Visar resultat för..."exit west"

A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick - Booker Gems THE NEW YORK TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017WINNER OF THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE'Astonishing' Zadie Smith'Stunning' Spectator'Extraordinary' TLSAn extraordinary story of love and hope from the bestselling author of The Reluctant FundamentalistAll over the world, doors are appearing.They lead to other cities, other countries, other lives.And in a city gripped by war, Nadia and Saeed are newly in love.Hardly more than strangers, desperate to survive, they open a door and step through.But the doors only go one way.Once you leave, there is no going back.*Coming soon as a major Netflix film - produced by Michelle and Barack Obama and starring Riz Ahmed*'One of the year's most significant literary works' The New York Times'A masterpiece' Michael Chabon'Addictively readable and brilliantly written. Fantastic' Mail on Sunday

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CILLIAN MURPHYA SUNDAY TIMES 'TOP 5 NOVELS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY'A SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERA TOP 5 IRISH TIMES 100 BEST IRISH BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURYA NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURYWINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE, THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut'Masterly.' The Times'Miraculous.' Herald'Astonishing.' Colm Tóibín'Stunning.' Sunday Independent'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas StuartIt is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.Claire Keegan's book Small Things Like These was a Sunday Times Bestseller w/c 05-11-2022-----Readers love Small Things Like These:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Gripping and very moving and thought-provoking ... brilliantly done, but also softly and slowly. You'll never regret reading this book, but it will haunt you for ever after.'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I haven't loved a book for so long. This has changed it. Every word counted. Moral, heartfelt & a beautiful read.'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This is a beautifully written story, both simple and profound. Set at Christmas, it is, in essence, an exploration of the best and the worst of what it is to be human. A stunning achievement.'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A remarkable novel - short, succinct, moving. I read it in one sitting early on a Sunday morning before anybody else was up.'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book needs to sit and settle with the reader after it's read. Much lies here within what seems a simple tale. It strikes to the heart.'

A New York Times bestseller, the astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet--sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors--doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . . Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.

As in all hospitals, the medical hierarchy of The House of God was a pyramid - a lot at the bottom and one at the top.Put another way it was like an ice-cream cone...you had to lick your way up!Roy Basch, the 'red-hot' Rhodes Scholar, thought differently - but then he hadn't met Hyper Hooper, out to win the most post-mortems of the year award, nor Molly, the nurse with the crash helmet.He hadn't even met any of the Gomers ('Get Out of My Emergency Room!'), the no-hopers who wanted to die but who were worth more alive!

From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, White Teeth and On Beauty - a masterful and intimate novel of modern London life'A triumph. Every sentence sings' Guardian'Intensely funny, richly varied, always unexpected. A joyous, optimistic, angry masterpiece' Daily Telegraph'Smith's most satisfying novel. Funny, sexy, weird, full of acute social comedy. She's up there with the best around' Evening StandardZadie Smith's brilliant tragicomic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices they've made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. Funny, poignant and vividly contemporary, NW is as brimming with vitality as the city itself.

NOMINATED FOR SIX OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE, SUPPORTING ACTOR AND SUPPORTING ACTRESS . . . Aged just five, Saroo Brierley lost all contact with his family in India, after waiting at a train station for his brother who never returned. Discover the inspiring, true story behind the film, Lion. This is the heart breaking and original tale of the lost little boy who found his way home twenty-five years later. -----------------------------------As a five-year old in India, I got lost on a train. Twenty-five years later, I crossed the world to find my way back home. Five-year-old Saroo lived in a poor village in India, in a one-room hut with his mother and three siblings... until the day he boarded a train alone and got lost. For twenty-five years.This is the story of what happened to Saroo in those twenty-five years. How he ended up on the streets of Calcutta. And survived. How he then ended up in Tasmania, living the life of an upper-middle-class Aussie. And how, at thirty years old, with some dogged determination, a heap of good luck and the power of Google Earth, he found his way back home.Lion is a triumphant true story of survival against all odds and a shining example of the extraordinary feats we can achieve when hope endures.-----------------------------------'Amazing stuff' The New York Post'So incredible that sometimes it reads like a work of fiction' Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)'A remarkable story' Sydney Morning Herald Review'I literally could not put this book down. Saroo's return journey will leave you weeping with joy and the strength of the human spirit' Manly Daily (Australia)'We urge you to step behind the headlines and have a read of this absorbing account...With clear recollections and good old-fashioned storytelling, Saroo...recalls the fear of being lost and the anguish of separation' Weekly Review (Australia)

** A SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER **** Chosen as a Spectator, Irish Times and Irish Independent Book of the Year **FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FOSTER, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE IS AN UNFORGETTABLE STORY OF HOPE, QUIET HEROISM, AND TENDERNESS. WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR.SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS'A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving.' Hilary Mantel (Winner of the Booker Prize 2009 and 2012)'This is a tale of courage and compassion, of good sons and vulnerable young mothers. Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart (Winner of the Booker Prize 2020)'Marvellous-exact and icy and loving all at once.' Sarah Moss'A haunting, hopeful masterpiece.' Sinéad Gleeson** A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK****CHOSEN AS A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME**It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.'Astonishing. Claire Keegan makes her moments real - and then she makes them matter.' Colm Tóibín'A true gift of a book. a sublime Chekhovian shock.' Andrew O'Hagan'A moral tale that is unsentimental and deeply affecting, because true and right.' David HaydenClaire Keegan's book Small Things Like These was a Sunday Times Bestseller w/c 05-11-2022

In The Sundial Shirley Jackson, author of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, blends family politics and apocalyptic terror to create a disturbing world of sinister relations and the macabre.'An amazing writer' Neil GaimanMrs Halloran has inherited the great Halloran house on the death of her son, much to the disgust of her daughter-in-law, the delight of her wicked granddaughter and the confusion of the rest of the household. But when the original owner - long dead - arrives to announce the world is ending and only the house and its occupants will be saved, they find themselves in a nightmare of strange marble statues, mysterious house guests and the beautiful, unsettling Halloran sundial which seems to be at the centre of it all. Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.'The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse' A. M. Homes'Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders' Dorothy Parker'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR.'A masterpiece' - The Times'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian'Luminous' - New York TimesA sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain's occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family.Ahmad, a middle-class shopkeeper runs his household strictly according to the Qur'an while at night he explores the pleasures of Cairo. A tyrant at home, Ahmad forces his gentle, oppressed wife and two daughters to live cloistered lives behind the house's latticed windows, while his three very different sons live in fear of his harsh will.The first book of the classic Cairo Trilogy, the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

*Ten years on from 9/11, much of the Muslim faith remains largely unknown and misunderstood in the West. *While there have been a number of successful books on the topic of Islamic history - from Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Brief History to Bernard Lewis's The Crises of Islam - there is surprisingly no book for a popular audience about Islam as a religion, let alone one by an author from an Islamic background. *No God But God fills that gap, addressing issues of belief: the difference between the Quran and the Bible, the meaning of the Hajj, the Muslim relationship with Jesus, the Muslim attitude towards Jews, equality between the sexes and more.* This revised and updated edition includes a wealth of new material and new chapters covering recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; the changing face of Islam in Europe and North Africa; and a number of topics of heated debate (the veil controversy; Islam & women; Iraq War as a Jihadi recruiting agent etc).

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out...

'Many books claim to tell an "unknown" story of the Second World War. Few of them actually do. Forgotten Bastards is a rare exception . . . This is gripping history' Duncan Weldon, Prospect A riveting story of World War II from the author of Chernobyl, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fictionIn November 1943, with the outcome of the Second World War hanging in the balance, the Allies needed a new plan. The Americans' audacious suggestion to the Soviets was to open a second air front, with the US Air Force establishing bases in Soviet-controlled territory. Despite Stalin's obvious reservations about the presence of foreign troops in Russia, he was persuaded. Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated in early 1944 as B-17 Superfortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltova region in today's Ukraine. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the gripping, little-known story of this encounter between American and Soviet soldiers and how their collaboration quickly fell apart, mirroring the transition from the Grand Alliance to the Cold War. Soviet secret policemen watched over the Americans, shadowing their every move. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defences. As their initial enthusiasm turned into disappointment, the American soldiers started calling themselves the Forgotten Bastards of Ukraine. Ultimately, no common purpose could overcome their cultural and political differences.Drawing on newly opened Russian archives as well as CIA records, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front offers a riveting bottom-up history of one of the Second World War's most unlikely alliances.

'These tales cut like razors, charm like poetry, and heal like love' Tayari Jones (author of AMERICAN MARRIAGE)A stunning collection of short stories from Caine-Prize and Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner Lesley Nneka Arimah, WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY has been described as 'luminous' (Roxane Gay), 'mesmeric' (Claire Vaye Watkins) and 'hilarious and heartbreaking' (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan). Shot through with magic and a powerful sense of yearning, this is a diverse and dazzling collection that showcases the work of a major new talent at the beginning of a stellar literary career.'When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters'. The daughters, wives and mothers in Lesley Nneka Arimah's remarkable debut collection find themselves in extraordinary situations: a woman whose mother's ghost appears to have stepped out of a family snapshot, another who, exhausted by childlessness, resorts to fashioning a charmed infant out of human hair, a 'grief worker' with a miraculous ability to remove emotional pain - at a price. What unites them is the toughness of the world they inhabit, a world where the future is uncertain, opportunities are scant, and fortunes change quicker than the flick of a switch. Characterised by their vividness, immediacy and the author's seemingly endless ability to conjure worlds at once familiar and unsettlingly different, this is a remarkable debut from a 'master storyteller' (Independent)

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for fleeting romance. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out...

A treasure trove of outstanding stories from 'the best writer of our generation' (Gary Shteyngart) - the perfect gift for the Zadie Smith fan in your life'She's already one of our best novelists and essayists, this reminds us that her short stories are right up there too' Observer'Sexy and hilarious. There is no moment in Grand Union when we are not entertained, or doubt that we are in the company of one of our best contemporary writers' Guardian'Brilliant. Another slam dunk. Street life, patois, music, food, clothes, hair: Smith has her finger on the pulse of life and the utter weirdness of whatever has just become normal. This is a book of and for the times, sobering in its clarity but bracingly witty and clever' Evening Standard'Smith's dialogue crackles with mordant wit. This dazzling collection of stories will leave you with plenty to think about' IndependentInterleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca's plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra portrays a woman tormented by fatal passion for her stepson. In The Trojan Women, the widowed Hecuba and Andromache await their fates at the hands of the conquering Greeks, and Oedipus follows the downfall of the royal House of Thebes. Octavia is a grim commentary on Nero's tyrannical rule and the execution of his wife, with Seneca himself appearing as an ineffective counsellor attempting to curb the atrocities of the emperor.

Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. In this collection of her complete short fiction from across four decades, she examines the intense private worlds and passions of everyday people.From one man's honeymooning epiphany in 'Hassan's Tower' to the journeying fantasies of 'A Voyage to Cythera', and from the sharp joy of 'The Merry Widow' to the bloody reality of the collection's title story, these are moving, witty and provocative tales, exploring cruel and loving relationships, social change and personal obsessions, and confirming her status as a leading practitioner of the art of the short story.

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside...Taken from the Greek, meaning 'ten-day event', Boccaccio's Decameron sees his characters amuse themselves by each telling a story a day, for the ten days of their confinement - a hundred stories of love and adventure, life and death, and surprising twists of fate. Less preoccupied with abstract concepts of morality or religion than earthly values, the tales range from the bawdy Peronella, hiding her lover in a tub, to Ser Cepperallo, who, despite his unholy effrontery, becomes a Saint. The result is a towering monument of European literature and a masterpiece of imaginative narrative that has inspired writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare . Translated with an introduction by G.H. McWilliam'McWilliam's finest work, his translation of Boccaccio's Decameron remains one of the most successful and lauded books in the series'The Times

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018'An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel' RODDY DOYLEFarouk's country has been torn apart by war.Lampy's heart has been laid waste by Chloe.John's past torments him as he nears his end.The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways._________'A thing of such beauty and compassion, a reminder of what the very finest sentences can do to shatter and then reassemble our hearts' KAMILA SHAMSIE'I struggle to think of a writer who has been so prolific and consistent in quality as Ryan ... Brutally honest, moving and often hilarious' GUARDIAN'Donal Ryan has not only bounded over a wall into new territory, but built himself a castle there . . . This is a superb novel.' JOHN BOYNE'Beautiful and affecting' DAVID NICHOLLS'Donal Ryan writes characters so well that as a reader you think 'I've met that man', or 'I know that woman.' But as a writer you simply wonder 'how does he do it?' From a Low and Quiet Sea is brutal and beautiful, carefully crafted portraits, deep and real, tied together, fashioned by a true artist. I absolutely loved it.' KIT DE WAAL

Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century. The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence.Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons – the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s.Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the ageing patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician. Throughout the trilogy, the family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humour and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.

The semiautobiographical Martin Eden is the most vital and original character Jack London ever created. Set in San Francisco, this is the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame. London, dissatisfied with the rewards of his own success, intended Martin Eden as an attack on individualism and a criticism of ambition; however, much of its status as a classic has been conferred by admirers of its ambitious protagonist. Andrew Sinclair's wide-ranging introduction discusses the conflict between London's support of socialism and his powerful self-will. Sinclair also explores the parallels and divergences between the life of Martin Eden and that of his creator, focusing on London's mental depressions and how they affected his depiction of Eden.

"Genuinely touching, wonderfully revealing" NEW YORKERGarlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine undetected when she takes on the much coveted and highly prestigious job of New York Times restaurant critic.____________________________________________________Reichl knows that to be a good critic she has to be anonymous - but her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star kitchen in town and so she embarks on an extraordinary - and hilarious - undercover game of disguise - keeping even her husband and son in the dark. There is her stint as Molly, a frumpy blonde in an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque resulting in a double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic. Then there is the eccentric, mysterious red head on whom her husband - both disconcertingly and reassuringly - develops a terrible crush. She becomes Brenda the earth mother, Chloe the seductress and even Miriam her own (deceased) mother.What is even more remarkable about Reichl's spy games is that as she takes on these various guises, she finds herself changed not just physically, but also in character revealing how one's outer appearance can very much influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites.