Linda Grant - Böcker

Shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction'Extraordinarily affecting' Alex Preston, Observer'This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas . . . Grant brings the 1950s - that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation - into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus' - Christobel Kent GuardianAll over Britain life is beginning again now the war is over but for Lenny and Miriam, East End London teenage twins who have been living on the edge of the law, life is suspended - they've contacted tuberculosis. It's away to the sanatorium - newly opened by the NHS - in deepest Kent for them where they will meet a very different world: among other patients, an aristocract, a young university grad, a mysterious German woman and an American merchant seaman with big ideas about love and rebellion. They are not the only ones whose lives will be changed forever. 'Grant is so good at conjuring up atmosphere and writes with earthy vivacity'- Anthony Gardner Mail on Sunday'Read this fine, persuasive, moving novel and contemplate' John Sutherland, The Times

WINNER OF THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman. A policeman, a documentary film-maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie, intersect with many. The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea, how all our lives intersect. 'Reminds us of the depth and strength of the communities that are our beloved London. Thank you' Philippe Sands'There's a Dickensian quality to the opening scene and yet it's one of the most bitingly contemporary publications of the year - a shifting, polyphonic narrative' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday'There is a richness in this novel, found in a migrant experience that is deeply embedded rather than distinct from its environment... a compelling read' Jake Arnott, Guardian'The novel is fleet-footed... the way even the minor characters flare into life gives the novel richness and depth... a novel fit for shifting, uncertain times' Suzi Feay, Financial Times

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2023'Epic and marvellously entertaining... There's a furious energy to the novel, which constantly moves forward even as it looks sorrowfully back'FINANCIAL TIMES'Magnificent... I want to press a copy on everyone I know'NIGELLA LAWSON'Epic, magnificent, beautiful... I couldn't put it down' PHILIPPA PERRY'Jewel-like clarity... exceptional'RICHARD COLES'Exquisite writing [and] a triumphant, elegant ending' MAIL ON SUNDAY'An intelligent family saga... ambitious and moving and funny' TESSA HADLEYIt's 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's life.The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness - in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales?From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, The Story of the Forest is about myths and memory and about how families adapt in order to survive. It is a story full of the humour and wisdom we have come to relish from this wonderful writer.Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Award Ceremony - 22 June 2023

From the award-winning Linda Grant, a vibrant imagining of the tumultuous world of early twentieth-century Europe through the eyes of Mina, a young girl whose adventures begin in a deep dark forest.'Epic, magnificent, beautiful. A perfect work of art and craft and such a good story... I felt I was living it. I couldn't put it down' Philippa Perry'Magnificent... flawless writing, wonderfully flawed characters, its epic sweep combined with a warm immediacy... I'm in awe, I'm charmed, and I want to press a copy on everyone I know' Nigella Lawson'What an amazing novel... Vivid storytelling with complex and colourful characters... spectacular' David MorrisseyIt's 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's life.The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness - in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales?From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, The Story of the Forest is about myths and memory and about how families adapt in order to survive. It is a story full of the humour and wisdom we have come to relish from this wonderful writer.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2023'Epic and marvellously entertaining... There's a furious energy to the novel, which constantly moves forward even as it looks sorrowfully back'FINANCIAL TIMES'Magnificent... I want to press a copy on everyone I know'NIGELLA LAWSON'Epic, magnificent, beautiful... I couldn't put it down' PHILIPPA PERRY'Jewel-like clarity... exceptional'RICHARD COLES'Exquisite writing [and] a triumphant, elegant ending' MAIL ON SUNDAY'An intelligent family saga... ambitious and moving and funny' TESSA HADLEYIt's 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's life.The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness - in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales?From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, The Story of the Forest is about myths and memory and about how families adapt in order to survive. It is a story full of the humour and wisdom we have come to relish from this wonderful writer.Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Award Ceremony - 22 June 2023

'Wonderful . . . all killer, no filler' Red Magazine'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror'Where power and feminist rage meet' Stylist______________________________A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers:Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO. For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story.In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.'A slick collection of clever tales, with something for bluestockings and banshees alike' Guardian'Delightful, thought-provoking' Louisa Young, Perspectives

A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by sixteen bestselling, award-winning writers.'Wonderful . . . all killer, no filler' Red Magazine'Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring' Daily Mirror'Where power and feminist rage meet' StylistBANSHEE. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO.For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, sixteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.STORIES BY: Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Annie Hodson, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O'Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie, Ali Smith, with an Introduction by Sandi Toksvig

How did Latin erotic elegy influence and shape sixteenth-century English love poetry? Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book offers detailed readings of poetry with close attention to the erotic, sometimes problematically 'pornographic', 'wanton' and 'lascivious' verse that exists in both periods. Moving beyond arguments that relate Renaissance eroticism more or less solely back to Ovid and Petrarch, Linda Grant breaks new ground by demonstrating the extent to which a broader sense of classical, specifically Latin, erotics underpins conceptions of sexual love, gender and desire in Renaissance literature. Methodologically sophisticated and moving away from static source study to the dynamism of intertextuality and reception, Grant shows the value of dialogic readings, exploring how elegy speaks to Renaissance poetry and how reading poems from both periods together illuminates both sets of verse.

How did Latin erotic elegy influence and shape sixteenth-century English love poetry? Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book offers detailed readings of poetry with close attention to the erotic, sometimes problematically 'pornographic', 'wanton' and 'lascivious' verse that exists in both periods. Moving beyond arguments that relate Renaissance eroticism more or less solely back to Ovid and Petrarch, Linda Grant breaks new ground by demonstrating the extent to which a broader sense of classical, specifically Latin, erotics underpins conceptions of sexual love, gender and desire in Renaissance literature. Methodologically sophisticated and moving away from static source study to the dynamism of intertextuality and reception, Grant shows the value of dialogic readings, exploring how elegy speaks to Renaissance poetry and how reading poems from both periods together illuminates both sets of verse.

The Well Said series is designed to improve the pronunciation and communication skills of beginner to advanced students from all language backgrounds. It offers a clear course plan covering the essential areas of pronunciation, including stress, rhythm, and intonation--features that research shows help students the most. Additionally, there are over fifty pages of supplemental activities focusing on consonant and vowel sounds. This level of Well Said introduces the most important pronunciation features at an intermediate to advanced level. A free Website for teachers and students includes the full audio program.

The Well Said series is designed to improve the pronunciation and communication skills of beginner to advanced students from all language backgrounds. It offers a clear course plan covering the essential areas of pronunciation, including stress, rhythm, and intonation--features that research shows help students the most. Additionally, there are over fifty pages of supplemental activities focusing on consonant and vowel sounds. The Intro level of Well Said is a slower-paced course that introduces the most important pronunciation features at the beginning to low-intermediate level. A free Website for teachers and students includes the full audio program.

In this novel, the Morgans, distant relatives brought together by circumstance and destiny, must fight the sinister Max Hauptman, his son, Carlo, and various henchmen, to prevent history from being altered, thus ensuring that the present stays free of oppression and destruction. Each member of the Morgan family consumes a specialized herb concoction, left behind by a long-dead relative, Jeremy Morgan, and finds their consciousness transported back in time into the body of a previous incarnation of themselves. Over the course of several incarnations and time periods, the Morgans fight, together and individually, to thwart the dastardly attempts of various incarnations of Max Hauptman to destroy the future. As they struggle to find their purpose and work in their respective timelines to stop the evil forces from succeeding, each Morgan learns a valuable lesson about the mistakes of their past selves and how to make their futures lives more meaningful and fulfilling.

The Well Said series offers a lively communicative approach to building and improving pronunciation and speaking skills through strategies development and abundant confidence-building activities.

The further away anyone was from that block of Ben Yehuda street, the easier it seemed to find a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, that stubborn mess in the centre of the Middle East and the more I studied these solutions, the more I thought that they depended for their implementation on a population of table football men, painted in the colours of the two teams: blue and white for the Israelis, green, red and black for the Palestinians. All the international community had to do was to twist the levers and the little players would kick and swing and send the ball into the net, to victory' One block of a Tel Aviv street is the starting point for Linda Grant's exploration of the inner dynamics of Israelis - not the government and its policies, but the people themselves, in all their variety. Iraqi shop-keepers, Teenage soldiers, Mob bosses, Tunisian-born settlers, Russian scientists, and the father of the child victim of a suicide bomber are some of the people she meets.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZEIn a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sándor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home?This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.

A good handbag makes the outfit. Only the rich can afford cheap shoes. The only thing worse than being skint is looking as if you're skint.'For centuries, an interest in clothes has been dismissed as the trivial pursuit of vain empty-headed women. Yet, clothes matter, whether you are interested in fashion or not because what we choose to dress ourselves in defines our identity. For the immigrant arriving in a new country to the teenager who needs to be part of the fashion pack or the woman turning forty who must reassess her wardrobe, the truth is that how we look and what we wear, tells a story. And what a story. THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER tells us how a woman's hat saved her life in Nazi Germany, looks at the role of department stores in giving women a public place outside the home, savours the sheer joy of finding the right dress. Here is the thinking woman's guide to our relationship with what we wear: why we want to look our best and why it matters. THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER celebrates the pleasure of adornment

Alix, arrogant, middle-aged and angry comes home to the derelict port of Liverpool as her mother lies dying. Irritably resigned to living alone for the rest of her life she suddenly finds herself erotically attracted to a stranger. Joseph is an American architect who has come to the city to build a hotel. Refusing to accept that his wife has left him or the trauma of a war he once fought in, the question is whether these survivors of the battles of the Seventies are meant for each other or not. And what happened to a factory in Dresden which long ago made the perfect face cream . . .'Perhaps her most accessible novel to date ... Grant's prose is blunt, honest, yet often beautiful and bitingly funny. Equally comfortable discussing concepts of justice and grooming routinme, the voices Grant creates are striking and authentic. Her characters are irascible, witty, fierce, and full of the contradictions and blind spots that make them wholly human. This is a compelling and satisfying novel' Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room

Born to hardworking immigrant parents in sunny suburban Los Angeles, Stephen Newman never imagined that he would spend his adult life under the grey skies of north London, would marry Andrea for convenience and stay married, and would watch his children grow into people he cannot fathom. Over forty years he and his friends have built lives of comfort and success, until the events of late middle age and the new century force them to realise that they have always existed in a fool's paradise.

This is a capacious and wide-ranging book, not just about individuals but about the history they move through. Whether the scene is Liverpool in the Blitz, a potato-chip factory in the prairies or a seedy hotel room in Hanoi, the writing is immediate . . . Grant approaches each character with insight and a tart sympathy' Hilary Mantel, Literary ReviewSybil Ross has been brought up by her Jewish furrier father and style-obsessed mother as an empty-headed fashion plate. But on the worst night of Liverpool's blitz she uncovers a secret that leaves her disorientated. When the war is over, Sybil embarks on a voyage that leads her to the very edge of America, and to a final choice. THE CAST IRON SHORE is a beautuful evocation of one woman's journey from the 1930s to the 1990s, combining the personal and political in an outstanding first novel.

'If you go back and look at your life there are certain scenes, acts, or maybe just incidents on which everything that follows seems to depend. If only you could narrate them, then you might be understood. I mean the part of yourself that you don't know how to explain.' In the early seventies, a glamorous and androgynous couple known as Evie/Stevie appear out of nowhere on the isolated concrete campus of a new university. To a group of teenagers experimenting with radical ideas, they seem blown back from the future, unsettling everything and uncovering covert desires. But their mesmerising flamboyant self-expression hides deep anxieties and hidden histories.For Adele, who also has something to conceal, Evie becomes an obsession - an obsession which becomes lifelong after the night of Adele's twentieth birthday party. What happened that evening and who was complicit are questions that have haunted Adele ever since. A set of school exercise books might reveal everything, but they have been missing for the past forty years. From summers in 1970s Cornwall to London in the twenty-first century, long after she has disappeared, Evie will go on challenging everyone's ideas of how their lives should turn out. With her hallmark humour, intelligence and boldness Linda Grant has written a powerful and captivating novel about secrets and the moments that shape our lives.

It is April 1946. Evelyn Sert, twenty years old, a hairdresser from Soho, sails for Palestine, where Jewish refugees and idealists are gathering from across Europe to start a new life in a brand-new country.In the glittering, cosmopolitan, Bauhaus city of Tel Aviv, anything seems possible - the new self, new Jew, new woman are all feasible. Evelyn, adept at disguises, reinvents herself as the bleached-blonde Priscilla Jones. Immersed in a world of passionate idealism, she finds love, and with Johnny, her lover, finds herself at the heart of a very dangerous game.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Linda Grant's mother, Rose, was diagnosed with Dementia. In Remind Me Who I Am, Again Linda Grant tells the story of Rose's illness and tries to reconstruct the history of their Jewish immigrant family, stalking them from Russia and Poland to New York and London. Writing with humour and great tenderness, Grant explores profound questions about memory, autonomy and identity, and asks if we can ever really know our parents.