Books published by Faber & Faber

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, an icy, remote lover who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is?

Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer, returns to the Dominican Republic after a lifelong self-imposed exile. Once she is back in her homeland, the elusive feeling of terror that has overshadowed her whole life suddenly takes shape. Urania's own story alternates with the powerful climax of dictator Rafael Trujillo's reign.In 1961, Trujillo's decadent inner circle (which includes Urania's soon-to-be disgraced father) enjoys the luxuries of privilege while the rest of the nation lives in fear and deprivation. As Trujillo clings to power, a plot to push the Dominican Republic into the future is being formed. But after the murder of its hated dictator, the Goat, is carried out, the Dominican Republic is plunged into the nightmare of a bloody and uncertain aftermath. Now, thirty years later, Urania reveals how her own family was fatally wounded by the forces of history. In The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa eloquently explores the effects of power and violence on the lives of both the oppressors and those they victimized.'The Feast of the Goat will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century and removes One Hundred Years of Solitude of that title.' Times Literary Supplement

An illywhacker is a confidence trickster, and Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of this dazzling comic novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery travels across the Australian continent and a century in a picaresque novel full of outlandish encounters and dangerous characters. Overflowing with magic, jokes and inventions, Illywhacker is a contemporary classic.

'By the time Nashe understood what was happening to him, he was past the point of wanting it to end . . .'Paul Auster fuses Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and The Brothers Grimm in this brilliant and unsettling parable. Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road in pursuit of a 'life of freedom'. But as the money runs out he finds that his sense of disillusionment has only been compounded by his year on the road. However, after picking up Pozzi, a hitchhiking gambler, Nashe finds himself drawn into a dangerous game of high-stakes poker with two eccentric and reclusive millionaires. 'A rare experience of contemporary fiction at its most thrilling.' New Statesman

In the second volume of his celebrated history of the Hundred Years War, Jonathan Sumption examines the middle years of the fourteenth century and the succession of crises that threatened French affairs of state, including defeat at Poitiers and the capture of the king.

A Beautiful Mind is Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography about the mystery of the human mind, the triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.At the age of thirty-one, John Nash, mathematical genius, suffered a devastating breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yet after decades of leading a ghost-like existence, he was to re-emerge to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim. A Beautiful Mind has inspired the Oscar-winning film directed by Ron Howard and featuring Russell Crowe in the lead role of John Nash.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty . . .-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

A cult classic in a new edition.This book is about a single, serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called 'Anarchy in the UK' was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. The song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris intellectuals.In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus's classic book on punk, Dadaism, the situationists, medieval heretics and the Knights of the Round Table (amongst others), the greatest cultural critic of our times unravels the secret history of the twentieth century.

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane's life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable - he writes about the saxophonist's unique sound.

Johann Joachim Quantz's On Playing the Flute has long been recognized as one of the primary sources of information about eighteenth-century performance practice. In spite of its title, it is not simply a tutor for the flute, but a fully-fledged programme for training musicians of all types, with detailed information on intonation, ornamentation, dynamics, the 'duties' of the various accompanying performers, including the leader of the orchestra, and the principal forms and styles (French, Italian and German) of the time. Although Quantz is most often identified as the teacher of Frederick the Great, his musical roots were in Dresden, the most brilliant musical establishment in Germany; and his travels and studies in Italy, France and England gave him direct experience of most phases of European musical life in the 1720s and 30s. This reissue of the second edition provides a wonderfully complete and detailed picture of musical taste and performance practice in the 18th century, and includes a new introduction by Professor Reilly, drawing attention to recent research on Quantz. Whether you want to learn to play the flute and be taught by the teacher of Frederick the Great, or just to gain a first-hand insight into the history of classical music, On Playing the Fluteis an essential and entertaining read.

This volume uniquely combines a lively biography of one of the best-loved composers of the nineteenth century with a detailed chronological guide to much of his oeuvre, from the most popular - Swan Lake or the 1812 Overture - to the lesser known pieces. David Brown enthusiastically and sensitively guides the reader through Tchaikovsky's music in the context of his life. His writing on the music is accessible and informative, both for the professional musician and the keen amateur listener. The biographical writing includes fascinating quotations from the composer's letters, and those of his friends; the Tchaikovsky that emerges is, despite his periodic struggle with depression, a man with a positive attitude to life, and a kind and supportive friend to many around him. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Tchaikovsky, his music, or the culture of the time.'One of the finest one-volume biographies to have appeared in recent years, written with such insight that it feels as though one is on a hot-line to the composer himself . . . by the end I felt I knew Tchaikovsky so much better. A classic.' Classic FM Magazine'I can't imagine a more intelligently sympathetic treatment of the man and his music.' BBC Music Magazine

This edition of Herzog on Herzog presents a completely new set of interviews in which Werner Herzog discusses his career from its very beginnings to his most recent productions.Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequentcollaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski - including the epics, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu - and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema.

In the eighteenth century, the palace's most elegant assembly room was in fact a bloody battlefield. This was a world of skulduggery, politicking, wigs and beauty-spots, where fans whistled open like flick-knives.Ambitious and talented people flocked to court of George II and Queen Caroline in search of power and prestige, but Kensington Palace was also a gilded cage. Successful courtiers needed level heads and cold hearts; their secrets were never safe. Among them, a Vice Chamberlain with many vices, a Maid of Honour with a secret marriage, a pushy painter, an alcoholic equerry, a Wild Boy, a penniless poet, a dwarf comedian, two mysterious turbaned Turks and any number of discarded royal mistresses.An eye-opening portrait of a group of royal servants, Courtiers also throws new light on the dramatic life of George II and Queen Caroline at Kensington Palace.

How do we move, think and remember? Why do we get ill, age and die? Distinguished biologist Lewis Wolpert explains how cells provide the answers to the fundamental questions about our lives.Cells are the basis of all life in the universe. Our bodies are made up of billions of them: an incredibly complex society that governs everything, from movement to memory and imagination. When we age, it is because our cells slow down; when we get ill, it is because our cells mutate or stop working.In How We Live and Why We Die, Wolpert provides a clear explanation of the science that underpins our lives. He explains how our bodies function and how we derive from a single cell - the egg. He examines the science behind the topics that are much discussed but rarely understood - stem-cell research, cloning, DNA - and explains how all life evolved from just one cell. Lively and passionate, How We Live and Why We Die is an accessible guide to understanding the human body and, essentially, life itself.

Set in the mid-1970s in India, A Fine Balance tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a 'State of Internal Emergency'. Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances - and their fates - become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen.Written with compassion, humour and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured and powerful novel by one of the most gifted writers of our time.'A masterpiece of illumination and grace. Like all great fiction, it transforms our understanding of life.' Guardian

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered. Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems and the ambitious Anglo-Indian Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly have the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects that there is a second brutal killing and the whole investigation is jeopardised when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.

'I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.' Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts another hidden story, this time of his own marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death.Passionate and shocking, political and personal: Man in the Dark is a novel that reflects the consequences of 9/11, that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

348 393 9028: MEDUSA. After the heated pool, the air was distinctly cool, even down here in the sheltered terraces above lake Lugano. He keyed in the number, then turned to face the hillside behind the villa. The land rose precipitously, the contours marked by the looping line of Via Totone and its accompanying homes and gardens. There was no one in sight.When a group of Austrian cavers in the Italian Alps come across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental - until the still unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. The whole affair has the whiff of political intrigue.The search for the truth leads Zen back into the murky history of post-war Italy and obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as the victim.If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century French city.

Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of the political landscape.

This is the complete collection of stories from one of the most original and powerful American writers of the twentieth century. Including A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge, this collection also contains several stories only available in this volume.

Reflects the wealth of forms, the rhetorical and tonal range, and the variousness of content in Auden's poetry. This volume also includes examples of Auden's mastery of light verse: the self-descriptive sequence of haiku called 'Profiles', the barbed wartime quatrains of 'Leap Before You Look', or 'Funeral Blues' itself.

Nominated for seven Oscars and winner of the BAFTA award, this triplet of masterfully interwoven crime stories is witty, gritty and shamelessly violent, displaying Tarantino's visceral approach to character and plot.

This selection made by E.E. Cummings himself from eleven books of poems constitutes a comprehensive introduction to his work.

David Lynch erupted onto the cinema landscape with Eraserhead, establishing himself as one of the most original, imaginative, and truly personal directors at work in contemporary film. In this career-length interview book, he speaks openly about the full breadth of his creative work.

Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake.

With films such as "The Brood" and "Videodrome", David Cronenberg established himself as Canada's most provocative director. This title charts his development from maker of inexpensive exploitation cinema to internationally renowned director of million-dollar movies, and reveals the concerns and obsessions which continue to dominate his work.

In the spring of 1976, the film-maker, Francis Ford Coppola, and his family left California for the Philippines, where the film "Apocalypse Now" was to be filmed. In this book Coppola's wife records the events of a period which stretched from months into years.

The Philokalia is a collection of texts on prayer and the spiritual life, written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition.