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Gesualdo Bufalino

In a Mediterranean island fortress-prison under the Bourbon monarchy four political prisoners suspected of conspiracy spend their last night before execution, discussing their lives, old hopes and ambitions.

Night's Lies

Jorge Amado

A big, brawling novel of waterfront life in Bahia, packed with cardsharpers, prostitutes, pimps, drunks and homeless Don Juans and Messalinas. It tells three interlinked and cumulating stories - about a marriage, a christening and a siege. 
 
The things that happen in Shepherds of the Night are bound to happen once the cleverest of the Don Juans marries an out-of-town prostitute and tires of her; once an unmarried mother insists on a church christening for her fatherless child; and once a group of homeless Bahians erect their shacks on private property.

Shepherds Of The Night

Ray Desmond

This informative volume traces the extraordinary evolution over more than two centuries of Kew's historic landscape, which began with two private royal gardens and expanded through the work of some of our most distinguished garden designers and architects, resulting in an important range of listed buildings of which thirty-nine have survived. These, together with the latest additions to Kew's architectural heritage, are extensively illustrated and described. As much part of this fascinating landscape are the principal figures in Kew's history - among them Queen Caroline, her son Frederick Prince of Wales, his wife Princess Augusta, and George III; Sir Joseph Banks, who organized the first worldwide plant-collecting expeditions; Sir William Hooker and his son, Sir Joseph, who laid the foundations of the present Botanic Gardens; and successive directors who formulated policy and enabled improvements. 
 
Kew also played a pivotal role in the development of the British Empire's natural resources, the introduction of commercial crops to the colonies and the compilation of colonial floras. Its collaboration with overseas botanical gardens, alongside its establishment as an international scientific institution are equally crucial and examined in detail. Whilst previous accounts of Kew have relied almost entirely on printed sources, the present volume makes extensive use of archives which support modern Kew's primary objective: "the better management of the Earth's environment by increasing knowledge and understanding of the plant kingdom".

A History

Lars Gustafsson

One grey November morning a friend rang Torsten Bergman and told him of a job on a house-conversion. Torsten arrived at the empty house in his decrepit car and got to work retiling the bathroom – the tiles were there already – while he waited for someone to turn up and make it all official. 
 
So begins this story of one day in an old man’s life: a day of work, of day-dreaming, of memories, of chance encounters (for men and women, not to mention children, burst in on his solitary tiling). And as he put away his tools that evening, there came also a discovery that might, after all, hold a clue to the elusive Meaning of Life. 
 
 
In A Tiler’s Afternoon, Lars Gustafsson has written an enchanting tale, full of insight, wisdom and gentle irony, sensitively conveyed in the childlike simplicity of its telling, as the tiler’s life-story is gradually filled in from his memories. Here is a book that in short compass embraces a whole rich microcosm.

A Tiler's Afternoon

Henry Green

Back is, according to Jeremy Treglown in his introduction, "Henry Green's most extended attempt to plumb the world of the hunted - and haunted". First published in 1946, it has indeed remained one of Green's most haunting, elegiac novels and one of the most enduring to have focused on the individual human tragedy of the war.

Back

Yashar Kemal

A tale of greed, hatred and decay from Turkey's legendary novelist Yashar Kemal 
 
Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brings to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. At the same time scents and sounds, vistas of mountain and stream and field, rise up from the pages of his books with primitive force. 
 
In a sudden, chance encounter in a coffee-house in a fishing village near Istanbul, Zeynel Celik shoots a local gangster. Only one man intervenes – the village outcast Fisher Selim – and in doing so inadvertently transfers the blame for the murder onto himself. From this one simple act, Zeynel becomes a legendary outlaw in the minds of the people, whereas Fisher Selim, passionate about the sea and haunted by a lost love, is cast as an eccentric oddball. Each is pursued by his own paranoia, memories of the past and hopes for the future, until their paths cross once again on Selim’s boat, and their obsessions come to a resolution. Reflective and lyrical, the novel offers insight into the Turkish mentality while drawing universally valid conclusions, and manages to be both brutally savage and deeply humane.

The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

Part One in the acclaimed The Wind from the Plain trilogy 
 
Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. At the same time scents and sounds, vistas of mountain and stream and field, rise up from the pages of his books with primitive force. The Wind from the Plains trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed My Hawk. 
 
Each year the wind brings the news to old Halil's keen senses that the cotton is ripe for picking in the plain, and at his word the entire population of his remote village in the Taurus Mountains set out on the arduous trek. 
 
 
But this year old Halil finds himself too old to go on foot; so does Long Ali's aging mother, Meryemdje, and both clamour for a place on the back of Long Ali's broken-down nag, scarcely capable of bearing either of the two old people. Halil's determination to stay on and Meryemdje's to get him off lead to a war of words and cunning which lights with delicious comedy the sombre drama of the march. But when the decrepit animal finally dies, and the group falls behind the rest of the villagers, it is the unfortunate Ali who has to show piety towards his mother and compassion to old Halil, while pressing on with dogged resolution to reach the cotton fields before they are picked bare. 
 
The power of The Wind from the Plain, the first volume of The Wind from the Plain trilogy, lies in its simplicity, which in turn lies in the handful of unforgettable characters whose story it tells - the timeless one of survival.

The Wind From The Plain

Jean-Christophe Grange

Anna Heymes, the wife of a senior government official, suffers from amnesia and from terrifying hallucinations: she doesn't always recognise her husband's face and sometimes not even her own. With the help of a psychiatrist, she learns that she has had a most complex form of facial surgery and now looks nothing like she did before. From this moment, two questions haunt her: Who did that to her and why? 
 
In Paris's 10th arrondissement - the Turkish district - two police officers are trying to solve the mystery of the torture and subsequent killing of three clandestine Turkish women workers. One of the policemen is a newly graduated inspector, the other a regular of the disrtict, supposed to be retired. As the investigation develops they discover that the "Grey Wolves", a ruthless group of far-right Turkish mafia, might be responsible for these particularly atrocious murders. 
 
As Anna is trying to find out who she was before she became amnesiac, she learns that she used to be closely linked to the Grey Wolves. Now she has no choice but to confront an astonishing and horrible truth.

Empire of Wolves

Daniel Del Giudice

Take-off: almost a ton of inert matter transformed by the pilot as it lifts off the runway into a thing of spirit and beauty. 
 
Take-off: lifting one's shadow off the earth, entering a new element where movement is the very condition for existence, for, as the author observes, "in life, to choose the wrong wife or the wrong lift is conventionally viewed as being matters of varying gravity, but in piloting an aircraft an act of petty oversight, due to the obvious but decisive fact that in flight there can be no stopping, could be fatal." 
 
Whether he is reliving his first solo flight or a frightening experience as he pilots a light aircraft through storm clouds, his training and his instincts constantly at odds, or the mysterious loss of an airliner on an internal flight, or the brief, adrenaline-charged lives of Italian torpedo-bombers in World War Two, Del Giudice focuses on the edge of experience in which a person learns to take nothing, but nothing, for granted. 
 
While Take-off has much of the charm, humour and poetry to be found in the best of Saint-Exupéry (whose last flight is evoked in the final chapter), it will also remind the reader of Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance by its close focus on the question of how the mind approaches problem-solving. 
 
Winner of the Bagutta, Campiello and International Flaiano Prizes.

Take-Off

Tom Lowenstein

On a tiny peninsula, the Inuit of Tikigaq worshipped the whales they killed, evolving an elaborate system of myths and rituals to accompany the hunt. Lowenstein began to explore these in 1973 and recorded the complex tales of the elders, providing a classic text on the vanishing culture of the North Alaskan wilderness.

Ancient Land: Sacred Whale

The second volume in the acclaimed The Wind from the Plain trilogy 
 
Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. The Wind from the Plains trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed My Hawk. 
 
After a particularly bad season, a group of poor cotton-pickers are unable to pay their creditor, shopkeeper Adil Effendi. Overwhelmed with shame and guilt, they wait in terror for Adil to come and demand retribution. But when he inexplicably fails to appear, Adil begins to represent an irrational and tyrannical force, growing in their minds until they become sick with apprehension and obsessed with the terrible disaster that is sure to come upon them. 
 
In their despair they turn to Tashbash, a brave, decent and loyal man, investing him with virtue, grace and miraculous power. But the cotton-pickers have no idea of the effect of their idolatry on Tashbash, with his innocent doubts and mental torment, until his fate finally befalls him and the novel draws to its apposite close. Written with deep compassion and lyrical beauty, this is a novel alive with the acute observation of human nature.

Iron Earth, Copper Sky

José Saramago

Peter Sis

"A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting by the door for favours (favours being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking on the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear..." 
 
Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him and what cargo it was found to be carrying the reader will discover as this short narrative unfolds. And at the end it will be clear that what night appear to be a children's fable is in fact a wry, witty Philosophical Tale that would not have displeased Voltaire or Swift.

The Tale of the Unknown Island

Thomas Glavinic

In Vienna, in the winter of 1910, the world of chess is aghast and the city abuzz. The unthinkable has happened: in the fifth round of the World Championship the renowned defending champion, Emanuel Lasker, has made an elementary error and lost a match. The little-known Austrian challenger, Carl Haffner, stands in the limelight, the title within his grasp. 
 
Haffner is a shy and fragile man, brought up in extreme poverty, from which his only escape is his exceptional gift for chess. His is a game shaped by the harsh experiences he has undergone. He has an obsessive fear of defeat, and his tactics and overall strategy are based on the sheer artistry of defence. But this confrontation with Lasker is not merely a clash between rook and knight; it is a collision between two men with vastly differing attitudes to life: the wealthy, worldly, self-confident champion on the one hand, the lonely, idealistic and penniless Haffner on the other. 
 
Carl Haffner is modelled on the Austrian grandmaster Karl Schlechter, and in his brilliant first novel Thomas Glavinic brings to life both the events surrounding the ten-match world championship and the atmosphere of the cafés and chess clubs of Vienna and Berlin in the years before the First World War. With mature insight, he analyses the reasons for Haffner's view of the world, a world that is thrown into further confusion by the appearance of the fascinating and beautiful Anna.

Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw

Kjell Westo

"I asked you to write a story about love, not a story about crime!" he yelled, and I answered, "I'm sorry, but in my mind they've become inseparable." 
 
In the middle of the night, a man makes a phone call to his best friend. He needs help, he says - and the loan of a heavy-duty shovel. The story of Christian Lang is one of obsession both physical and emotional. A famous novelist and television chat-show host, Lang wants to keep his affair with the enchanting Sarita a secret, but she has her own reasons for keeping it quiet too. Lang finds himself caught up in a sinister love triangle with Sarita and her violent ex-husband. He knows that his life is in danger but so great is Lang's passion for his lover that he is unable to stay away. 
 
As Lang is drawn further into a spiral of lust, lies and violence his judgement becomes increasingly irrational. This is a compelling story about love, hatred and obsession and of how these can override the emotion of intense fear. Westö has produced a superbly crafted tale of the terrifying lengths to which a man will go to fuel his addiction to a woman.

Lang

The fitting and devastating finale of the acclaimed The Wind from the Plain trilogy 
 
Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. The Wind from the Plain trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed My Hawk. 
 
Three men are caught in a triangle of politics. Memidik, a young hunter, is obsessed by an urge to kill the tyrannous headman, Sefer, who has caused him so much pain and humiliation. Yet, each time he treis, he is overcome by fear. Then the accidental death of another man in the community fires him with renewed determination. Sefer, meanwhile, is sentenced to solitude and the local champion, Tashbash, is invested with mythical powers. 
 
The web of fantasy and intrigue spun around the villagers enmeshes them in plots of bravery and illusion in this extraordinary story of survival.

The Undying Grass

Anna Politkovskaya

The Chechen War was supposed to be over in 1996 after the first Yeltsin campaign, but in the summer of 1999, the new Putin government decided, in their own words, to 'do the job properly'. Before all the bodies of those who had died in the first campaign had been located or identified, many more thousands would be slaughtered in another round of fighting. 
 
The first account to be written by a Russian woman, A Dirty War is an edgy and intense study of a conflict that shows no sign of being resolved. Exasperated by the Russian government's attempt to manipulate media coverage of the war, journalist Anna Politkovskaya undertook to go to Chechnya, to make regular reports and keep events in the public eye. 
 
In a series of despatches from July 1999 to January 2001 she vividly describes the atrocities and abuses of war, whether it be the corruption endemic in post-Communist Russia, in particular the government and the military, or the spurious arguments and abominable behaviour of the Chechen authorities. In these courageous reports, Politkovskaya excoriates male stupidity and brutality on both sides of the conflict and interviews the civilians whose homes and communities have been laid waste, leaving them nowhere to live, and nothing and no one to believe in.

A Dirty War

A Russian Reporter in Chechnya

Mayra Montero

Enrico, the world's most highly paid tenor, lands in Havana in 1920, carrying with him the death threat of the Sicilian Black Hand. But when a bomb explodes during a performance, and he runs terrified into the arms of a Chinese widow, he is not running from his destiny but towards it.

The Messenger

Gustave Flaubert

George Sand

Translated, this correspondence, from 1863-76, is unique in the history of French literature. Never have two great writers set down their ideas so candidly and over so long a period on the most varied topics, including the genesis of their own writings, a commentary on the Paris theatre, gossip from the literary world and their own domestic lives.

The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand

Flaubert - Sand

Raymond Carver

'I look at all of Carver's work as just one story, for his stories are all occurences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn... In formulating the mosaic of the film Short Cuts, which is based on these nine stories and a poem, 'Lemonade', I've tried to do the same thing- to give the audience one look... But it all began here. I was a reader turning these pages. Trying on these lives' - Robert Altman in his introduction.

Short Cuts

Vincent Cronin

First published 25 years ago, this biography of the Sun King uses contemporary sources to examine what sort of monarch Louis XIV really was. The author's researches reveal a portrait of the man and an account of the principal events of his long reign (1642-1715). The book provides an overview of the entire civilization inspired by and reflecting the glory of the Sun King. Thus, while Louis occupies the foreground, artists like Racine, Moliere, Lully and Mansart, the architect of Versailles, share the middleground with politicians such as Cardinal Mazarin and Nicolas Fouquet and courtiers such as the king's mistress, Louise de La Valliere.

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