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Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. 
 
The man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank. 
 
His girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase. 
 
‘A science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas’ Independent 
 
‘A highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship’ New Yorker 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

A Wild Sheep Chase

the surreal, breakout detective novel, now in a deluxe gift edition

Special 3D Edition

Hans Keilson

1930s Germany; the shadow of Nazism looms. Pictures of the new dictator, 'B.', fill magazines and newspapers. Our hero is ten when his world begins to change dramatically. Suddenly, the other children won't let him join in their games. Later, he is refused a job on a shop-floor. Later still, he hears youths boasting of an attack on a Jewish cemetery. Both hypnotised and horrified by his enemy, our hero chronicles the fear, anger and defiance of everyday life under tyranny. 
 
Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, this novel is a powerful account of what he outlived. Painful, trenchant and streaked with dark humour The Death of the Adversary is a rediscovered masterpiece.

The Death of the Adversary

Yukio Mishima

For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness - then she falls in love. 
 
The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit. Eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare and love in later life. 
 
'An exquisitely paced high comedy at once characterized by humor and restraint...features a magnificently ebullient heroine as she embarks upon one more adventure in love' Kirkus 
 
&lsquo;[Mishima's] most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction&rsquo; New York Times

After the Banquet

Italo Calvino

Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is seeking knowledge; 'it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath'. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar's observations render the world afresh. 
 
'Beautifully nimble, solitary feats of imagination' Seamus Heaney 
 
'Beguiling' Time

Mr Palomar

Halldór Laxness

*BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE* 
 
'Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice' Nicholas Shakespeare 
 
Abandoned as a baby, Alfgrimur is content to spend his days as a fisherman living in the turf cottage outside Reykjavik with the elderly couple he calls grandmother and grandfather. There he shares the mid-loft with a motley bunch of eccentrics and philosophers who find refuge in the simple respect for their fellow men that is the ethos at the Brekkukot. But the narrow horizons of Alfgrimur's idyllic childhood are challenged when he starts school and meets Iceland's most famous singer, the mysterious Garoar Holm. Garoar encourages him to aim for the 'one true note', but how can he attain it without leaving behind the world that he loves? 
 
'It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life' Murray Bail

Fish Can Sing

Nikolay Leskov

Leskov’s stories of Russian life are explosions of imagination. Peopled by outsized characters including serfs, princes, Gypsy girls, horse dealers, nomadic Tartars and garrulous storytellers, Leskov’s writing exuberantly fables the national character of his age. For the first time, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation brings Leskov’s original storytelling and irresistible voice to life.

The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Chi Zijian

'A long-time confidante of the rain and snow, I am ninety years old. The rain and snow have weathered me, and I too have weathered them' 
 
At the end of the twentieth century an old woman sits among the birch trees and reflects on the joys and tragedies that have befallen her people. A member of the Evenki tribe who wander the forests of north-eastern China, hers was a life lived in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. 
 
Then, in the 1930s, the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict that marks the beginning of the end of life as they know it. 
 
'An atmospheric modern folk-tale, the saga of the Evenki clan of Inner Mongolia - nomadic reindeer herders whose traditional life alongside the Argun river endured unchanged for centuries... This is a fitting tribute to the Evenki by a writer of rare talent' Financial Times 
 
VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.

The Last Quarter of the Moon

A novel from the Vintage Earth collection

Marlen Haushofer

An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on her drawings of birds and insects. 
 
The loft is a retreat where she can work undisturbed. It is also a retreat from her dull and dissatisfied husband, a man who sighs unhappily even when she sneezes. Their grown-up children are living independent lives and the house is very quiet. Her dreams are filled with domestic drudgery. 
 
Then one day, a package arrives containing extracts from the narrator's diary, written twenty years before. Back then she had been sent away to a remote cottage in a bid to 'cure' her from unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages containing old diary entries arrive. Who is sending them? And what did happened all those years ago in the forest? 
 
'A thrilling novel... What gives this book its tremendous power? First the voice is charming, with a skittish beauty throughout... But there is also disarming honesty, and a lack of vanity, which appeals as only truth can’ John Self, Guardian 
 
TRANSLATED BY AMANDA PRANTERA

The Loft

A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of all human consciousness.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Jean-Patrick Manchette

Eugène Tarpon is back to sleeping in his office and waiting for a job that pays. Then he gets a call from an old contact in the police. A distant relative of his – a polite, persistent widow – wants someone to look into her daughter’s disappearance. The police have already given up. No leads, no hope, no point. Just take the case, take her money, and keep her busy. 
 
Tarpon’s too broke to refuse, and too much of a gentleman to brush her off. But the story doesn’t sit right. And when something smells off, he can’t help but start digging. 
 
With Skeletons in the Closet, Manchette sends his bruised, boozy detective stumbling deeper into the wreckage of modern France – exposing a world where justice is hollow, the missing stay missing, and decency is just another dead end.

Skeletons in the Closet

Marcel Proust

The definitive translation of a truly great French novel - Proust's beautiful, atmospheric story of memory and loss. 
 
This is the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, one of the greatest French novels of the twentieth century. Travelling back through time, the narrator tells the story of events long since past - his childhood happiness and sadness, and memories brought famously back to life by the taste of a madeleine. His family's friend and neighbour, the aristocratic Swann, weaves through the tale. We learn of Swann's passionate love affair with Odette, a jealous love that creates a model for the narrator's own relationships. All Proust's great themes begin here: time and memory, love and loss, art and the artistic vocation. 
 
THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION 
 
The best translation available: 'A really major, significant achievement, and one that you should put on your Christmas list immediately' Guardian 
 
VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - six masterpieces of French fiction in collectable editions.

Swann's Way

Vintage Classics French Series

Andrey Platonov

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT AND ELIZABETH CHANDLER AND OLGA MEERSON 
 
Platonov's dystopian novel describes the lives of a group of Soviet workers who believe they are laying the foundations for a radiant future. As they work harder and dig deeper, their optimism turns to violence and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation pit but an immense grave. 
 
This new translation, by Robert &amp; Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, is based on the definitive edition recently published by Pushkin House in Leningrad. All previous translations were done from a seriously bowdlerized text. Robert Chandler is also the translator of Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate. The American scholar Olga Meerson has written extensively on Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Platonov and many other Russian authors.

The Foundation Pit

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. 
 
His wife is growing more distant every day. 
 
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. 
 
As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell. 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'Visionary...a bold and generous book' New York Times 
 
'Murakami weaves textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty' Independent on Sunday 
 
'Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. 
 
The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. 
 
As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'Wonderful... Magical and outlandish' Daily Mail 
 
'Hypnotic, spellbinding' The Times 
 
'Cool, fluent and addictive' Daily Telegraph

Kafka on the Shore

Roberto Bolaño

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an affair with one of his students, he has no idea where it will lead. 
 
More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee Barcelona with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling, mythical town on the Mexico-US border, populated by mysterious characters and haunted by dark tales of murdered women. 
 
Returning to the the world and characters of 2666, Bolaño's masterpiece, Woes of the True Policeman explores the the power of art, memory and desire - and marks a kaleidoscopic, lyrical and darkly humorous last act in one of the great oeuvres of world literature. 
 
TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER 
 
&lsquo;Hallucinatory, manic, fearful, comic... Bolaño must be read by anyone who loves the novel&rsquo; Herald 
 
&lsquo;We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius&rsquo; Patti Smith

Woes of the True Policeman

Ismail Kadare

Two Irish-American scholars from Harvard journey to Albania in the 1930s with a tape recorder (a 'new fangled' invention) in order to record the last genuinely oral epic singers. 
 
Their purpose, they say, is to show how Homer's epics might have been culled from a verbal tradition. But the local Governor believes its an elaborate spying mission and arranges for his own spy to follow them.The two dedicated scholars realise only too late that they have stumbled over an ants' nest. 
 
This simple tale by Albania's most eminent and gifted novelist serves to lift the veil on one of the most secret and mysterious countries of modern Europe. 
 
‘Witty and touching. It consolidates Kadare's reputation as one of the finest writers to emerge from communist Europe’ Sunday Times

The File on H

Marcovaldo is an enchanting collection of twenty stories that are both melancholy and funny, farce and fantasy. Calvino charts the struggles of an Italian peasant to reconcile country habits with urban life, combining comical disasters with a surrealistic view of city life through the eyes of an outsider. As always with Calvino, nothing is quite as it seems. 
 
'Delightful and rewarding as always' Observer 
 
'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times

Marcovaldo

In a remote fishing village in Japan, two very different young people fall in love. 
 
Shinji is a hard-working fisherman, Hatsue is the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. She is also a diver for pearls and seaweed with the other women of the community. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and a relationship develops via secret notes and meetings. But when the villagers&rsquo; gossip threatens to divide them permanently, Shinji must risk his life to prove his worth. 
 
&lsquo;A work of art...altogether a joyous and lovely thing&rsquo; New York Times 
 
&lsquo;A sunny masterpiece&rsquo; Los Angeles Times

The Sound of Waves

Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country's dead. 
 
Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, and their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task. As they descend from the callous trivialities of their gruesome business, past and present, to suffering self-disgust, the author gives us glimpses of the lives of the people whose graves they are unearthing. 
 
‘He has been compared to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell. But Kadare's is an original voice, universal yet deeply rooted in his own soil’ Independent on Sunday

General Of The Dead Army

&lsquo;In this neighbourhood, only the dead go out for a walk&rsquo;... 
 
A young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor, only to watch his soul departing his body. Two embittered police detectives debate their favourite weapons. A violent man looks back on his childhood and seeks out the now-aged male porn actor his mother shot movies with. 
 
Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolaño. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: The Return is a trove of strangely arresting short master works. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 
 
'Dark, intimate and sneakily touching... There is gold to be found in this collection' New York Review of Books 
 
&lsquo;Each tale turns the reader into a voyeur, grasping at snapshots of troubled lives and ghosts&rsquo; Observer 
 
 &lsquo;A compelling encapsulation of Bolaño's work... You won't be bored&rsquo; Los Angeles Times

The Return

Andre Gide

During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth, written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism, reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom, but a submission to heroism. In a series of 'Encounters', Gide describes a Negro tramp, a drowned child, a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering, death and religion, causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'.

Fruits Of The Earth

José Saramago

No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order. 
 
Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers. 
 
 A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks. 
It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped. 
 
This is not anarchy, this is blindness. 
 
‘Saramago repeatedly undertakes to unite the pressing demands of the present with an unfolding vision of the future. This is his most apocalyptic, and most optimistic, version of that project yet’ Independent

Blindness

These early short stories brim with the beauty of the Italian countryside and seaside, telling tales both sumptuous and unnerving. 
 
Calvino's war-torn Italy is vivid, intense, almost hyper-real. A trio of greedy burglars rob a pastry shop, a boy offers a girl presents of toads and insects from the garden, a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him. In every story he reveals the hidden meaning beneath the surface of everyday life, and the ludicrousness of war. 
 
Some stories from Last Comes the Raven have been previously available in the collection Adam, One Afternoon. This new expanded collection includes several stories newly translated by Ann Goldstein and is an important addition to Calvino's legacy. 
 
'In Last Comes the Raven, a collection of early stories, we find the man behind the magician' New Yorker

Last Comes the Raven

Simone de Beauvoir

Two sisters must find their way in a world designed to confine them. 
 
Marcelle is the elder sister, a woman whose ambitions focus on becoming the companion of a 'man of genius'. Marguerite is the younger sister, a girl whose sanity depends on breaking free of the oppressive expectations of society. Both end up focusing their attentions on the same disappointing man. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Woman of Genius

Magda Szabó

Nothing is more mysterious than another human soul. 
 
Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though she enters Magda’s home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence’s own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty years, an intimate trust is built between the two, rich with secrets. 
 
Yet when this trust is betrayed one dark afternoon, the pair’s complex relationship will be left forever altered, and Magda will find herself haunted until the end of her days. For not all doors are made to be opened. 
 
'A dark domestic fairy tale' New York Times 
 
Translated by Len Rix

The Door

Mikhail Bulgakov

in Bulgakov's allegorical masterpiece of Stalin&rsquo;s regime the devil is making a personal appearance in Moscow. 
 
He is accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order are in disarray. Only the Master, a writer and a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil&rsquo;s onslaught. 
 
&lsquo;Stunning, superb...Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest&rsquo; Independent 
 
&lsquo;A masterpiece &ndash; a classic of twentieth-century fiction&rsquo; New York Times 
 
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GLENNY, INTRODUCED BY WILL SELF

The Master and Margarita

Reality bends all the more acutely with lack of sleep in this stunning novel from the master of the surreal. 
 
Eyes mark the shape of the city 
 
The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari's help. 
 
Meanwhile Mari's beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is 'too perfect, too pure' to be normal; it has lasted for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the television screen in her room, even though it's plug has been pulled out. 
 
Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night? 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'A captivating mood piece, delicate and wistful' Evening Standard

After Dark

Murakami’s atmospheric masterpiece, now in a deluxe gift edition

A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes. 
 
Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. 
 
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire. 
 
Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished... 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world' Time Out

Sputnik Sweetheart

a deluxe gift edition of Murakami’s masterful tale of unrequited love

Jo Nesbo

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is transformed into a page-turning Jo Nesbo crime thriller, the story of the ex-addict cop Inspector Macbeth. 
 
He's the best cop they've got. 
When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it's up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. 
 
He's also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. 
He's rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They're all within reach. 
 
But a man like him won't get to the top. 
Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He's convinced he won't get what is rightfully his. 
 
Unless he kills for it. 
 
‘Shakespeare's darkest tale – reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A deliciously oppressive page-turner' Guardian 
 
SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Macbeth

‘Shakespeare's darkest tale reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday

'Explosive, absurd...with plenty of oh la la and even more zut alors' The Times 
 
WHEN IT COMES TO REVOLUTION, EVERYONE PAYS 
 
In Paris, the Nada gang – a small cell of left-wing radicals – hatch a plan to kidnap the U.S. ambassador. They’re armed, angry, and almost successful – but totally unprepared for what follows. As the crackdown begins, the group splinters, exposing cowardice, betrayal, and the thin line between radical idealism and outright nihilism. There will be no heroes – only casualties. 
 
Jean-Patrick Manchette skewers both the establishment and its would-be destroyers in this pitch-black political thriller. His most overtly radical work, Nada is a savage, stylish dissection of violence, ideology, and the wreckage left behind. 
 
PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE 
 
 
‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy 
 
'A comedic genius... I read and reread him, stunned, appalled, and laughing out loud' Rachel Kushner 
 
‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis 
 
‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski

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