Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange

On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: 'I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west, but when death came to me nothing of all that I had gathered was of any avail. You who see me take heed: for Time is not to be trusted.' 
 
Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.

Superb, a revelation - a real classic of popular literature . . . endlessly diverting and inventive, (giving) a unique insight into a now-lost elegant, courtly and tolerant Arab world

Offers a gateway to a different world of language and ideas, florid, wildly descriptive and are a powerful reminder of the human need for story . . . irresistible

This book is an astonishment . . . a profound oddity, but an absolutely intriguing one

Instantly appealing (with) headlong narrative drive . . . like a Medieval Fifty Shades of Grey . . . above all, fun

Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.

World Cup WAGS

An ordinary girl thrown into an extraordinary life . . . 
 
England have made it to the World Cup in Spain and Damien can't wait to see his friends playing for their country. But a last-minute injury means he may get to do more than just watch. His seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Amy, has been trying to get her life back on track, but when a Spanish summer is calling, what\'s a WAG to do . . . ?

WAGS' World: Knowing the Score

An ordinary girl thrown into an extraordinary life . . . 
 
Amy Thornton is sixteen and planning a perfect summer in London with her lush footballer boyfriend, Damien. 
 
But things turn nasty when a fellow WAG threatens to blackmail Amy. Scared of ruining things with Damien, Amy accepts the demands and gets caught up in a whirlwind of celebrities and scandal. As Amy starts meddling in other people's lives while hiding her own secrets, she realizes that dealing with gossip is about more than scoring points . . .

WAGS' World: Playing the Game

The author of WAGS' World loves shopping, travel, fashion magazines and Italian designers, and she admires people who leave the hairdresser's with their curlers still in. She lives in the UK with her husband and kids.

An ordinary girl thrown into an extraordinary life . . . 
 
Amy, sixteen, has moved to London for the summer to be near her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, Damien. He's just been signed to a top premiership football club and is getting a taste of the no-limits lifestyle - and he wants Amy to come along for the ride. 
 
She soon learns that the other wives and girlfriends are playing games too, but theirs are strictly off the pitch . . . Will a normal girl ever be able to cope in this fast and furious WAGS' world?

A Selection

The Philokalia

Andrew Louth (Translator) 
Andrew Louth is Emeritus Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. 
 
Jonathan L. Zecher (Translator) 
Jonathan Zecher is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University.

The Philokalia is the most influential book in the recent history of the Orthodox Church, aside from the Bible. It is an anthology of thirty-six spiritual texts written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by the masters of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, tracing a continuous tradition of the prayer of the heart, or hesychasm, in which the Jesus Prayer plays a growing role, from Evagrios of Pontos to Gregory Palamas. First published in Greek in 1782, and revered for offering a rich tapestry of wisdom on the path to union with God, the texts, largely of monastic origin, serve as a guide to lay people as well as monks in their pursuit of contemplative prayer, ‘inner asceticism’, and the purification of the soul.

Anonymous

Andrew George

Andrew George has skillfully bridged the chasm between a scholarly re-edition and a popular work

The definitive translation of the world's oldest known epic, now revised in a second edition (2020) and updated with newly discovered material. 
 
Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as far as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, predates Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, The Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death. This new edition of Andrew George's translation has been extensively revised to include recently discovered fragments and new sources.

Anonymous

Praise for The Epic of Gilgamesh

A masterly verse translation

Andrew George has skillfully bridged the chasm between a scholarly re-edition and a popular work

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