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‘May well be the most perfectly constructed, moving, and beautiful novel I've ever read’ ANN PATCHETT
‘One of the most important writers alive’ TASH AW
‘A wise and wonderful book’ ANNE ENRIGHT
Acclaimed Pulitzer-Prize winner Yiyun Li, returns with a sweeping historical epic, following two extraordinary musicians on the rise.
When Ludwig Bemelmans encounters the dashing yet penniless Comte de St. Cucuface aboard a Paris train, he is swept into a deliciously absurd adventure across postwar France. Under the Count’s gleeful tutelage, Bemelmans adopts the persona of a German prince, mastering the art of hoodwinking strangers with immaculate manners and effortless charm. Together, the unlikely duo embark on a run of outlandish escapades, living extravagantly on nothing at all. They dine in grand hotels, befriend millionaires, outwit restaurateurs and regale nouveau-riche Americans with fantastical tales of their aristocratic pasts. First published in 1952, this autobiographical travelogue from the beloved creator of Madeline brims with quick wit and whimsical illustrations. Bemelmans captures a France poised between eras, where fading old-world elegance mingles with the glitter of the new.
Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed? When the Marquis of Queensbury left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: ‘For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite’. The most feted playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiralled into public disgrace, humiliation and an early death. But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne’s extraordinary novel, ‘The Weight of Angels’.
In 1939, when she was just nineteen years old, Hermine Braunsteiner applied for a job in a new prison which had opened near her home. She had heard that the pay was better than working on the factory line. The prison was called Ravensbrück. A few months later, the Second World War would break like a wave across Europe. By the time it was over, she had become one of the most notoriously cruel and violent guards in the Nazi death camps. The prisoners nicknamed her the Mare – she was known for kicking her victims to death. After the war, Hermine disappeared back into civilian life. A few years later she met a US war veteran who was holidaying in Europe. He had no idea who she was. He fell in love with her, married her and brought her back to America, where she lived for years as a well-liked suburban housewife, until one day a tip-off from a Holocaust survivor sent a New York Times journalist to their door, and the questions started.
Rome, 1599. Beatrice yearns to escape the clutches of her abusive father and determined to find a way back to Rome, enlists the help of Olimpio, the castle’s keeper. Soon the love that grows between them will transform Beatrice’s fortunes, for better and for worse. History has sold her short. She is no doe-eyed victim of her father’s brutality, nor the cunning murderer who plotted her father’s demise. No, this Beatrice – a woman pregnant by her lover, incarcerated in a remote castle by her father, and brim-full of white-hot rage – is both innocent and guilty, saint and sinner. And she will stand tall in the face of the violence of men, no matter the cost.
Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence. The idealism that once bound them together fissured and fractured under the weight of collective and personal griefs. Through their memories of youthful certainty, the antagonism of their conversation and the embers of their enduring kinship, they navigate the wreckage of our world today – the hope, the anger and the exhaustion. In her most personal and emotionally resonant writing yet, Claudia Rankine blends narrative, memory and criticism in a poignant exploration of the beautiful but complicated friendships that we rely on to unsettle us, to make us better – exposing the fiction in the facts of our lives and demanding action in our time of relentless loss.
TRAS LOS ALEMANES, SERGIO DEL MOLINO ABORDA EN UNA FICCIaN DESLUMBRANTE LA HISTORIA DE ROSARIO WEISS, OCULTA TRAS UN MITO DEL ARTE ESPAÑOL: FRANCISCO DE GOYA.(S0(BSergio del Molino mira donde nadie mira y por eso ve lo que nadie ve. Y lo cuenta con trazo de escritor grande(S1(B. – Iñaki GabilondoJuan Antonio Rascón llega a París en 1878 para ver unos cuadros de Goya que resultan ser las pinturas negras de la quinta madrileña del artista. Al examinarlas, vuelve a él la memoria de Rosario Weiss, de quien estuvo enamorado en su juventud. La joven creció junto a Goya y aprendió de él, pero por encima de todo, fue la hija que lo acompañó hasta sus últimos días; sin embargo, tras la muerte del pintor, quedó relegada durante décadas, borrada tanto por su condición de mujer como por la voluntad colectiva de conservar intacto el mito goyesco.Más de un siglo después, el escritor Sergio del Molino contempla el autorretrato de Weiss en el Museo
In the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest, forbidden from ever leaving its strange depths. As part of her rigid schooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe. Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed – until she begins to pursue her own.
Two sisters must find their way in a world designed to confine them. Marcelle is the elder sister, a woman whose ambitions focus on becoming the companion of a ‘man of genius’. Marguerite is the younger sister, a girl whose sanity depends on breaking free of the oppressive expectations of society. Both end up focusing their attentions on the same disappointing man.
The life of a poet becomes a parable of hunger, hope, and the price of beauty. Yi Sang, born into poverty, dreams of becoming a poet. His gift with words leads him down a path of wandering, hunger, and rejection – yet also moments of transcendent vision. Drawing on the real life of nineteenth-century poet Kim Byeong-yeon, Yi Mun-yol creates a work that is at once historical fiction, fable, and a meditation on the burden of art itself.
1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, poverty and excess. There, a lonely young Brit working on a novel is charmed by an English runaway and want-to-be star, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles. The intimate, fleeting connection they form will stay with him for all his days.
The poetry of Dylan Thomas has long been heralded as amongst the greatest of the Modern period, and along with his play, ‘Under Milk Wood’, his books are amongst the best-loved works in the literary canon. First published in 1940, at the height of his fame, this is a collection of short autobiographical stories that paint fascinating and humorous portraits of life in rural Wales, and pre-empt characters and traits that echo throughout his later work. Now rightly considered one of the most important volumes in his oeuvre, this book is the key to unlocking the great poet’s work.
During WWII, a young Tuscan woman falls in love with a man from the rural depths of southern Italy. As the conflict finally draws to a close, the two travel from Rome to finally meet with his family. But very quickly a dawning realisation breaks: her in-laws and their friends are eccentric in the extreme. They barely leave the house and they rarely speak to their son, fretting instead about their ‘daughter’ – a loud little dog – and worrying constantly, incessantly, about the weather. And, worst of all, they speak with a nostalgic warmth about the region’s recently overthrown fascist regime.
'Matthew Plampin should rank with the best' Sunday Times
'Plampin is heartbreakingly good' The Times
'Gripping, immersive, at times very funny and beautifully written, this is historical fiction of the highest quality' Elizabeth Fremantle
An artist's life, a pact with the devil, a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
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