'Could a message from the past rewrite the story of your life?'
When mysterious postcards from Japan arrive out of the blue, Samuel a university lecturer once featured in Francesc Miralles's novel Love in Lowercase is profoundly disillusioned with life. At the same time, his girlfriend leaves him and he is heartbroken.
Encouraged by his friend Meritxell, Samuel travels to Kyoto, a city whose classical beauty becomes a character of its own. Amid temples, gardens, and unforgettable meals, he nearly forgets to search for the sender of the postcards until he meets the captivating Mizuki and begins a journey of self-discovery he had never imagined.
Written with Miralles's signature insight and wit, Postcards from Japan is a healing, cozy novel about second chances, cultural connection and the beauty of imperfection. Perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, it will appeal to anyone drawn to Japanese culture and the quiet hope of new beginnings.
]]>Praise for Lisa Gorton:
These astounding poems unfold like the chambers of a nautilus: spiralling, repeating in dazzling patterns... They bring to poetry a heteroglossia usually confined to fiction in their exhilarating consideration of how art might be made and unmade.' NSW Premier's Literary Awards
'Mordant political wit, formal and thematic bricolage, a liquid control of the line, and the ability to trace patterns across the strata of history and society to rove between time and the timeless have long characterised Gorton's oeuvre.' Australian Book Review
]]>Cornwall, 2018. In the quiet fishing village of Portscatho, sixteen-year-old Daniel and seventeen-year-old Jago form an unexpected connection - something neither of them can name. What unfolds is transformative, particularly for Daniel, who for the first time feels truly seen.
East London, 2023. Daniel has rewritten himself: sharper, louder, queer in a way the city understands. But a visit from Jago stirs up a reckoning with his former life, forcing them both to question how much change their bond can withstand.
Reminiscent of douard Louis and Douglas Stuart's fiction in its blend of grit and tenderness, Orange examines how we reconcile our past selves with the people we become, those we bring with us and those we leave behind.
]]>Isaac is immediately infatuated by the handsome, charismatic artist, but while they grow closer, his sense of self becomes increasingly hazy. Harrison's demands shift constantly, and after Isaac tries everything to prove his worthiness, he must take a hard look at his ideas about love, sex and men, and his relationship with himself.
'So vivid and real, it brought a thousand memories rushing back' - Russell T Davies
'Truly impressive: funny, melancholic and acutely real. Isaac takes me back to my own adolescence in London, to being on the precipice of adult life... bracing and uncensorious' - James Cahill, author of Tiepolo Blue
'Carefully written, sexually candid but full of warmth and longing, Isaac is deeply satisfying in its elegance and tenderness' - Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy
'A luminous and beautiful debut about coming-of-age in London today. An instant queer classic' - Jon Ransom, author of The Gallopers
'Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing' - Alex Pheby, author of Playthings
]]>Driven by PhD research, relationship trauma and pride, Sylvie's new philosophy seems set to stick. Until Robbie comes along. And then Abie...Finding herself falling in love not once, but twice Sylvie must make a decision: to be brave and let this love in, or to choose her research and burn everything else to the ground.
Deeply relatable and utterly compelling, The End of Romance is an anti-romance romance novel for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love and wondered why.
]]>Antonio Valli, a gifted Italian philosopher in his thirties, has left his wife and children behind in Florence for a one-year research fellowship at a provincial English university. Handsome and charming, Antonio is irresistible to men and women both and he knows it. One who falls under his spell is Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist from whom Antonio rents a room. For the first time in years, Dick finds himself desperately, passionately in love, but the games the manipulative Italian plays with him throw the older man's life into chaos.
Published only three years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, A Domestic Animal is Francis King's most intimate and daringly autobiographical novel: a 'wry, anguished study...of love and jealousy [that] is hard to forget' (Robert Baldick, The Daily Telegraph).
]]>Rumaan Alam is the author of four novels. He lives in New York City.
]]>For fans of Alexander McCall Smith's many beloved series and romantic standalone novels, The Perfect Passion Company shows him at his most perceptive, playful, and generous. In the way that only McCall Smith can, this novel offers a glimpse inside the psychology of matchmaking, the search for love and companionship, and the mysterious spark of attraction that can, at times, catch hold of us all.
Two stories that wind their way into this wonderful novelwere previously available in different forms as e-book only shorts.
]]>There's a new case for the Perfect Passion Company. After a serendipitous meeting in a supermarket, Clea meets the man of her dreams. But having left suddenly without his phone number, she can't stop thinking about what might have been. Can apprentice matchmaker Katie, with the help of her enigmatic neighbour William, help orchestrate the forces of Kismet and choreograph another happy union?
And now that the newly single William's engagement is off, can Katie seize the moment to tell him how she feels before her chance has gone forever?
]]>Recent contributors include: Antigone Kefala, Alexis Wright, Eliot Weinberger, Xi Xi, Lucy Van, Peter Stamm, Lena Andersson, Elizabeth Harrower, Paul Muldoon, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Mariana Enrquez, David Sornig, Max Easton, Hasib Hourani, Isabella Trimboli, Eda Gunaydin, Ursula Robinson-Shaw, Noemi Lefebvre, Gareth Morgan, Ender Baskan, George Mouratidis, Jenny Erpenbeck, Oliver Driscoll, Mary Jean Chan, Amitava Kumar, Fiona Wright, Oscar Schwartz, Zang Di, Hanne rstavik, Katharina Volckmer, Kate Middleton and Noelle Janaczewska.
HEAT's third series (2022) is edited by Anna Thwaites and designed by award-winning designer Jenny Grigg.
Recent praise for HEAT:
'The revival of HEAT journal has been one of the high points of the year. In the 1990s and 2000s, HEAT was the most exciting, forward-looking literary magazine in the country. After more than a decade on ice, this new series has raised the bar once again. Elegantly designed and thoughtfully curated, and including work from canonical Australian writers to emerging voices to authors in translation, the journal reminds us how crucial such organs are to the vigour and health of our literary ecosystem.' Geordie Williamson, The Saturday Paper's 'Best of 2022'
'So slender and elegant, nothing wasted, nothing grandiose and beautiful work.' Helen Garner
'HEAT magazine was a trailblazer from the day it was launched...[The new series is] still dedicated to publishing non-Anglophone views of the world, alternatives to the mainstream and points of view that are both thought-provoking and expressed in high literary style.' Openbook, NSW State Library Magazine
'A very beautiful and stylish object...long may this new series of HEAT continue!' Sarah Holland-Batt
'I welcome the return of HEAT. Readers and writers alike will revel in its daring audacity, bold exploration and innovative celebration of literature.' Alexis Wright
'HEAT is eclectic and eccentric, bold and often feisty, and above all else, it is a journal that always gives a freer rein to its writers, that we might gallop wherever we will.' Fiona Wright
]]>Through long poems, parataxis, pop culture, internet rabbit holes and lyric elements, Fivehundred Swimming Pools thematically meditates upon what it could mean to know or see crude oil from within an urban setting where the consequences of extraction are continually deferred, outsourced or otherwise made invisible.
'Fivehundred Swimming Poolsoccupies the continuum of calamity and quotidian that is oil, spilled or otherwise. Connor Weightman's petropoems extract, disperse, make visible amid history and anecdote, trivia and statistic, fact and feeling a fathom of oil, a rod of plastic. A mile of still air.' Shastra Deo
]]>These poems reckon with: history's omissions and erasures; the authority, fallibility and allure of the document; colonial-induced crises; negotiation of bodies through difficult spaces; the obscurities of the past that cling to us; the pressures of work, loss, waste, consumption, memory, violence. But lest one despair at the thought of encountering such heavy themes here what emerges is the sense that the poem is a space through which poets people can face, challenge, or make peace with the world's harsh and marvellous designs. Poetry can be a tool that helps us to hold and clarify emotion (or, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, to escape emotion). Poetry invites readers to experience the event of language uncurling from these attempts to distil and convey. The 'real' world is dizzy with maladies, but there is pleasure, beauty, catharsis power in poetry's bold and manifold efforts.
]]>Angela Costi's poetry books include Honey&Salt, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New, and The Heart of the Advocate (Liquid Amber Press). Her chapbook, Adversarial Practice, published in Cordite was commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Prize 2024. She won the University of Canberra's Health Poetry Prize 2024 and the KSP Poetry Prize 2022. In 1995, she received a travel award from the Australia National Languages Board to study Ancient Greek drama in Greece. She was writer-in-residence at the former Kensington Public Housing Estate on the Relocated project. She is known as among the Cypriot diaspora, her ancestry.
Jessica L Wilkinson is Editor-in-Chief of Rabbit and the author of three books of biographical poetry. She is Professor in Creative Writing at RMIT University.
]]>Was W. H. Auden being literal when he said that poetry makes nothing happen? Or was he being facetious? How might poetry, if not evoke direct action, actually ignite the passion for action?
This 40th issue of Rabbit poetry journal features new nonfiction poems that variously explore the theme of 'extinction' as concept and fact.
]]>Elena Gomez is the author of Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt and Body of Work, as well as several chapbooks and pamphlets. She lives on unceded Wurundjeri country.
Jessica L Wilkinson is Editor-in-Chief of Rabbit and the author of three books of biographical poetry. She is Professor in Creative Writing at RMIT University.
]]>The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you will see life in the Middle East as it is really lived adolescent love, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib's luminous stories unveil the lives of ordinary people and the power of objects to hold extraordinary memories.
'A densely imagined and beautifully written debut.' Sydney Morning Herald
'With her compassion for an old, vanished world and her exceptional eye for the bruised landscape of the modern Middle East, Al-Nakib should be heralded as an exciting new literary voice.' The National
]]>A village is driven to a murderous frenzy by the wolf walking among them. In the dead of night, a sleepwalking monk reenacts a scene of violence glimpsed as a child. A lycanthropist draws closer to a monstrous truth while investigating a spate of grisly grave-robbings.
In the nineteenth century, Catherine Crowe's name was synonymous with haunting accounts of 'real' ghost stories, glimpses of the 'night side of nature' and well-wrought Gothic tales, earning her a reputation comparable to Dickens' to the Victorian readership. This new collection edited by Crowe expert Ruth Heholt features Crowe's unique, journalistic short tales of real ghost sightings alongside her Gothic stories written for popular periodicals, showcasing her singular gifts as one of the great storytellers of the Victorian era.
]]>In this new collection, Haynes expert Craig Lamont presents the essential classics of her strange storytelling alongside rarities from obscure anthologies and magazines and several stories exhumed from the family archive which have never been published before.
Featuring illustrations by Mervyn Peake from the Library's collections, this volume knits the irresistible pull of Haynes' unique brand of the uncanny with a rare opportunity to discover new material from one of the great weavers of Scottish horror
]]>Craig Lamont is a researcher and editor, and an expert on Dorothy K. Haynes' works and archive. He has spearheaded a revival of Haynes' writing, beginning in 2023 with a new edition of the novel Haste Ye Back published by the Association for Scottish Literature.
]]>Women writers of the twentieth century had a complex relationship with romantic fiction, at once a denigrated genre yet also often considered their only legitimate domain by the male literary establishment. The women in this collection complicate our over-simplified understanding of the 'love story,' crafting multifaceted, touching and vividly real stories of romantic love and loss.
From chance meetings on trains to honeymoon bliss, tentative young love, doomed love, and settled love, this collection brings together some of the best short stories on romantic connection by women writers of the twentieth century.
This new anthology brings together the creative minds of:
Across the decades, women writers return to perpetual teenage daughters that rebel against the spectre of maternal tradition and mothers who start to see their own mothers' shadows on the wall. Brought together in this collection is a moving testament to the inextricable and ineffable bond between mothers and daughters, in all its lovely and imperfect forms.
This new anthology brings together the creative minds of:
'Changing expectations of motherhood and new freedoms won by feminism permeate these stylish short stories from celebrated literary women.' SMH/The Age, Fiction Pick of the week
]]>First published in 1955, this classic village mystery with elements of WW2 spy fiction showcases Gilbert's ingenious plotting and ability to blow the reader's assumptions sky high.
]]>This classic locked-room mystery with a closed circle of suspects is woven together with a thrilling story of escape from an Italian POW camp, as the Second World War nears its endgame and a handful of British prisoners prepare to flee into the Italian countryside.
]]>You may call it a sin; I say it was an act of desperation.
Like all pathologists, Cuthbert finds dealing with dead children the hardest part of his job. However, when the body of a young boy is found in the grounds of a church orphanage, Cuthbert not only has to steel himself for the task ahead, he is also forced to revisit his own childhood grief. The boy in his shallow grave has been interred with some ritual, but just how did he die? And why was he killed?
Working closely with his assistant and the team at Scotland Yard, Cuthbert slowly and painstakingly reveals the terrible truth.
]]>Death is a lonely business . . .
No one who meets Dr Jack Cuthbert forgets him. Tall, urbane, brilliant but damaged, this Scottish pathologist who works with Scotland Yard is the best the new DCI has seen. But Cuthbert is a man who lives with secrets, and he still battles demons brought back from the trenches.
When not one but two corpses are discovered in a London park in 1929, Cuthbert must use every tool at his disposal to solve the mystery of their deaths. In the end, the horrifying truth is more shocking than even he could have imagined.
]]>In 1930, the killing of a Soho prostitute is hardly a priority for Scotland Yard. But when a second, similar murder comes to light, and then a third, everything changes. Cuthbert and his team find themselves in a nightmarish world of people-trafficking, prostitution and drug use amongst the upper classes.
Using all his forensic skills, Cuthbert sets out to solve one of the most baffling cases of his career. One final question remains unanswered until a faded photograph reveals its tragic secret.
]]>A visit to Glasgow for a job interview in 1931 unexpectedly places Cuthbert at the centre of a devastating crime. Unwittingly, he finds himself working at the intersection between rising British fascism, anti-Semitism and the infamous Glasgow razor gangs. To solve the case, Cuthbert needs to rely on all the expertise he can gather from those around him. But who can he trust?
]]>Alice Fraser has a special place in her heart for the sweeping silliness of romance novels. The journey to reach a believable Happily Ever After can go via an unbelievable rollercoaster of intensity, through wildly entertaining twists and unlikely turns. To celebrate the unparalleled joy this genre can bring to readers and defy its oft maligned status, Alice has created the author, D'Ancey LaGuarde, the ineffably mysterious, outrageously prolific, undisputed regent of the art of romance.
Collecting together excerpts, book cover designs, character sketches and synopses of 'D'Ancey's' most absurdly frivolous and outlandishly whimsical works: from A Knight of Passion to The Dragon Lord's Lady and Luring the Laird to A Cowboy Called Home, this is an exclusive glimpse into the tropes and dreams that rise like perfumed bubbles through the fecund swamp of the romantic mind, and a fulsome challenge to anyone denying the importance of joy purely for its own sake.
This book will be a constant source of solace and encouragement for romance fans worldwide, and the perfect companion to smuggle into your next ball...
]]>Paris, 1940. The course of Fatiha Bin-Khalid's life is changed forever when she befriends the Muslim feminist Doria Shafik. But after returning to Egypt and dedicating years to the fight for women's rights, she struggles to reconcile her political ideals with the realities of motherhood.
Cairo, 1966. After being publicly shamed when her relationship with a bisexual boyfriend is revealed, Fatiha's daughter is faced with an impossible decision. Should Yasminah accept a life she didn't choose, or will she leave her home and country in pursuit of independence?
Bristol, 2011. British-born Nadia is battling with an identity crisis and a severe case of herpes. Feeling unfulfilled (and after a particularly disastrous one-night stand), she moves in with her old-fashioned Aunt Yasminah and realises that she must discover her purpose in the modern world before it's too late.
Following the lives of three women from the Bin-Khalid family, Daughters of the Nile is an original and darkly funny novel that examines the enduring strength of female bonds. These women are no strangers to adversity, but they must learn from the past and relearn shame and shamelessness to radically change their futures.
Everyone's talking about Daughters of the Nile...
'A writer to watch.' @ElementaryMyDear_
'Mesmerising.' @alicetheunique
'Not to be missed.' @Silvia_reviews
'A true gem.' @stratospherekawaiigirl
]]>www.mythicalbritain.co.uk/@mythicalbritain
]]>King Arthur's Death (commonly referred to as the Alliterative Morte Arthure) is a Middle English poem that was written in Lincolnshire at the end of the fourteenth century. A source work for Malory's later Morte d'Arthur, it is an epic tale which documents the horrors of war, the loneliness of kingship and the terrible price paid for arrogance.
This magnificent poem tells of the arrival of emissaries from Imperial Rome demanding that Arthur pays his dues as a subject. It is Arthur's refusal to accept these demands, and the premise of foreign domination, which leads him on a quest to confront his foes and challenge them for command of his lands.
Combining heroic action, probing insight into human frailty and a great attention to contemporary detail, King Arthur's Death is not only a lesson in effective kingship, it is also an astonishing mirror on our own times, highlighting the folly of letting stubborn dogma drive political decisions.
]]>www.mythicalbritain.co.uk/@mythicalbritain
]]>Michael Smith's translation of this magnificent Arthurian romance draws on his intimate experience of the North West of England and his knowledge of mediaeval history, culture and architecture. He takes us back to the original poetic form of the manuscript and brings it alive for a modern audience, while revealing the poem's historic and literary context.
The book is beautifully illustrated throughout with detailed recreations of the illuminated lettering in the original manuscript and the author's own linocut prints, each meticulously researched for contemporary accuracy. This is an exciting new edition that will appeal both to students of the Gawain-poet and the general reader alike.
]]>www.mythicalbritain.co.uk
]]>It tells the story of a man coming of age in the middle of this century. Now at its end, he finds himself alone, struggling to make sense of a life of dislocation and loss. He remembers his childhood in the west of Ireland and his decades of bewildered exile in the factories, potato fields and on the building sites of England. He is haunted by the faces of the family he left behind and by the land that is still within him. He remembers the country and the seascapes, the bars and the boxing booths, the music he played, and the woman he loved. This elegiac narrative is accompanied by a succession of photographs taken by Pyke during his travels in Ireland - from starkly beautiful landscapes to unforgettable portraits and scenes from everyday life - which in their counterpoint with the text produce a powerful evocation of the Irish emigrant experience.
]]>In the 1970s, Steve Pyke was a punk rocker with an itch to do something more singular. He borrowed a friend's camera and since that time has photographed for every major magazine. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in many international permanent collections.
]]>Ronan Treanor, Monaghan native and teller of this tale, is a celebrated theorist of post-modern architecture in New York. Paul Crane, single son of a hotel maid in Indiana, turns his mathematical gift into a multi-million-dollar career as an investment banker. And the mysterious Ryan, who drew as a boy in besieged West Belfast, but was swept up in the war against the British and lived a decade of extreme and escalating violence as a sniper. Through him, the war in Ireland and its psychic legacy are brought into close focus in a way rarely seen in contemporary fiction.
Their lives merge and conflict, rise and fall, as one man becomes the undoing of the next. Hauntingly beautiful, lyrical and profound, this is a novel about what happens when you cannot escape your past, featuring drawings and paintings by Anthony Lott.
]]>"We all blamed Helen"
Haunted by her decision to leave her child behind in fleeing her unhappy marriage, Helen seeks to build a new life in Troy with her lover, Paris. She yearns to recreate the childhood family she lost when she married Menelaus, but her outraged husband vows to regain her by force, at the head of a vast army.
Facing hostility from all sides, Helen must decide where her loyalty-and her safety-lies.
Perfect for fans of Greek mythology retellings, and Madeline Miller's Circe, Jennifer Saint's Elektra, and Pat Barker's The Women of Troy.
]]>www.susancwilson.co.uk
]]>Moscow, 1993. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have brought unimaginable change to Russia. With this change come new freedoms: freedom to travel abroad and to befriend Westerners, freedom to make money, and even the freedom for an underground gay scene to take root.
Encouraged by the new climate of openness, twenty-one-year-old Kostya ventures out of the closet and resolves to pursue his dreams: to work in the theatre and to find love as his idol Tchaikovsky never could. Those dreams, however, lead to tragedy not only for Kostya, but for his mother and for the two young men he loves, as all three face up to the ways they have betrayed him.
Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants is both a gripping thriller and a poignant, very human tale of people beset by forces beyond their control, in a world where all the old certainties have crumbled and it's far from clear what will eventually take their place.
]]>At work one night, photography archivist Charlie Sze-Toh receives a misdirected letter from Wang Tian Wei, a 1920s colonial era Chinese photographer. Through a mysterious digital folder and photographic plates, a conversation is sparked, leading to a romance that spans lifetimes.
In his time, Tian Wei scours a turbulent Singapore for his missing friend, Aiko, leading him to the perfumed chambers of a Japanese brothel. Meanwhile, in the modern day, Charlie struggles against a family dynamic dominated by her stepmother, a manipulative matriarch who uses family secrets as bargaining chips. Communication starts to become difficult and Tian Wei's letters are tinged by the increasing threat of Japanese Occupation. Will one last fate-defying letter from Charlie allow Tian Wei to keep their love alive?
Inspired by her research into Singaporean historical archives, Elaine Chiew weaves Chinese mythology and early 20th century colonial Singapore into this speculative epic.
]]>Banned from publication in the United States until 1966 for its assumed obscenity, immorality, and lack of literary merit, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), is a novel considered to be the first original English prose erotica.
This is the tale of the titular Fanny Hill, told to us in her own letters with 'stark naked truth'. Young, orphaned, and nave, she recounts her early days of prostitution in bawdy eighteenth-century London and her dramatic rise to respectability.
An important work of political, social, and sexual parody and philosophy, the author himself was imprisoned at the time of publication for his depictions of sexual 'deviance' as an act of pleasure rather than simply shameful. Fanny Hill deserves its place in continued publication not only for its role in securing rights for erotica, but for its surprisingly modern, explicit, and complicated depictions of sex, love-making, money-talk, and homosexuality.
This uncensored version is set from the 1749 edition and includes a new introduction by Chelsea G. Summers, as well as a conversational afterword between Summers and Jessica Stoya.
Featuring a conversational afterword from writers Chelsea G. Summers and Jessica Stoya.
]]>Chelsea G. Summers is a former academic and college professor with Ph.D. training in eighteenth-century British literature. A freelance writer, Chelsea's work has appeared in New York Magazine, Vogue, The New Republic, Racked, The Guardian, and other fine publications. She splits her time between New York and Stockholm, Sweden. A Certain Hunger was her first novel.
Jessica Stoya has been a pornographer since 2006 and a writer since 2012. She has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, Playboy, and others. She has acted in Serbian sci-fi feature Ederlezi Rising and two of Dean Haspiel's plays in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She lives in Los Angeles.
]]>But his fate changes one day when members from a religious organisation he had never heard of, the Smiling Hearts Society, knock on his door and hand him a flyer. He's ready to dismiss them until he notices the face of his estranged wife on the flyer, smiling ever so softly.
And so begins a tale of religion and insanity. What kind of sinister darkness lurks behind this religion and its strange smiles?
]]>Driven by his deep discomfort with forced smiles and inspired by his conversations with people raised in religious cults, Hattori explores themes of faith, control, and the societal pressure to appear happy.
]]>Suspicion immediately falls on her lover, who is thrown into prison. The incompetent Inspector Hamid begins an investigation. So does the defence lawyer of the main suspect. Family, friends, and close ones give their testimonies, finding themselves confronted with their past. Secrets, betrayals, grudges, but also dreams and hopes shed light on their connection to the victim. So, who really killed Zakia? And what if, behind this woman's murder, lie secrets so unbearable they could tear an entire community apart?
'Khatibi lets his formidable storytelling talent shine. Essential reading.' France Info
'A delightful and skillful novel. In the tradition of Alaa El Aswany' Le Point
]]>Alexander Elinson teaches Arab literature at Hunter College in NY. He has translated two novels by Youssef Fadel: A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me and A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
]]>The ensemble cast brims with intrigue: The count, a sponger and a sham had arrived under cover of dark with a beautiful young woman scheming to be a top model. Two comedians seclude themselves as they try to overcome a writing block. One depressive, Signor Monforti, a retired academic, tries to woo a beautiful divorcee, while another, a woman this time, prepares to leave her husband. Two elderly spinsters and their Filipina maid are aghast at the awful predictions of their Tarot pack. With the local police floundering, it falls to Monforti to unravel the mystery, triumphing as an amateur detective.
'Doyens of the Italian detective story, Fruttero and Lucentini, offer a perfect blend of the comedy of manners and the macabre; in short, very Mediterranean mysteries.' Tim Parks, author ofHotel MilanoandItalian Life
'A sophisticated thriller consistently funny. These are superbly deadpan observers of humanity.' Literary Review
]]>Gregory Dowling lives in Venice. He is a celebrated translator from Italian, a novelist and a local university professor.
]]>The death of the jockey is only one of the mysterious goings-on to be solved. It soon becomes clear that there are no bystanders in the Palio.
]]>Gregory Dowling grew up in Bristol and read English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. Gregory lives in Venice. He is a celebrated translator from Italian, a novelist (The Four Horsemen and Ascension, both set in Venice). and a local university professor.
]]>In this kaleidoscopic novel set in a favela of Rio de Janeiro 'in the city of stray bullets, in the land of lost opportunities' a gang member runs wildly through the streets not knowing he has only seven minutes left to live. Barflies, prostitutes, immigrants, a gay couple, a taxi driver, cops, a mobster, and more populate Francisco Maciel's first book to appear in English. Leaping back and forth across time and spiraling into the surreal, the novel coalesces around a brutal massacre. Maciel's multiracial characters write poetry and discourse on soccer, insects, samba, and climate change. Gritty, unpredictable, and percussive,There's No Point in Dying is translated by National Book Award winner Bruna Dantas Lobato.
]]>Bruna Dantas Lobatoby Stenio Gardel won the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
]]>Lali's poetry is alive with seeing and feeling the world a world of sun and wind, water and fire. He is also a poet of love a love for his wife Branka that 'matures like wine' over the decades. From adolescence, through young adulthood, to the onset of old age, where 'We are twin foci of the same ellipse... Which links two other foci: death and love.'
But for Lali, the seen and the felt need to be held in memory if they are to last beyond the instant. This means putting them into words, in speech or a poem, though doing so distances us from the raw freshness of experience: 'Images I barter for the right to pronounce them, / Names I slip as a bribe to time'. Memory, for Lali, is also cultural. Many of his poems speak about Yugoslavia's Eastern and Western heritages. About his native Serbia's history and landscape, and its roots in Byzantium and ultimately in Ancient Greece. But also the seascapes and culture of the Croatian Adriatic, and of Italy.
TheTaste of Lightningintroduces new readers to this grand master of European poetry, whose other books in English are now out of print. And for those who know Lali's poetic world, it combines revisions of previously published translations with poems not seen before in English.
TheTaste of Lightningtraces the whole arc of Lali's poetic career. From the directness of his early work in the 1950s, which emerged from the trauma of a wartime boyhood. Through the rich imagery and startlingly apt similes of his mature verse. But it also charts another voice, thoughtful and meditative, that gradually grows more prominent. This voice finally reflects, just before Lali's death in 1996, on what God's purpose might be in a world wounded by personal and national tragedy: 'may he forgive my fear / That he created me, as the book says, in his own image'.
Francis R. Jones, the book's editor and translator, knew Lali well, and has worked with his poems for almost five decades. Of Jones's 15 translation prizes to date, five were awarded for his versions of Lali's poetry.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>Featuring original illustrations from editions of the 1920s, this collection will adorn any booklover's shelf and transport the reader back in time to Holmes's bustling Victorian London the misty moors of Dartmoor the dizzying heights of Reichenbach; and the cozy living room of 221b Baker Street.
]]>