Peter Owen Publishers – förlag

A new edition of what is commonly seen as the legendary Norwegian writer''s masterpiece. Siss and Unn are new friends - so new that they have spent only one whole evening in each other''s company. But so profound is that evening that when Unn inexplicably disappears Siss''s world is shattered. Siss''s struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn''s fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the Ice Palace are described in prose of a lyrical economy that ranks among the most memorable achievements of modern literature. Tarjei Vesaas is regarded as one of the finest writers ever to have come out of Scandinavia - he is notable for having been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and has been considered one of the greatest prose stylists never to have won. Nevertheless, his reputation is secure and growing all the time. Peter Owen has long considered The Ice Palace to be the greatest work ever to have come from his publishing house, which boasts seven Nobel Prize winners on its list.

''This is not perhaps the real Napoleon, but it''s certainly a remarkable creation that leaps off the page.'' - Jack Kerridge, The Sunday Telegraph In The Hundred Days, Joseph Roth provides a poignant look at Napoleon''s seemingly triumphant return to Paris from exile in March 1815. The story of Napoleon''s last grasp at glory is framed both through the eyes of the Emperor himself and an infatuated young imperial laundress named Angelina Pietri. Before long, one hundred days have elapsed and war and truth have crushed the lofty dreams of both Napoleon and little Angelina. Originally published in 1935, and out of print in English for seventy years, The Hundred Days achieves Roth''s aim of sending the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte out of the lofty clouds and crashing down to earth.

As the USSR enters its final decade, a group of bored science students in Kiev devise a strategy game in which each ''ruler'' competes in Orwellian permanent war. Alerted - by whom? - to the subversive nature and Ukrainian nationalism inherent in the game, the KGB becomes suspicious and pulls them all in for questioning. Though eventually released, they are now marked men whose lives are overrun by wider events - resulting variously in a hellish tour of duty in Afghanistan, incarceration in an asylum and mindless bureaucratic drudgery. As Ukraine negotiates the post-Soviet capitalist free-for-all twenty years later, one of the group, Davidov, aka Istemi, receives an email with a familiar ultimatum attached . . . Brilliantly revealing how a seemingly innocent pursuit can have unforeseen and far-reaching effects, Istemi is a wildly inventive novel exploring the curious banality deep in the heart of a paranoid totalitarian state.

One of Britain''s most idiosyncratic writers - also an acclaimed poet - returns with a typically original and erotically charged novel. Some time in the not-too-distant future London has merged with Tokyo, police use flying cars to catch kamikazee Boeings and Michael Jackson shops incessantly. Amid the chaos two men are called into a hypnotherapy clinic named the Grid to get treatment for AIDS. They discover that they are the reincarnations of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, a revelation that leads them to the truth about one of the great literary mysteries of all time, the murder of Kit Marlowe in a Deptford tavern in 1593.

Nearly all Michael Angelo''s sonnets express personal feelings, and by far the greater number of them were composed after his sixtieth year. To whom they were addressed, we only know in a few instances. Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso de'' Cavalieri, the two most intimate friends of his old age in Rome, received from him some of the most pathetically beautiful of his love-poems. But to suppose that either the one or the other was the object of more than a few well-authenticated sonnets would be hazardous. Nothing is more clear than that Michael Angelo worshipped Beauty in the Platonic spirit, passing beyond its personal and specific manifestations to the universal and impersonal. This thought is repeated over and over again in his poetry; and if we bear in mind that he habitually regarded the loveliness of man or woman as a sign and symbol of eternal and immutable beauty, we shall feel it of less importance to discover who it was that prompted him to this or that poetic utterance. That the loves of his youth were not so tranquil as those of his old age, appears not only from the regrets expressed in his religious verses, but also from one or two of the rare sonnets referable to his manhood. The love of beauty, the love of Florence, and the love of Christ, are the three main motives of his poetry.

First published sixty years ago, Asylum Piece today ranks as one of the most extraordinary and terrifying evocations of human madness ever written. This collection of stories, mostly interlinked and largely autobiographical, chart the descent of the narrator from the onset of neurosis to final incarceration at a Swiss clinic. The sense of paranoia, of persecution by a foe or force that is never given a name evokes The Trial by Franz Kafka, the writer with whom Kavan is most often compared, though Kavan''s deeply personal, restrained and almost foreignaccented style has no true model. The same characters who recur throughout — the protagonist''s unhelpful ''advisor'', the friend/lover who abandons her at the clinic, and an assortment of deluded companions — are sketched without a trace of the rage, selfpity or sentiment that have marked more recent prozac memoirs.

In the 21st century we face innumerable material and existential challenges both now and in the future, from religious fanaticism, mass migration, unfettered corporate power, to inequality, big data and climate change. Ahead of these global threats and tragedies is a common barrier to their solution it is the spirit that has defined the age we live in: competition. The Simultaneous Policy Solution, the ''SIMPOL Solution'' shows us how we must all come to terms with the crippling effect of global competition. Only through simultaneous action, through cooperation, can we overcome these problems.

Part of the Peter Owen World Series: SerbiaBelgrade seems to have changed in the years since Count Otto von Hausburg last visited the city, and not for the better. Fog and mist have settled around the perimeter walls, and everywhere there is talk of murder, rebellion and death.Serbia in the eighteenth century is a battleground of empires, with the Ottomans on one side and the Habsburgs on the other. In the besieged capital, safe for now behind the fortress walls, Princess Maria Augusta waits for love to save her troubled soul. But who is the strange, charismatic count, and can we trust the story he is telling us? While some call him the Devil, he appears to have all the fears and pettiness of an ordinary man.In this daring and original novel, Novakovi invites her readers to join the hunt for the undead, travelling through history, myth and literature into the dark corners of the land that spawned that most infamous word: vampire.

A dazzling, Joycean achievement by one of Spain''s greatest living novelists.On a sweltering hot August day in Málaga, dawn breaks over a patch of waste ground and a man lying close to death. From this vivid encounter, a kaleidoscopic narrative unfolds over a single day, as the suffocating terral wind spreads its malign influence over the city. We meet the dying man''s family, his doctor wife and entitled son; a picture framer and his alcoholic brother; their mother and her entrepreneur boyfriend; the framer''s colleague and his wife who has given all their savings to the local priest; drug dealers and addicts, itinerant musicians and petrol station workers – their lives all interwoven in a richly layered tapestry of contemporary Spain.A monumental achievement by one of Spain''s greatest living writers, Sur explores asks powerful questions about the hope and futility of daily life and the manifestation of our desire, exploring the countless stories we intersect with every day.

A unique book in its field and a comprehensive history of cosmetics In this highly praised volume, Richard Corson chronicles the pursuit of beauty from Ancient Egypt to the present day. Concentrating mainly on makeup traditions of the Western world, with some examples from other countries included for comparison, Corson describes the cosmetics with which men and women have decorated their faces, how they have applied them, and what they looked like as a result. This edition has an additional 16 new pages by fashion historian James Sherwood to bring makeup trends up to the present day. It is an essential reference for students, makeup artists, costume designers, actors, illustrators, beauty consultants, social historians, and all those interested in the use and application of cosmetics.