the renowned and award-winning Len Rix, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight is the consummate European novel of the inter-war period. 'A writer of immense subtlety and generosity . . . Can literary mastery be this quiet-seeming, this hilarious, this kind? Antal Szerb is one of the great European writers' Ali Smith 'A novel to love as well as admire, always playful and ironical, full of brilliant descriptions, bon mots and absurd situations . it's a book utterly in love with life' Kevin Crossley-Holland, Guardian Books of the Year 'Just divine . the kind of book that makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian. 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. 'I had never heard of Zweig until six or seven years ago, as allthe books began to come back into print, and I more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I immediately lovedthis book, his one, big, great novel-and suddenly there weredozens more in front of me waiting to read.' Wes Anderson The Society of the Crossed Keys contains Wes Anderson's selections from the writings of the great Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel. A CONVERSATION WITH WES ANDERSON Wes Anderson discusses Zweig's life and work with Zweig biographer George Prochnik. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY Selected extracts from Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, an unrivalled evocation of bygone Europe. BEWARE OF PITY An extract from Zweig's only novel, a devastating depictionof the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN THE LIFE OF A WOMAN One of Stefan Zweig's best-loved stories in full-a passionate tale of gambling, love and death, played out against the stylish backdrop of the French Riviera in the 1920s. "I defy anyone to read these tasters of Zweig's work without being compelled to read on. Pushkin might as well do their readers all a favour and sell The Society of the Crossed Keys with a complete Zweig back catalogue." Independent 'The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed.' -- David Hare 'Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read.a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor 'One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories.'--Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and, between the wars was an international bestselling author. With the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath, New York and Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Wes Anderson's films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel. 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. BERLIN, NOVEMBER 1938. With storm troopers battering against his door, Otto Silbermann must flee out the back of his own home. He emerges onto streets thrumming with violence: it is Kristallnacht, and synagogues are being burnt, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed. Turned away from establishments he had long patronised, betrayed by friends and colleagues, Otto finds his life as a respected businessman has dissolved overnight. Desperately trying to conceal his Jewish identity, he takes train after train across Germany in a race to escape this homeland that is no longer home. Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Shot through with Hitckcockian tension, The Passenger is a blisteringly immediate story of flight and survival in Nazi Germany. 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. Inspired by Borges and Cortazar, and echoing Vila Matas and Zarraluki, Neuman regards both life and literature's big subjects - identity, relationships, guilt and innocence, the survival of extreme circumstances, creativity and language - with a quizzical, philosophical eye. Shining from the page with both irony and mortal seriousness, these often tragicomic 'stories of ideas' vacillate between the touching and the absurd, in the best tradition of Spanish storytelling.This is the first ever English collection of Andres Neuman's short fiction, containing thirty-five short stories and four sets of 'Twelve Rules for a Storyteller'.Andres Neuman was born in Buenos Aires in 1977, and grew up and lives in Spain. The son of Argentinian emigre musicians, he has published numerous novels, short stories, essays and poetry collections. Pushkin Press also publishes his novels Talking to Ourselves and Traveller of the Century, which was awarded the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. 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. With its delicious food, warm jazz, and stunning views of Manhattan, Edward's home was a much-needed refuge for reporter Isabel Vincent. Her recently widowed ninety-something neighbour would prepare weekly meals for her, dinners Isabel would never cook for herself - fresh oysters, juicy steak, sugar-dusted apple galette. But over long, dark evenings where they both grieved for their very different lost marriages, Isabel realised she was being offered a gift greater than crisp martinis and perfect lamb chops. As they progressed from meals a deux to full dinner parties with an eclectic New York crowd, she saw that Edward was showing her how to rediscover the joy of life. For even a shared bowl of chowder could transform loneliness and anxiety into friendship, freedom, and a pure, simple pleasure Isabel had not known she could find 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. A young secular writer's journey along ancient religious pilgrimage routes in Spain, Japan and Ukraine leads to a surprise family reconciliation in this literary memoir Gideon Lewis-Kraus arrived in free-spirited Berlin from San Francisco as a young writer in search of a place to enjoy life to the fullest, and to forget the pain his father, a gay rabbi, had caused his family when he came out in middle age and emotionally abandoned his sons. But Berlin offers only unfocused dissipation, frustration and anxiety; to find what he is looking for (though he's not quite sure what it is), Gideon undertakes three separate ancient pilgrimages, travelling hundreds of miles: the thousand-year old Camino de Santiago in Spain with a friend, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and finally, with his father and brother, a migration to the tomb of a famous Hassidic mystic in the Ukraine. It is on this last pilgrimage that Gideon reconnects with his father, and discovers that the most difficult and meaningful quest of all was the journey of his heart. A beautifully written, throught-provoking, and very moving meditation on what gives our lives a sense of purpose, and how we travel between past and present in search of hope for our future. "Beautiful, often very funny. a story that is both searching and purposeful, one that forces the reader, like the pilgrim, to value the journey as much as the destination." New Yorker "If David Foster Wallace had written Eat, Pray, Love it might have come close to approximating the adventures of Gideon Lewis-Kraus" Gary Shteyngart "Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written a very honest, very smart, very moving book about being young and rootless and even wayward. With great compassion and zeal he gets at the question: why search the world to solve the riddle of your own heart?" Dave Eggers Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written for numerous US publications, including Harper's, The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Slate and others. A 2007-08 Fulbright scholarship brought him to Berlin, a hotbed of contemporary restlessness where he conceived this book. He now lives in New York, but continues to find himself frequently on the road to other places. 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. Winner of the Leipzig Book Fair PrizeLonglisted for the German Book PrizeIt's the evening before the feast in the village of Furstenfelde (population: declining), but not everyone is asleep. The local artist, wearing an evening dress and gum-boots, goes down to the lake under cover of darkness. The village archivist is kept awake by ancient tales that threaten to take on a life of their own. A retired lieutenant-colonel weighs his pistol, and his future, in his hand. And eighteen-year-old Anna, namesake of the Feast, prepares to take her place in tomorrow's festival of drinking and dancing, eating and burning.On this night of misdeeds and mischief, they are joined by a dead ferryman, a hapless bellringer, two robbers in football shirts and a vixen on the hunt as the fantastic, the menacing, and the inexplicable collide in the most surprising ways. 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. Family brings the young woman back to the Faroe Islands - the windswept, rocky northern archipelago where she has never lived but which she has always called home. There she finds her stories entwining with those of her ancestors as she searches for a way to connect with the culture and her kin. Is 'home' just a place name, or something more? Split across three generations of a Faroese family, rooted in the wild beauty of the islands and the author's own history, this is a bewitching tale of exile, homecoming, and what it means to belong. 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. In the hot, rainy summer of 1955, Cambodia is in upheaval. The first democratic elections, just weeks away, will determine not only the future of a country, but the happiness of three people. Sar is a quiet, serious schoolteacher, officially campaigning for the opposition, who is secretly working for an armed Communist takeover. Many years later, he will become known to the world as Pol Pot. Somaly - young, fragile, beautiful - refuses to be tied down. She is the woman Sar loves, the woman for whom he is willing to sacrifice his most dearly held beliefs. And Sary is the ruthless deputy prime minister - determined to keep the opposition from power by any means, and to make Somaly his lover. Amidst the poverty and the cocktail parties, the silk dresses, the divided loyalties and betrayals, a love triangle unfolds which will decide the fate of a nation. 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. Tenderly, observantly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captures life on the page like few other writers. She's a master of the short story, and this is a spectacular collection. 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. The Perigord of sixteenth-century France is a wild region on the edge of the reaches of royal authority-its steep, forested valleys roamed by bands of brigands and gypsies, its communities divided by conflict between Catholics and converts to the new Protestant faith, the Huguenots. To this beautiful but dangerous country come two veterans of the French king's wars, Jean de Siorac and Jean de Sauveterre, The Brethren-as fiercely loyal to the crown as they are to their Huguenot religion. They make their home in the formidable chateau of Mespech, and the community they found prospers, but they are far from secure-religious civil war looms on the horizon, famine and plague stalk the land, and The Brethren must use all their wits to protect those they love from the chaos that threatens to sweep them away. The Brethren is the first volume in the epic historical drama Fortunes of France-a lusty, exhilarating blend of adventure and romance set against the backdrop of a critical period in European history.'Swashbuckling historical fiction. For all its philosophical depth [The Brethren] is a hugely entertaining romp. The comparisons with Dumas seem both natural and deserved and the next 12 instalments [are] a thrilling prospect' Christobel Kent, Guardian'A vivid novel by France's modern Dumas. [there is] plenty of evidence in the rich characterisation and vivid historical detail that a reader's long-term commitment will be amply rewarded' Sunday Times'The mainstay of the novel is swashbuckling action. What stands out is Merle's eye for detail' Spectator 'We're swept away by triumph, tragedy, action and adventure. It's a novel like this that makes reviewing one of the best jobs in the world.' Bookbag, Five Star Review 'Cleverly depicts France's epic religious wars through the intimate prism of one family's experience. It's beautifully written too. Metro.'Historical fiction at its very best. This fast paced and heady brew is colourfully leavened with love and sex and a great deal of humour and wit. The second instalment cannot be published too soon' We Love This Book'This is old-fashioned story-telling. It has swagger and, vibrancy with big characters. A gripping story with humour and strength and real attention to historical detail" Mature TimesThis enjoyable story has some of the wit of George MacDonald Fraser's 'Flashman'. Alexandre Dumas comes to mind too. [the remaining volumes] of this moving panorama are eagerly awaited'The Tablet'A lively adventures anyone keen on historical fiction [should] look forward to the next instalment' Telegraph'A master of the historical novel' Guardian 'The spectacular 13-volume evocation of 16th-17th-century France' Independent 'Merle's novel offers a sympathetic and highly imaginative view of a fraught time in French history. filled with originality, humanity, and insight'New Welsh Review'The Brethren very quickly wins one over' Glasgow Herald'The Dumas of the twentieth century' Neues Deutschland'A wonderful, colourful, breathlessly narrated historical panorama' Zeitpunkt'Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who has attained both popular success and the admiration of critics. The doyen of our novelists is a happy man' Le Figaro Robert Merle (1908-2004) was born in French Algeria, before moving to mainland France in 1918. Originally an English teacher, Merle served as an interpreter with British Expeditionary Force during the Second World War, and was captured by the German army at Dunkirk, the experience of which served as the basis for his Goncourt-prize-winning Weekend at Zuydocoote. He published the 13 volumes of his hugely popular Fortunes of France series over four decades, from 1977 to 2003, the final volume appearing just a year before his death of a heart attack in 2004. 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. 'Ineed that beauty beside me because heaven doesn't send you something like thattwice. If you don't hold on to her very, very tight, if you let her go becausesomeone breaks your tooth or your arm, then you obviously don't deserve her.And she will love me, I'm telling you, in the end, she'll love me.'Twomen are crossing the sea to marry women they have never met, in order to helpthem escape war-torn Europe for the Jewish homeland. Zeev Feinberg - lover ofmany women and proud owner of a lustrous moustache - yearns to return home, toa girl whose skin is sweet with the smell of oranges. For Yaacov Markovitch,however, who no woman has ever looked at twice, his fake marriage is thebeginning of a lifelong obsession. As he vows to make his beautiful bride,Bella, love him - while she is determined to break free - their changingfortunes take them through war, upheaval, terrible secrets, tragedy, joy andloss. Vital, funny and tender, One Night, Markovitch brilliantlyfuses personal lives and epic history in an unforgettable story of endless, hopelesslonging and the desperate search for love.AyeletGundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982. She holds an MA inClinical Psychology from Tel Aviv University, has been a news editor on Israel'sleading newspaper and has worked for the Israeli civil rights movement. Herfilm scripts have won prizes at international festivals, including the BerlinToday Award and the New York City Short Film Festival Award. OneNight, Markovitch, her first novel, won the Sapir Prize for best debut. 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. Berlin, November 1938. With storm troopers battering against his door, Otto Silberman must flee out the back of his own home. He emerges onto streets thrumming with violence: it is Kristallnacht, and synagogues are being burnt, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed. Turned away from establishments he had long patronised, betrayed by friends and colleagues, Otto finds his life as a respected businessman has dissolved overnight. Desperately trying to conceal his Jewish identity, he takes train after train across Germany in a race to escape this homeland that is no longer home. Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Shot through with Hitchcockian tension, The Passenger is a blisteringly immediate story of flight and survival in Nazi Germany. 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. Claire Newbold is not your typical heroine. Smart and sexy, yes, but she's also been known to sneak into a hotel room or two without paying, seduce a teenager in wet bathing trunks, and just check out of things altogether - like her job. And her marriage. No wonder, though. Claire's been careening off heartbreak. Her only child has died. On the discovery her husband has had an affair, she takes leave of absence from her everyday life, and her behaviour drifts from illicit to erratic. No longer a mother, not sure she wants to be a wife, Claire moves from hotel to hotel, basking in the anonymity of travel and forbidden sex. As she struggles to understand her marriage and her life, she surprises herself - and us - by emerging with a new sense of redemption. 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. 'Gorgeously quirky' Stylist'Evocative and humorous' Observer'Beguiling' GuardianIt's been a tough day. She's been dumped. Twice. She's accidentally killed a goose. And now she's suddenly responsible for her best friend's deaf-mute son. But when a shared lottery ticket turns the oddly matched pair into the richest people in Iceland, she and the boy find themselves on a road trip across the country. With cucumber hotels, dead sheep, and any number of her exes on their tail, Butterflies in November is a blackly comic and uniquely moving tale of motherhood, friendship and the power of words. Auur Ava Olafsdottir was born in Iceland in 1958, studied art history in Paris and has lectured in History of Art. Her earlier novel, The Greenhouse (2007), won the DV Culture Award for literature and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award, and her other titles have been translated into 16 languages. She currently lives and works in Reykjavik as the director of the University of Iceland's Art Museum.'Beautifully crafted and translated. Carefully observed, sensuously written, and often darkly comic' Booktrust. 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 superb early postmodern classic by one of Nabokov's fellow emigre writers, rediscovered after more than half a century"A mesmerising work of literature" Antony Beevor"A work of great potency . it punches very much above its weight, and I have a hunch that what's in it will stay with you for the rest of your life" Nicholas Lezard, Guardian"This is an original at work, that originality perceived as it were through a veil, as an intrigue, an enigma . offering a perception of reality, of death and guilt and the effects of both" George Szirtes, The Times"Quick-paced, taut prose . rendered beautifully in Karetnyk's accomplished new translation" Ivan Juritz, Independent on Sunday"A masterpiece of modern literature" Die Zeit"If Proust had been a Russian taxi driver in Paris in the 1930s." L'ExpressA man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago-from the victim's point of view. It's a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man.So begins the strange quest for the elusive writer "Alexander Wolf".A singular classic, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf is a psychological thriller and existential inquiry into guilt and redemption, coincidence and fate, love and death.Gaito Gazdanov, the son of a forester, joined Baron Wrangel's White Army aged just sixteen and fought in the Russian Civil War. Exiled in Paris from the 1920s onwards, he took on what jobs he could and during periods of unemployment slept on park benches or in the Metro. A job driving taxis at night eventually allowed him to attend lectures at the Sorbonne and write during the day; he soon became part of the literary scene, and was greatly acclaimed by Maxim Gorky, among others. He died in Munich in 1971. 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. On the night of the Tiananmen Square massacre, a woman gives birth alone in a Beijing hospital. Years later, her daughter Liya travels from America to China with her mother's ashes, hoping to unravel the legacy of silences and contradictions that she inherited from that night onwards. As Liya seeks to understand her family history, we travel through Shanghai and Beijing, and deep into the past, uncovering an unexpected love triangle whose repercussions reach up to the present moment. Ambitious, multifaceted yet intimate, Little Gods is a gripping story of migrations both literal and emotional and of the tragic impact of history on individual lives. 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. Hitchcock meets the Coen Brothers in a darkly comic suspense novel with the tense pacing of a thriller and the beauty of the best of literary fiction"A ripping good novel" The New York Times"An astonishing debut novel, smart and stylish. with an absolutely Hitchcockian menace" Peter StraubThere is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.But it could always be worse.Lonely widower Jason Getty killed a man he wished he'd never met, and buried him behind his own house. A year later, just as he's ready to move on, Jason's gardeners dig up two other bodies on his property, a man and a woman. Apparently unrelated, the surprising stories behind each murder begin to unravel as Jason becomes entangled in a race against time, two determined police detectives, and his own conscience.Jamie Mason's dark imagination, tender wisdom and sharp sense of comedy take us inside the hearts and souls of all her characters - policemen, criminals, victims, innocent bystanders and one truly remarkable dog.Psychologically brilliant, relentlessly entertaining and irresistibly pitch-perfect, Three Graves Full is a dazzling literary debut.Jamie Mason was born in Oklahoma City, but grew up in Washington, DC. She currently lives with her husband and two daughters in the mountains of western North Carolina. She is the founder and editor of authorscoop.com. Three Graves Full is her first novel."Mason strides confidently into Coen brothers territory with her highly entertaining, solidly plotted debut about loneliness and the need for companionship" Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Three Graves Full is something special - an offbeat, high-class, pacy mystery that blends black humour with dark lyricism, and deft, intricate plotting with dead-on psychological insight. A gem of a debut" Tana French"Portraying characters so well and so thoroughly, examining and explaining their motives even for murder, requires a level of skill that is rare, marking this as an astonishingly accomplished debut and Mason as a writer to watch very closely" Booklist, starred review, "A Top Ten Crime Novel of 2013"Mason's quirky debut novel deftly weaves dark humor into a plot that's as complicated as a jigsaw puzzle but more fun to put together.Mason's written a dandy of a first outing with not a single boring moment" Kirkus"Filled with biting wit and great prose style, Three Graves Full by newcomer Jamie Mason may be the debut of the year" Bookspan. 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. She's one of the stars of the shore this summer; one of the girls who doesn't care what she's drinking or what pill she's taking; who ties perfectly knotted cherry stems with her tongue; her family is rich and she's untouchable. Except her parents' marriage is in brutal collapse and her brother is violently lashing out, the community around her wracked with suspicion and guilt. As her identity unravels, she circles back to the night that a local girl drowned, and no one tried to save her. Daringly experimental, Machine is a kaleidoscopic interrogation of gender, class and privilege, an unforgettable rendering of youth spinning out of control. 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. Jana is returning to see her twin brother Bror, still living in the small family farmhouse in the rural north of Sweden. It's decrepit and crumbling, and Bror is determinedly drinking himself to an early grave. They're both damaged by horrific childhood experiences, buried deep in the past, but Jana cannot keep running. Alive with the brutality and beauty of the landscape, MY BROTHER is a novel steeped in darkness and violence - about abuse, love, complicity, and coming to terms with the past. It's the story of a homecoming without a home: a story of forgiveness. 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 strange,haunting, and utterly original exploration of displacement and desire' -- TeaObreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, New York TimesBook Review'Fearless, delicate, beautiful, sad,haunting and wonderful. A brilliant novel that mesmerizes with both itshumanity and its utter uniqueness' -- JeffVanderMeerIn 1980s Yugoslavia, a young girl namedEmine is married off to a man she hardly knows. But soon her country is torn apartby war, and she is forced to flee with her family.Decadeslater Emine's son, Bekim, has grown up a social outcast in a country suspiciousof foreigners. Aside from casual hook-ups, his only companion is a pet boaconstrictor - until one night in a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat. It isthis witty, charming, manipulative creature that starts him on a journey backto Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the remarkable, cruelhistory of his family. And soon he learns that love can be found in the mostunexpected places. 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. Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision are the collected stories of an award-winning author who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike and even Chekhov'This book is a spectacular literary revelation. With Binocular Vision a new fictional planet, richly populated and suffused with warm lucidity, comes into view'?Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times'Pearlman writes about the predicaments odd, wry, funny and painful of being human . [Her] view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments. Her characters inhabit terrain that all of us recognize, one defined by anxieties and longing, love and grief, loss and exultation. These quiet, elegant stories add something significant to the literary landscape.'? The New York TimesTenderly, observantly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captures life on the page like few other writers. She is a master of the short story, and this is a spectacular collection.Edith Pearlman, born in 1936, published her debut collection of stories in 1996, at age 60. In 2011, she won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Binocular Vision. She has published over 250 works of short fiction in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and online publications. Her work has won three O. Henry Prizes, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, and a Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. In 2011, Pearlman was also the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, which puts her in the ranks of luminaries like John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates.Her fans include T.C. Boyle, Ann Patchett and Chris Adrian. 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. Somewhere in the North African desert, a man with no memory tries to evade his armed pursuers. Who are they? What do they want from him? If he could just recall his own identity he might have a chance of working it out. Elsewhere, four westerners are murdered in a hippy commune and a suitcase full of worthless currency goes missing. Enter a pair of very unenthusiastic detectives, a paranoid spy whose sanity has baked away in the sun, and a beautiful blonde American with a talent for being underestimated. Sand is a gripping thriller - part Pynchon, part Le Carre, part Coen brothers - an unsettling, caustically funny tale of pursuit and madness.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Named a Must-Read by TIME, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, InStyle, and O, The Oprah Magazine 'Action-packed. a compelling family story' USA Today 'Lillian Li is a brilliant young writer and someone to watch' Lorrie Moore The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life. Owner Jimmy Han has ambitions for a new high-end fusion place, hoping to eclipse his late father's homely establishment. Jimmy's older brother, Johnny, is more concerned with restoring the dignity of the family name than his faltering relationship with his own teenaged daughter, Annie. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, yearn to turn their thirty-year friendship into something more, while Nan's son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. When disaster strikes and Pat and Annie find themselves in a dangerous game that means tragedy for the Duck House, their families must finally confront the conflicts and loyalties simmering beneath the red and gold lanterns. 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 novel of blood ties, online identities, and our tormented efforts to connect in the digital age.At twenty-three, Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She falls in love with Manhattan, and becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, an intriguing Japanese writer whose life has strange parallels to her own.As Alice closes in on Mizuko, her 'internet twin', realities multiply and fact and fiction begin to blur. The relationship between the two women exposes a tangle of lies and sexual encounters. Three families collide as Alice learns that the swiftest answer to an ancient question - where do we come from? - can now be found online. 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. "Wayetu Moore is an inspiration . . . her book is a gift" Imbolo Mbue "The book is unforgettable . . . irresistibly evocative and fierce. She Would Be King is a masterfully wrought alternate history of magical black resistance" Star Tribune "This novel dazzles with beauty and transcendent, transformative humanity" Sarah Jessica Parker In the west African village of Lai, red-haired Gbessa is cursed at birth and exiled on suspicion of being a witch. Bitten by a viper and left for dead, she survives to discover a new life with a group of African American settlers in the colony of Monrovia. Then Gbessa meets two extraordinary others; June Dey - a man of unusual strength, born into slavery on a plantation in Virginia - and Norman Aragon, the child of a white British coloniser and a Maroon slave from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, who can fade from sight at will. Soon all three realise that they are cursed - or perhaps, uniquely gifted. Together they protect the weak and vulnerable, but only Gbessa can salvage the tense relationship between the settlers and the indigenous tribes.> In her transcendent debut, Wayetu Moore illuminates the tumultuous roots of Liberia, blending history and magical realism in a profound tale of resistance and humanity. 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. Prague, 1995: journalist Ludvik Slany is assigned to make a documentary about a truly bizarre case. Vera Foltynova, a middle-aged woman with no musical training, claims she has been visited by the ghost of great composer Frederic Chopin - and that he has been dictating dozens of compositions to her, to allow the world to hear the sublime music he was unable to create in his own short life. With media and recording companies taking the bait, Ludvik enlists the help of ex-Communist secret police agent Pavel Cerny? to expose Vera as a fraud. Soon, however, doubt creeps in, as he finds himself irrationally drawn towards this unassuming woman and the eerily beautiful music she plays. Could he be witnessing a true miracle? An intricately plotted mystery imbued with the dusky atmosphere of autumnal Prague, The Ghost of Frederic Chopin is an engrossing story of art, faith and the quiet accompaniment of the past. 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. 'Sometimes when you go astray and touch bottom, you finally come out on the other side' Lucie was brought up by bourgeois parents as a passionate young fascist. At the age of eighteen, the headstrong protagonist decides to volunteer in the Nazi labour camps in Germany. Wishing to disprove what she sees as the lies that are being told about Nazi-Fascism, she instead encounters the horrors of life there - and is changed completely. Shedding her identity, she joins a group of deportees being sent to Dachau concentration camp. She escapes the camp in October 1944, and wanders around a Germany devastated by allied bombardments. Then, in February 1945, while helping dig in rubble seeking to rescue survivors, a wall falls on her and she is left paralysed from the waist down. Translated into English for the first time, Deviation is an autobiographical novel about the repression of memory, and one woman's attempt to make sense of the hell she has lived through. 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. Tommy McBride and his brother Billy return to their isolated family home to discover that their parents have been brutally murdered. Haunted and alone, their desperate search for the killers leads them to the charismatic but deadly Inspector Noone and his Queensland Native Police - an infamous arm of colonial power whose sole purpose is the 'dispersal' of Indigenous Australians in protection of settler rights. The retribution that follows will leave a lasting mark on the colony and the country it later becomes. It will also devastate Tommy - and destroy his relationship with his brother, forever. 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. There will be a club. Important messages have been sent already. If anybody wants to ruin it, he will be punished. Eleven-year-old Elmer inhabits a childhood of superstition, private lore and secret societies. When a new boy, pale, spindly Werther, arrives in the neighbourhood, a subtle game of fascination and persecution begins. In wartime Amsterdam, a young boy watches as Germans occupy the city. At first his parents' friends, the Boslowits family, think they have little to fear. Then, slowly, terribly, their fate is sealed. These two haunting novellas, from the acclaimed author of The Evenings, evoke the world of childhood, in all its magic and strangeness, darkness and cruelty. Here, the things seen through a child's eyes are far from innocent. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.