Published for the first time in a faithful English translation, Unknown Soldiers is the story of a platoon of ordinary Finnish soldiers fighting their Soviet Union counterparts during the Second World War. Drawing on Linna's own wartime experiences, this gritty and realistic account shatters the myth of the noble, obedient Finnish soldier. Views: 1 183
From the author of the international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, an exquisite portrait of marriage, adulthood, and the meaning of family
Paolo Giordano’s prizewinning debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, catapulted the young Italian author into the literary spotlight. His new novel features his trademark character-driven narrative and intimate domestic setting that first made him an international sensation.
When Signora A first enters the narrator’s home, his wife, Nora, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. First as their maid and nanny, then their confidante, this older woman begins to help her employers negotiate married life, quickly becoming the glue in their small household. She is the steady, maternal influence for both husband and wife, and their son, Emanuele, whom she protects from his parents’ expectations and disappointments. But the family’s delicate fabric comes undone when Signora A is diagnosed with cancer. Moving seamlessly between the past and present, Giordano highlights with remarkable precision the joy of youth and the fleeting nature of time. An elegiac, heartrending, and deeply personal portrait of marriage and the people we choose to call family, this is a jewel of a novel—short, intense, and unforgettable. Views: 1 162
Marta is raised by her grandmother in her house in Trieste, a safe haven of stories, books and enchantment. She knows that her mother died when she was young, and she believes that her father is a Turkish prince. But, as she grows older and this fairy tale disintegrates, Marta feels only anger towards her grandmother for withholding information about her parents.
When her grandmother dies, Marta is alone in the world. One day, in the dusty attic, she finds a box belonging to her mother which may help to uncover her own past. With clues found in her mother's journal and a worn photograph, Marta decides to track down her father, who she believes may still be alive. Feeling the need to escape her grandmother's house, which is populated by secrets, Marta embarks on a journey to Israel, seeking what is left of her mother's family in an attempt to make sense of where she came from.
Written as a young woman's narrative addressed to the memory of her grandmother, "Listen to My Voice" is a poignant coming of age story, and a beautifully crafted meditation on the importance of history and belonging. Views: 1 160
La villa est magnifique, l'été brûlant, la Méditerranée toute proche. Cécile a dix-sept ans. Elle ne connaît de l'amour que des baisers, des rendez-vous, des lassitudes. Pas pour longtemps. Son père, veuf, est un adepte joyeux des liaisons passagères et sans importance. Ils s'amusent, ils n'ont besoin de personne, ils sont heureux. La visite d'une femme de cœur, intelligente et calme, vient troubler ce délicieux désordre. Comment écarter la menace ? Dans la pinède embrasée, un jeu cruel se prépare.
C'était l'été 1954. On entendait pour la première fois la voix sèche et rapide d'un « charmant petit monstre » qui allait faire scandale. la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle commençait. Elle serait à l'image de cette adolescente déchirée entre le remords et le culte du plaisir. Views: 1 057
The world might be in the throes of a global recession but when an author on the brink of despair, an enigmatic musician, a supermodel and a Satanic sect meet with the cream of Italian high society at the home of a Roman property tycoon, the world outside the mansion's walls is soon forgotten. There's going to be one hell of a party. Views: 1 023
A cautionary tale of how the patron saint of children, merchants, scholars, sailors and virgins has the misfortune to get mixed up with the tabloid press. .Three psychotic killers manage to escape from prison and wander the countryside looking for new victims. Things don't go exactly as they planned though, and soon the police are closing in on them and everything seems to be going wrong for the trio. Will the police recapture them, or will they survive that long? Views: 979
Set in London in 1939 at the start of WW2 when the cut-throat razor was the weapon of choice for settling differences, the tale involves a bungled bank robbery and a car chase as ace getaway driver Foxy tries to avoid a personal introduction to the hangman.Don’t kill a copper cos it’s a hanging job. The tale is set in London on the eve of WW2 at a time when hanging was the penalty for murder and the cut-throat razor, the weapon of choice for settling differences within the criminal fraternity.It’s 1939 and Hitler is about to invade Poland and kick off the Second World War, but Foxy has more important things on his mind: as the getaway driver on bungled bank robbery he is at risk of a formal introduction to the hangman if caught. For Foxy, comedy and tragedy have always gone hand in hand, and this day is no exception as he plays hide and seek with the forces of law and order in the streets of London and the leafy lanes of Hertfordshire, doggedly keeping one step ahead thanks to his driving skills. Views: 972
Ischiano Scalo. A place where even the main road out to the nearest big town gives up after a couple of miles, where escape from a life of boredom and emptiness is almost impossible. Forced into crimes he never wanted to commit, Pietro reaches crisis point when his parents ignore his pleas for help and his schoolteacher turns her back on him - in desperation, he reaches out for attention, and finds instead a terrible revenge. Escape from Ischiano Scalo comes at a price. Life there will never be the same again. Views: 945
Lorenzo has a few issues. They include the fact that he doesn’t have, or want, any friends. Because this is making his parents unhappy, he tells them he has been invited on a skiing holiday with a group from school. In fact, he is planning to spend the week happily ensconced in the cellar of their apartment building with a supply of canned tuna.
Then his estranged older sister Olivia turns up in the cellar with some issues of her own. Over the next few days, as Lorenzo helps her through her heroin withdrawal, they form an intense bond. And Olivia reveals some secrets that the family have kept from Lorenzo.
Niccolò Ammaniti, the author of the hugely popular I’m Not Scared, has been described as ‘the best novelist of his generation’. With this breathtaking novel, he has produced a small masterpiece. Views: 941
"One of the most celebrated writers of criticism in nineteenth-century Spain, Leopoldo Alas employed his satirical talent to powerful and humorous effect in fiction as well. In His Only Son, Bonifacio Reyes, a romantic flautist by vocation--and a failed clerk and kept husband by necessity--dreams of a novelesque life. Tied to his shrill and sickly wife by her purse strings, he enters timidly into a love affair with Serafina, a seductive second-rate opera singer, encouraged by her manager who mistakes Bonifacio for a potential patron. Meanwhile, Bonifacio's wife experiences a parallel awakening and in the midst of a long-barren marriage, surprises them both with a son--but is it Bonifacio's? In the accompanying novella, Doana Berta, an aged, poor, but well-born woman forfeits her beloved estate in search of a portrait that may be all that remains of the secret love of her life"-- Views: 924
During the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians and Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army. But soon Romania itself entered the war, and Bologa found himself fighting his own people.
The Forest of the Hanged asks a fundamental question about war: namely, why does a man fight? Apostol condemns an officer to death for desertion and attempting to give information to the enemy. He watches the execution of the officer with satisfaction until he witnesses a fellow soldier's grief and pity for the dead man. At this point his world shifts. His growing self-doubt and uncertainty lead him to question beliefs he once held without question. Unprepared for his own reaction when he is once again called to sit on a court martial, he finds that he too must go to the forest.
This very rare, richly descriptive novel lays bare the inner conflict engendered by a total war, yet seldom expressed Views: 913
In this immensely powerful, lyrical and skillfully narrated novel, set in southern Italy, nine year-old Michele discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he daren’t tell anyone about it. Read an exclusive excerpt at BookBrowse today.
The hottest summer of the twentieth century. A tiny community of five houses in the middle of wheat fields. While the adults shelter indoors, six children venture out on their bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside.
In the midst of that sea of golden wheat, nine year-old Michele Amitrano discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he daren’t tell anyone about it. To come to terms with it he will have to draw strength from his own imagination and sense of humanity. The reader witnesses a dual story: the one that is seen through Michele's eyes, and the tragedy involving the adults of this isolated hamlet. The result is an immensely powerful, lyrical and skillfully narrated novel, its atmosphere reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, Stephen King's Stand By Me and Italo Calvino's Italian Fairy Tales.
This is Ammaniti's third book, but his first to be published in the USA. Views: 898
Loral spends most of her days hiding in textbooks in the hopes of rescuing her family from poverty. When she finds a temple with all the books she can read, it seems too good to be true. But there must be some reason the townspeople hate the temple so much...Maddog 1 is a fascinating detective story. Involving murder, sex, interwoven with mystery and suspense.It will keep you reading until your eyelids grow heavy.The action takes place on the mean streets of New York City. The main character is New York City’s most violent private investigator Mike Murdock. Mike through his early life experience is enraged against crime. He is fearless in exploits defending the innocent. Sometimes known as Maddog, by both the police his enemies and his friends.It will magically transport you back to Yonkers in the 1940s. A time of public phone booths, and $0.10 phone calls. Where you opened your car door, with the key, metered parking was a nickel.Experience the thrill of following, Maddogs adventures. The action starts in chapter 1 and continues through chapter 17Written is in first person with a with an authentic York accent.Weeks after reading this book, you will find yourself thinking of the different encounters and imagining what you would have done. Views: 873
That Mad Ache, set in high-society Paris in the mid-1960’s, recounts the emotional battle unleashed in the heart of Lucile, a sensitive but rootless young woman who finds herself caught between her carefree, tranquil love for 50-year-old Charles, a gentle, reflective, and well-off businessman, and her sudden wild passion for 30-year-old Antoine, a hot-blooded, impulsive, and struggling editor. As Lucile explores these two versions of love, she vacillates in confusion, but in the end she must choose, and her heart’s instinct is surprising and poignant. Originally published under the title La Chamade, this new translation by Douglas Hofstadter returns a forgotten classic to English.
In Translator, Trader, Douglas Hofstadter reflects on his personal act of devotion in rewriting Françoise Sagan’s novel La Chamade in English, and on the paradoxes that constantly plague any literary translator on all scales, ranging from the humblest of commas to entire chapters. Flatly rejecting the common wisdom that translators are inevitably traitors, Hofstadter proposes instead that translators are traders, and that translation, like musical performance, deserves high respect as a creative act. In his view, literary translation is the art of making subtle trades in which one sometimes loses and sometimes gains, often both losing and gaining at the same time. This view implies that there is no reason a translation cannot be as good as the original work, and that the result inevitably bears the stamp of the translator, much as a musical performance inevitably bears the stamp of its artists. Both a companion to the beloved Sagan novel and a singular meditation on translation, Translator, Trader is a witty and intimate exploration of words, ideas, communication, creation, and faithfulness. Views: 855
Nik's eternal optimism is challenged when he rescues a strange talking lizard from an alley and the men chasing her come after him.Read it for free at https://stories.osterin.comA plucky city girl. A tough cowboy. Romance in cowboy country.When a crisis cripples the ranch, stern cowboy Jett Maddox is suddenly promoted to foreman. Just in time for the fall cattle drive. No sweat. Except for the new spitfire cook who is way too soft for wild country. City-girl Marlee Donovan knows failure. She’s already on her second career, and her family is sure she’ll fail again. But plucky Marlee packs up her chef’s knives and heads west for a cook’s job on a ranch anyway. She’s ready to prove herself. As Marlee struggles with the hardships of life in the west, Jett finds himself falling for her. And Marlee is drawn to the unexpected soft side of the gruff cowboy.But when tragedy at the ranch escalates, a difficult decision must be made…and Marlee’s stubborn streak could cost her everything. Love on the Range is a prequel to the Looking Glass Lake series of contemporary Christian romance. If you like sweet and clean love stories with quirky characters that get you laughing, then you’ll love Rebecca Nightsong’s world of imperfect people who dare to put their faith and love in action. Saddle up and enter cowboy country to start this love story today! Views: 850
