Marie-Helene Bertino – författare

One of Time's Top 10 Books of 2024One of Electric Lit's Top 5 Books of 2024One of 100 Notable Books of 2024 at The New York TimesA Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Guardian, and KirkusA Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club PickA Best Book of the Year (So Far): The New York Times Book Review, Time, Elle, Esquire, Goodreads, and WBEZ ChicagoA Must-Read: Nylon, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, BookRiot, The Christian Science Monitor, Our Culture, The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia magazine"A perfect little polished garnet of a novel" -Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times“A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life.” —Dakota Johnson, BustleFrom the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn’t feel at home on Earth.At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings. For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the YearWinner of PEN/O. Henry Prize: “Exit Zero”Included in The Best American Short Stories: “Viola in Midwinter”Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland. Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.

“[Marie-Helene] Bertino blurs the line between writer and magician . . . Dazzling.” —Molly Young, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)A Must-Read: The New York Times Book Review, Bustle, Harper''s Bazaar, Chicago Review of Books, Our Culture, Literary HubWinner of PEN/O. Henry Prize: “Exit Zero”Included in The Best American Short Stories: “Viola in Midwinter”Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland. Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Time, Elle, The Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Goodreads, WBEZ Chicago, Book Riot, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Women’s WorldA Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionA Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club PickAn Esquire Best Science Fiction Book of All Time“A perfect little polished garnet of a novel.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review“A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life.” —Dakota Johnson, BustleFrom the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn’t feel at home on Earth.At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings. For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

EDITORS' CHOICE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize"Miraculous: spry and mordant, with sentences that lull you with their rhythms, then twist suddenly and sting." —Lauren Groff, author of Florida"A twisting, strange delight, Parakeet shimmers a soft and generous light on the darkest of a woman's innermost thoughts." —Kristen Iversen, Refinery29Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried. A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change? Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.A Best Book of 2020 at Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Refinery29A Best Book of Summer at Vulture, Refinery29, Yahoo! Life, Alma, Subway Book Review, and Lit HubA Best Book of the Month at Entertainment Weekly, Hello Giggles, and PopSugar

Brought to you by Penguin.Meet Adina: a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times, a companion to anyone who has ever felt homesick at homeBorn at the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space, Adina is a baby of unusual perception. Tiny and jaundiced, she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognises she is different, not least because of her strange knowledge of a faraway planet. When a fax machine arrives at home, her suspicions are confirmed: it allows her to communicate with her extraterrestrial relatives, who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.As Adina makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and delights of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges her to share her observations with the world. Is there a chance there are others like her out there?Beautyland is a shyly joyful novel about real life on our planet, the challenge of knowing ourselves and the miracle of finding our people in this vast universe.‘One of the best books I have read this year’ KALIANE BRADLEY, Guardian‘A perfect little polished garnet of a novel’ New York Times‘Beautyland is a miracle. I’ll be rereading it forever’ KAVEH AKBAR© Marie-Helene Bertino 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

From Lonely Planet, the world''s leading travel guide publisher, Better Than Fiction 2, the follow-up to 2012''s Better Than Fiction, is a second serving of true travel stories told by some of the world''s best fiction writers including Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley and Karen Joy Fowler.

Varied in place, plot and voice, these are stirring and evocative pieces that all share one common characteristic-they manifest a passion for the precious gift of travel, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places, to the truths, sometimes uncomfortable but always enlarging, it reveals about ourselves.

By turns comic, dramatic, and moving - from Francine Prose''s confrontation of the mysteries of India to DBC Pierre''s search for Hemingway''s muse in Italy - these 30 short tales reveal the joys, perils, and surprises of travel, and that truth can often be stranger (and better) than fiction.

Whether on a plane en route to your own travel adventure, or at home settling in for a vicarious experience of world adventures, embark on this literary journey around the world and explore your passion for travel now!

Authors: Lonely Planet, Don George, Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley, Karen Joy Fowler, Stefan Merrill Block, Francine Prose, DBC Pierre, Fiona Kidman, Alexander McCall Smith, Keija Parssinen, MJ Hyland, Catherine Lacey, Rebecca Dinerstein, Lloyd Jones, Porochista Khakpour, Jack Livings, Marina Lewycka, Lydia Millet, Suzanne Joinson, Sophie Cunningham, Christina Nichol, Mandy Sayer, Steven Amsterdam, Marie-Helene Bortino, Shirley Streshinsky, Steven Hall, David Shafer, Avi Duckor-Jones, Lily King, Aliya Whitely, and Natalie Baszile

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world''s leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet''s mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.

Lonely Planet''s award-winning list travel literature anthologies include An Innocent Abroad (Independent Publishers Award, Silver for Essays, 2015) and A Fork in the Road (Lowell Thomas Award, Bronze for Travel Book, 2014; James Bear Award, Nominated for Travel Fiction, 2014).

''Lonely Planet. It''s on everyone''s bookshelves; it''s in every traveller''s hands. It''s on mobile phones. It''s on the Internet. It''s everywhere, and it''s telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.'' -- Fairfax Media

''Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.'' - New York Times

Lonely Planet guides have won the TripAdvisor Traveler''s Choice Award in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.