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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.
Two decades after Portuguese novelist and Nobel Laureate José Saramago shocked the religious world with ‘The Gospel According to Jesus Christ’, he did it again with ‘Cain’, a satire of the Old Testament. Written in the last years of Saramago’s life, it tackles many of the moral and logical non-sequiturs created by a wilful God.
One of Cinema’s great masters revisits his childhood – and the end of his parent’s marriage – in a novella of awakening. Over the course of one summer, eight-year-old Pu Bergman realises that his parents are no longer in love. Surrounded by the quiet idyll of the Swedish countryside, with its ponds, rivers and woods, the daily chaos of the family’s ramshackle summer home threatens to end the bright, brilliant haze of Pu’s childhood world.
Go is a game of strategy which is simple in its fundamentals yet infinitely complex in its execution. This fictional account of a match played between a revered and invincible master and a younger, more progressive, challenger captures the moment in which the traditions of imperial Japan met the onslaught of the 20th century.
A magical, mystical novella about the art and power of storytelling, this is Italo Calvino’s miniature masterpiece. A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then in a tavern. Their powers of speech have been magically taken from them. Instead, they have only tarot cards with which to tell their tales. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
From Japan’s most famous, classic novelist comes a remarkable gem of wit, irony, and feline observation. A stray kitten, catapulted to literary fame loudly observes the world of Meiji Japan in all its absurdity. But he’s not the only cat in the neighbourhood, and as he rallies against the stupidity of human habit, he grows closer to the sophisticated Miss Calico – but he can’t hide his own inadequacies for long.
An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley – an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever. The resting place of legendary Viking warrior Egil Skallagrímsson’s skull, Mosfell Church is a lonely, country church, fated to be destroyed. But as the plans to destroy it take shape, stories, myth and folklore abound in one magical last attempt to leave Mosfell standing.
Can you leave your parents behind? Can you slam the door, walk down the stairs, and decide never to see them again? Can you ever escape the grip of your origins? A son asks himself these questions as he celebrates a bittersweet anniversary: it is a decade since he saw his parents. Now he finally feels able to tell their story. This is his lucid portrait of a family devastated by a father’s violence and the woman who silently accepts him; of an airless relationship, unsettled only by the ringing of a telephone, a visiting classmate or a friend who is soon rejected. And it is the story of how a son is possessed by the irrepressible desire to be free: to be himself, to live his own life, to open up to others without fear of reprisals.
Camille loves Alain, but Alain loves his cat, whom he has had from childhood, more than he could love any woman.
From dragons and unicorns to beings born only in Borges’s labyrinthine mind, this extraordinary compendium blurs the line between scholarship and fantasy. At once encyclopaedia and storybook, it reveals Borges’s genius for turning knowledge into wonder.
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, the narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J’s Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier – the infamous three-flipper Spaceship.
Tucked behind the trees in a quiet neighbourhood in Tokyo, the beloved Marble café offers a cup of warm, healing matcha to all who pass through its doors. Customers flock all week to Café Marble, tucked away behind the cherry trees. But Monday is a special day: the enigmatic owner hosts a tea tasting. The ritual invites its clientele to pause, reconnect with their inner peace, and rediscover the value of simplicity, allowing the bitterness of matcha to soothe their troubles. Following the twelve calendar months, ‘Matcha on Monday’ follows people from all walks of life: a woman who needs to change, a couple facing a crisis, an artist who has lost her purpose, and a young woman struggling to break free from family expectations. As each customer frequents Café Marble’s cosy haven, they start their week with a warm sip of matcha and the joys of everyday human connection.
Trundling through the scenic countryside of Kyoto and Osaka is the Hankyu Line, a burgundy-coloured electric train that has been carrying its commuters to their destinations for decades. Over the course of a single journey in springtime, and the return journey six months later just as the leaves begin to fall: a young man meets the woman who happens to take out the last copy of the library book he was about to borrow; an angry wedding guest dresses in a white gown to upstage the bride; a university student leaves home for the first time; a twenty-something finally grows the courage to walk away from an abusive partner- a widow learns independence, as she and her granddaughter meet their new dog. As the seasons and the landscapes change, passengers jostle and connect, as this gentle timeless train carries each one forward towards the person they intend to become.
A young couple build their lives around the objects they long to own. From furniture to clothes to carefully imagined interiors, their desires shape their sense of who they are – and who they might become. Yet satisfaction always seems just out of reach. Precise and quietly ironic, the story explores the promises of material life – and the emptiness that can follow.
Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal’s cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties with his tale.
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile’s young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile’s leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider’s dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator’s attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation.
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