Minke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of 19th-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures. It is his love for Annelies that enables him to find the strength to embrace his world. Views: 1 064
Readers of exciting, challenging and visionary literary fiction-including admirers of Norman Rush's Mating, Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, and Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord-will be drawn to this astonishingly gripping and accomplished first novel. A decade in the writing, this is an anthropological adventure story that combines the visceral allure of a thriller with a profound and tragic vision of what happens when cultures collide. It is a book that instantly catapults Hanya Yanagihara into the company of young novelists who really, really matter.
In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences. Views: 1 064
The second in a two volume collection of acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. JG Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain's most highly regarded and influential novelists. However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which show the germination of ideas he used in his longer fiction. This, the second book in a two-volume collection, offers a platform from which to view Ballard's other works. Almost all of his novels had their seeds in short stories and this collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to trace the development of one of Britain's most visionary writers. Views: 1 064
Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived." This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and these superb new translations capture their modernist spirit. Elusive and subtle, spare and unadorned, the stories in this selection are among Chekhov's most poignant and lyrical. The book includes well-known pieces such as The Lady with the Little Dog, as well as less familiar work like Gusev inspired by Chekhov's travels in the Far East, and Rothschild's Violin, a haunting and darkly humorous tale about death and loss. The stories are arranged chronologically to show the evolution of Chekhov's art.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. Views: 1 063
So begins the story told by Peter Aaron and his best friend, Benjamin Sachs. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he admired, a world he shared. and then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that might or night not have been intentional, Sachs disappeared. Now Aaron must piece together the life that led to Sach's death. His sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it, before those who are investigating the case invent an account of their own. Paul Auster's extraordinary seventh novel is about friendship and betrayal, sexual desire and estrangement, and the unpredictable instrusions of violence in the everyday. It is a daring and immensely moving story by an author whom The Times Literary Supplement has called "one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers." Views: 1 062
Anything can happen underground, and although our future is uncertain, there's one thing I know for sure…
Emily is working her way under my skin…
…and I'm letting her.
I sleep while chaos swirls around me, and all I can do is watch as anarchy brews. Recklessly, I seek comfort in a stranger, and somehow, I've let Emily thread our futures together. I should be thinking about saving my brother, but right now, she’s at the forefront of my mind.
I have to get her out of here.
I have to keep her safe…
At all costs. Views: 1 061
Cyd Charisse takes on Manhattan in this follow-up to Gingerbread and Shrimp. Now that she's graduated from high school, Cyd crashes with her brother Danny in New York City, ready to start her fabulous independent life--that is, until she breaks her leg. Views: 1 061
This unusual fictional account - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-out of two great cities. The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society. Views: 1 060
Of all the great novelists writing today, none shows the same gift as Martin Amis for writing non-fiction – his essays, literary criticism and journalism are justly acclaimed. As Rachel Cusk wrote in the The Times, reviewing a previous collection, ‘Amis is as talented a journalist as he is a novelist, but these essays all manifest an unusual extra quality, one that is not unlike friendship. He makes an effort; he makes readers feel that they are the only person there.’
The essays in The Rub of Time range from superb critical pieces on Amis’s heroes Nabokov, Bellow and Larkin to brilliantly funny ruminations on sport, Las Vegas, John Travolta and the pornography industry. The collection includes his essay on Princess Diana and a tribute to his great friend Christopher Hitchens, but at the centre of the book, perhaps inevitably, are essays on politics, and in particular the American election campaigns of 2012 and 2016. One of the very few consolations of Donald Trump’s rise to power is that Martin Amis is there to write about him. Views: 1 060
Hailed as a literary masterpiece, Robertson Davies' The Cornish Trilogy comes to a brilliant conclusion in The Lyre of Orpheus. Available as an eBook for the first time.
There is an important decision to be made. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish– connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric–whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. Hoffmann’s unfinished opera Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold; and the scholarly priest Simon Darcourt finds himself charged with writing the libretto. Complications both practical and emotional arise: the gypsy in Maria’s blood rises with a vengeance; Darcourt stoops to petty crime; and various others indulge in perjury, blackmail, and other unsavory pursuits. Hoffmann’s dictum, “the lyre of Orpheus opens the door of the underworld,” seems to be all too true—especially when the long-hidden secrets of Francis Cornish himself are finally revealed. Baroque and deliciously funny, this third book in The Cornish Trilogy shows Robertson Davies at his very considerable best. Views: 1 060
As the Easter Rebellion looms, tension mounts in the rain-soaked streets of Dublin. Tension is also ratcheting up at home. Pat Dumay is a Catholic and an Irish patriot. His relentlessly pious mother pursues her own private war with his stepfather, a man sunk in religious speculation and drink. Meanwhile Pat's Protestant soldier cousin, Andrew Chase-White, puzzles out his complex emotions about Ireland and the girl he loves. Weaving between them moves Millie Kinnard: fast, feminist, and only just respectable. Views: 1 059
The Cunning Man is a perceptive and entertaining memoir of a doctor’s life, available as an eBook for the first time.
When Father Hobbes mysteriously dies at the high altar on Good Friday, Dr. Jonathan Hullah—whose holistic work has earned him the label “Cunning Man” (for the wizard of the folk tradition)—wants to know why. The physician-cum-diagnostician’s search for answers compels him to look back over his own long life. He conjures vivid memories of the dazzling intellectual high jinks and compassionate philosophies of his circle, including flamboyant, mystical curate Charlie Iredale; cynical, quixotic professor Brocky Gilmartin; outrageous banker Darcy Dwyer; and jocular, muscular artist Pansy Todhunter. In compelling and hilarious scenes from the divine comedy of life, The Cunning Man reveals profound truths about being human.
In Robertson Davies’ last novel, he returns to those issues which concerned him throughout his writing career–the nature of friendship, religion, faith, and artistic life–with his famous wit and humour and his usual rich characterization. Views: 1 059
With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night. Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: a later work from 1983, People Who Knock on the Door, is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness. This novel, out of print for years, again attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene). Views: 1 058
