Serpent's Tail Classics – serie

The cult classic novel from the 2026 Booker-longlisted author of The End of EverythingWith an introduction by bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield'A more grown-up version of The Secret History' LUCY SCHOLES'A groundbreaking work' GUARDIAN 'The best literary fiction out now' DAILY MAIL 'Gloriously intelligent and beautifully written' INDEPENDENT On a hot May night, three Cambridge students carry out a ritualistic act that changes their lives. Decades later, none of the participants can remember what transpired; but their clouded memories bind them together. Unable to move on, Pam Stuyvesant has epilepsy and is plagued by sensual visions. Her husband Lucas believes that a dwarfish creature is stalking him, and invents histories to soothe Pam's fears. Self-styled Sorcerer Yaxley becomes obsessed with a terrifyingly transcendent reality. The narrator is seemingly the least effected participant in the ritual: he is haunted by the smell of roses, and his guilt as he attempts to help his friends escape the torment that has engulfed their lives. Strange, dreamlike and moving, The Course of the Heart is an examination of the edges of humanity where we lie, hide, hurt and heal.'A spare textual elegance and closure-denying restraint that impresses and fulfils' IAIN BANKS

David Toop's extraordinary work of sonic history travels from the rainforests of Amazonas to the megalopolis of Tokyo via the work of artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Sun Ra, Erik Satie, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk and Brian Wilson. Beginning in 1889 at the Paris exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed, Ocean of Sound channels the competing instincts of 20th century music into an exhilarating, path-breaking account of ambient sound. 'A meditation on the development of modern music, there's no single term that is adequate to describe what Toop has accomplished here ... mixing interviews, criticism, history, and memory, Toop moves seamlessly between sounds, styles, genres, and eras' Pitchfork's '60 Favourite Music Books'

A memoir from a man present at the birth of modern rock and the author of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, praised by Robert Plant, Brian Eno and more'From Dylan to Pink Floyd, Boyd was there and can remember it all' Daily ExpressWhen Muddy Waters came to London in the early '60s, Joe Boyd was his tour manager. When Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar. When it was the summer of love, Joe Boyd was running the coolest club in London, the UFO. When a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer. When a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd.More than any previous '60s music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the '60s heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well.'Profound ... and beyond' Robert Plant

With an introduction by Lynne Tillman'The last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction' Bret Easton EllisPhysically beautiful and strangely passive, George Miles attracts his fellow students' attention, like a wallet lying on the street. One after another, his teenage friends rifle through George, ransacking him for love, secrets or anything else they can plausibly extract.Closer follows the subterranean connections that drag George into the arms of men like John, an artist who drains his portraits of humanity in order to find what lies beneath; Alex, fascinated by splatter films and pornography; and Steve, an underground entrepreneur who turns his parents' garage into a nightclub. Boys and men pass George from hand to hand, fascinated by the nightmarish intensity of his detachment, but soon he will be confronted by desires he may find harder to endure. Closer is an unflinching exploration of the very limits of experience. Still shocking after more than two decades, here is a provocative classic that assaults the senses as it engages the mind.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2010ONE MILLION COPIES SOLDEva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

One of Elena Ferrante's Top 40 Best Books by Women'One of my all time favourites' ELIZA CLARKErika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. By night she trawls the city's porn shows while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man Walter Klemmer.With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstasy of self-destruction. A haunting tale of morbid voyeurism and masochism, The Piano Teacher, first published in 1983, is Elfreide Jelinek's Masterpiece.Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2004 for her 'musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power.The Piano Teacher was adapted into an internationally successful film by Michael Haneke, which won three major prizes at Cannes, including the Grand Prize and Best Actress for Isabelle Huppert.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

A GUARDIAN BEST NOVEL OF ALL TIME'There is no novel more mesmerizing and paradigm-shifting' Valeria Luiselli'One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature' Susan SontagWith an Introduction by Gabriel García MárquezFrom one of the most famous and influential Mexican writers, and the father of magical realism, this novel is a stunning masterpiece of the surreal. Juan Preciado sets out on a strange quest, bound by a promise to his dying mother. Embarking down a parched and dusty road, Juan goes to seek his father, Pedro Páramo, from whom they fled many years ago.The ruined town of Comala is alive with whispers and shadows. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of desires and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the tyranny of the Páramo family. Womaniser, overlord and murderer, Juan's notorious father retains an eternal grip over Comala. Its barren and broken-down streets echo the voices of tormented spirits sharing the secrets of the past in an extraordinary chorus of sensory images, violent passions and unfathomable mysteries.NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM

'My Albertine, how I adored her! Her luminous eyes led me through the darkness of my youth. She was my guide through the nights of one hundred sleeps. And now she is yours.' At the age of twenty-one, a sad and hungry Patti Smith walked into a bookshop in Greenwich Village and decided to spend her last 99 cents on a novel that would change her life forever. The book was Astragal, by Albertine Sarrazin. Sarrazin was an enigmatic outsider who had spent time in jail and who wrote only two novels and a book of poems in her short life - she died the year before Patti found her book, at the age of twenty-nine.Astragal tells the story of Anne, a young woman who breaks her ankle in a daring escape from prison. She makes it to a highway where she's picked up by a motorcyclist, Julien, who's also on the run. As they travel through nights and days together, they fall in love and must do whatever they can to survive, living their lives always on the edge of danger. A bewitching and timeless novel of youthful rebellion and romance, this new edition of Patsy Southgate's original translation includes an introduction by Patti Smith.

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 100 BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURYAlison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: one is a former modelling sensation, stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged proofreader with a meticulous eye. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly between the glamorous and gritty '80s, when beauty and style gave licence to excess, and the broken world of the decade's survivors twenty years later, Gaitskill casts a fierce yet compassionate eye on the two eras and their fixations. Veronica masterfully evokes the fragility and mystery of human relationships in a world where love is rife with frightening artificiality. Evocative, raw and entirely unique, Veronica was shortlisted for the prestigious 2005 National Book Award in the USA.

First published privately in 1929 as The Middle Parts of Fortune, Her Privates We is the novel of the Battle of the Somme told from the perspective of Bourne, an ordinary private. A raw and shockingly honest portrait of men engaged in war, 'that peculiarly human activity', the original edition was subject to 'prunings and excisions' because the bluntness of language was thought to make the book unfit for public distribution. This edition restores them. An undisputed classic of war writing and a lasting tribute to all who participated in the war, Her Privates We was originally published as written by 'Private 19022'. Championed by Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot and TE Lawrence, it has become recognised as a classic in the seventy years since its first publication. Now republished, with an introduction by William Boyd, it will again amaze a new generation of readers with its depiction of the horror, the ordinariness and the humanity of war.

'If you stay alive long enough, people eventually catch up'Born in rural Georgia in 1947, Jayne moved to New York and became part of the 60s art scene surrounding Andy Warhol's Factory. Jayne's story follows the arc of LGBT liberation in the US - she came of age living hand-to-mouth, faced off against police at Stonewall and came out as a trans woman while she was touring Europe with her band. She went everywhere and met everyone and lived to tell the tale.Man Enough to Be a Woman is the funny, fierce memoir of Jayne's extraordinary journey, now including a new epilogue where she reflects on how the world has (almost) caught up with her.

Her name is not Nina, but that's the name she uses sometimes. At her local bar, in the carpark with her tricks, when she needs to score.She doesn't really need the money. But it lays bare the truth of each loveless transaction. Still living at home, each chance encounter is a route to escape the tedium of her sheltered, suburban existence. One day a man takes her home to meet his beautiful, unhappy wife, Ingrid. She knows she should leave, but instead becomes drawn ever deeper into their games, her suspicions of the terrible secrets they keep mounting with each visit. Caught in a web of fear, intrigue and desire, she will end up in more trouble than she ever bargained for.Told with perfect restraint and the iciest detachment, Notice is the sickeningly addictive story of a woman on the edge, who does not know how much further yet she could fall. A stark, relentless exploration of power and pursuit, this provocative cult classic will lead you on an unforgettable journey into pitch darkness.

In Oe's masterpiece of the human condition and family psychology, estranged brothers Mitsusaburo and Takashi have long since left their family home in a remote forested valley on Shikoku, in the south of Japan: Mitsusaburo for work in Tokyo; his younger brother Takashi for the United States, to atone for his part in anti-American student protests. Takashi's return to Japan coincides with a local Korean supermarket magnate's offer to buy the brothers' ancestral storehouse, pitting the brothers against one another and dredging up family histories best forgotten.The Silent Cry is the most important Japanese novel of the post-war period and a strange, unsettling tale of how the call of blood and history echoes down the generations.

Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

Peter Jernigan's life is slipping out of control. His wife's gone, he's lost his job and he's a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn't work, you up the dose. And when that doesn't work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)Jernigan's answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he's busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan's perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.

'A wonderfully disgusting book ... invigorating' DAZED Best Books for Pride MonthThe 25th anniversary edition of Michelle Tea's classic coming-of-age story, now with a foreword by Maggie Nelson, award-winning author of The Argonauts'One of the few truly life changing books I've encountered' Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, BabyFleeing Tucson and her troublesome on-and-off ex-girlfriend, Michelle lands in queer San Francisco's riotous underbelly, stumbling through her early twenties in a haze of nightlife, drug adventures, scams and a string of hookups, break-ups and make-ups. As butches and dykes spin in and out of her orbit, she considers the force and casual cruelty of their desires and her own. Heady, beer-sticky and brimming with life, Valencia is a sharply observed and piercingly funny chronicle of a year lived close to the bone. 'If you want to know how dangerous and great and awful it is to be a girl, you'll scarf Valencia right up' Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls'Michelle Tea is an intoxicating writer, delivering sentences that land with the snap and force of a punch' Guardian

Remo Erdosain's Buenos Aires is a dim, seething, paranoid hive of hustlers and whores, scoundrels and madmen, and Erdosain feels his soul is as polluted as anything in this dingy city. Possessed by the directionlessness of the society around him, trapped between spiritual anguish and madness, he clings to anything that can give his life meaning: small-time defrauding of his employers, hatred of his wife's cousin Gregorio Barsut, a part in the Astrologer's plans for a new world order... but is that enough? Or is the only appropriate response to reality - insanity?Written in 1929, The Seven Madmen depicts an Argentina on the edge of the precipice. This teeming world of dreamers, revolutionaries and scheming generals was Arlt's uncanny prophesy of the cycle of conflict which would scar his country's passage through the twentieth century, and even today it retains its power as one of the great apocalyptic works of modern literature.

'Fuelled with energy, drama and emotional weight, combined with a light touch and a fast-moving story. Grab it while you can' TIMES, Best Rediscovered Books'Acknowledged as Holland's finest novelist' GUARDIAN'Mulisch is a rarity ... an instinctively psychological novelist' JOHN UPDIKEIn the bitter final months of the Second World War, the body of a Dutch Nazi collaborator is found on the doorstep of an ordinary family home. The repercussions are complex and terrible: the family is killed and the house burned to the ground; only the twelve-year-old son, Anton, survives. Following Anton as he reckons with this trauma through his life, The Assault is a powerful excavation of resistance and the collateral damage wrought on innocent people in times of war.A runaway bestseller that sold 200,000 copies on first publication, this is a classic of Dutch literature from one of the greatest European writers of his time.With an introduction by Thomas Harding, author of Hanns and Rudolf

Part One of the critically acclaimed Red Riding seriesNow a Netflix series that is 'better than The Godfather' (Telegraph) - featuring a star-studded cast including Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine and Rebecca HallJeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Claire Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lord Lucan on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's winter, 1974, Yorkshire, and Eddie Dunford's got the job he wanted - crime correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched into her back.In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of an Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession and greed, and starts a highly acclaimed crime series that has redefined how the genre is approached.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2005ONE MILLION COPIES SOLDEva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009'Just as the father in the house in which we live is our father, so Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our country. And just as the mother in the house in which we live is our mother, so Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of our country. Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our children. All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their parents.'The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Müller describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, lyrical language, Herta Müller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people.This edition is translated by Martin Chalmers, with a new foreword by Paul Bailey.Also by Herta Müller: Nadirs, The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, and The Hunger Angel.

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He's planned the crime for some time, but still, the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life and criminal exploits with his own.Continuing with the plan despite a string of botched attempts, Gregoire's final shot at offing Germaine leads to an abrupt unravelling. Lauded in France for its fresh and witty style, African Psycho's inventive use of language surprises and relieves the reader by sending up this disturbing subject.

Remo Erdosain''s Buenos Aires is a dim, seething, paranoid hive of hustlers and whores, scoundrels and madmen, and Erdosain feels his soul is as polluted as anything in this dingy city. Possessed by the directionlessness of the society around him, trapped between spiritual anguish and madness, he clings to anything that can give his life meaning: small-time defrauding of his employers, hatred of his wife''s cousin Gregorio Barsut, a part in the Astrologer''s plans for a new world order... but is that enough? Or is the only appropriate response to reality - insanity?Written in 1929, The Seven Madmen depicts an Argentina on the edge of the precipice. This teeming world of dreamers, revolutionaries and scheming generals was Arlt''s uncanny prophesy of the cycle of conflict which would scar his country''s passage through the twentieth century, and even today it retains its power as one of the great apocalyptic works of modern literature.

Peter Jernigan''s life is slipping out of control. His wife''s gone, he''s lost his job and he''s a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn''t work, you up the dose. And when that doesn''t work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)Jernigan''s answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he''s busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan''s perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009''Just as the father in the house in which we live is our father, so Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our country. And just as the mother in the house in which we live is our mother, so Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of our country. Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our children. All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their parents.''The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu''s dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Müller describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, lyrical language, Herta Müller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people.This edition is translated by Martin Chalmers, with a new foreword by Paul Bailey.Also by Herta Müller: Nadirs, The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, and The Hunger Angel.

''If you stay alive long enough, people eventually catch up''Born in rural Georgia in 1947, Jayne moved to New York and became part of the 60s art scene surrounding Andy Warhol''s Factory. Jayne''s story follows the arc of LGBT liberation in the US - she came of age living hand-to-mouth, faced off against police at Stonewall and came out as a trans woman while she was touring Europe with her band. She went everywhere and met everyone and lived to tell the tale.Man Enough to Be a Woman is the funny, fierce memoir of Jayne''s extraordinary journey, now including a new epilogue where she reflects on how the world has (almost) caught up with her.

In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture.Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.As vital now as when it was first published in 1977, As Serious As Your Life is the essential story of one of the most dynamic musical movements of the twentieth century.

It's a hot 4th of July night in New York City. In the darkness of the Bronx, thousands of boys have gathered from all across the city. Among them are the warriors of the Coney Island Dominators. Ismael Rivera, leader of the Delancey Thrones, has called an assembly of New York's disparate youth gangs. Why should they keep taking it from the Man when they could be the ones giving it to everyone else? But when the assembly descends into violence, the Dominators are suddenly a very long way home from home. The Warriors follows the Dominators as they rape and murder their way back to Coney Island through the terrifying New York night. First published in 1965, Sol Yurick's bleak and shocking novel is a brutal tale of young men left to raise themselves, and an urgent warning about the animal savagery that emerges from the torn fabric of human society.