Claire Thomas – författare

From the internationally acclaimed, prize-winning author of The Performance and Fugitive Blue comes a remarkable work of literary fictionA woman arrives in Geneva, the first stop in a train journey through the country of her father's birth. She yearns to be outside time - untethered and alone - but she soon becomes immersed in the stories resonating all around her. She visits a museum and stares into the oversized, disco-ball eyes of an insect, unsettled by the intimacy, 'like looking into the facial pores of a lover'. Later, she will tiptoe through the snow to find a portrait of James Baldwin on the window shutter of a chalet, his features rendered in rows of silver staples shot into timber. She will find traces of Mary Shelley and Fleur Jaeggy; android pioneers in eighteenth-century Neuchâtel; Charlie Chaplin, Patricia Highsmith, and striking workers drilling through the earth to create the vast Gotthard Tunnel; Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary as they summit Everest; Lenin and the Dada artists in early twentieth-century Zurich.On Not Climbing Mountains is a tender and compelling novel. Beautifully conceived and deftly crafted, it is an exhilarating feat of storytelling, concerned with the fragilities of the natural world, the pains of grief and memory, and the endless reverberations of art.'Incandescent with ideas. One of the best books by an Australian writer I've read in a long time. A magisterially good book' THE BOOKSHELF - ABC RADIO NATIONAL'Thomas has written a novel that is truly novel - she plays with form and artfully constructs a journey through the mountains of Switzerland, braiding stories of artists, writers, and thinkers into a literary rope, a pulley system for the mind. Vivian Gornick meets Ali Smith, but unmistakably Claire Thomas' MADELEINE GRAY, AUTHOR OF GREEN DOT'A book of images, resonances, memory, and the mingling of art and life that becomes something beautiful and tender' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD'Told aslant with a beautiful lightness of touch . . . There is a sense, throughout, of the author just behind the scenes, in tight control of her material; of history churning beneath her prose' THE GUARDIAN'A beautifully meditative, intensely lyrical book, and its approach to narrative is innovative and exciting' SATURDAY PAPER'Both vast and intimate . . . A tender, intelligent, and moving novel' AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW'Extraordinary and experimental' THE CONVERSATION'Thomas has an archivist's curiosity and a novelist's ear, and the result is a work that feels both precise and associative. She invites the reader to look harder, and then again and again. It's not quite memoir, not quite history, not quite criticism, not quite fiction, but something tautly stitched between all three' BOOKS+PUBLISHINGPraise for The Performance 'Flawless' WASHINGTON POST 'Compassionate' NEW YORK TIMES'Transformational' THE TIMES'The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius' THE GUARDIAN

The real history of MI5. 'PO Box 500, London W2'; the nondescript address from behind which one of the world's most famous Secret Services hid: MI5. This book, based on previously secret sources, lifts the lid on Britain's Security Service in its battle against German espionage. During the Second World War, the Security Service, through brilliant officers such as Guy Liddell, Dick White and the fearsome spy-breaker, 'Tin-eye' Stephens, commandant of MI5's interrogation centre, Camp 020, successfully ran the Double Cross (XX) system. XX agents such as the dynamic, womanising petty criminal ZIGZAG, the suave TRICYCLE and the aptly named CARELESS laid the basis for Operation FORTITUDE in which MI5's agents BRUTUS and GARBO were central to the success of the greatest deception in modern military history: convincing Hitler that the D-Day landings in Normandy were an elaborate diversion to the 'real' Allied landings at Calais. It was MI5's finest hour.

The real history of MI5 during the era of the Cold War, the IRA & international terrorism. 'PO Box 500, London W2'; the nondescript address from behind which one of the world's most famous Secret Services hid: MI5. This book, based on previously secret sources, lifts the lid on Britain's Security Service. Despite an outstanding war record against German espionage, MI5 failed to prevent Soviet agents like Anthony Blunt penetrating the heart of the British establishment, including MI5 itself. The authors look in detail at MI5's role in the post-Cold War world; in particular, they consider its changing role as it took on the main responsibility in countering terrorist threats to Britain. Controversy has never been far away during MI5's battle against the IRA, which included sending deep penetration agents into the heart of Northern Ireland's terrorist organisations. And in the twenty-first century, MI5 has had to face the deadliest terrorist threat of all - from Al Qaeda. The book looks at MI5's attempts to prevent mass murder on the streets of Britain, including the failure to stop the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.

The breakout literary sensation of 2021 from the prize-winning author of FUGITIVE BLUE

'Quietly transformational'The Times 'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly'Patrick Gale'Innovative... an original, at-a-sitting read'Daily Mail'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives'Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend'A miracle... Engaging and evocative'Washington Post'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable'Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters'Lively and intimate... The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius'Guardian'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed'Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.The house lights lower.The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

A unique new insight into multilingual families, this book views multilingual childhoods from the point of the child and is based on over 50 interviews with adults who grew up in multilingual settings. The book charts their recollections of their childhoods and includes many different types of families, discusses many of the common issues that arise in multilingual families, and draws examples from all over the world. The book fills a significant gap in the literature and resources available to multilingual parents. It was researched and written by a self-help group of multilingual parents and thus the book remains very practical and gives clear and realistic advice to multilingual parents facing choices or dilemmas. However, because of its unique viewpoint, this book also includes much new material that will be of interest to researchers and students of bilingualism.

A unique new insight into multilingual families, this book views multilingual childhoods from the point of the child and is based on over 50 interviews with adults who grew up in multilingual settings. The book charts their recollections of their childhoods and includes many different types of families, discusses many of the common issues that arise in multilingual families, and draws examples from all over the world. The book fills a significant gap in the literature and resources available to multilingual parents. It was researched and written by a self-help group of multilingual parents and thus the book remains very practical and gives clear and realistic advice to multilingual parents facing choices or dilemmas. However, because of its unique viewpoint, this book also includes much new material that will be of interest to researchers and students of bilingualism.

The real history of MI5. 'PO Box 500, London W2' - the nondescript address from behind which one of the world's most famous secret services hid: MI5. Drawing on previously secret sources, this book lifts the lid on Britain's Security Service in its battle against German and Soviet espionage. It tells the sensational stories of the officers and agents and the enemies they confronted, from MI5's creation in 1909 under the direction of Vernon Kell, Britain's first spymaster. Building on the service's wartime success, Maxwell Knight ('M'), MI5's charismatic and eccentric agent runner, penetrated Soviet and Fascist spy networks during the 1920s and 1930s. His agent, 'Miss X', was instrumental in breaking the Percy Glading spy ring run by the Soviets, while the beautiful Joan Miller and 'Miss Z' helped bring to justice Tyler Kent, who was passing information to the Axis powers.