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Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf has a chat with his friend's daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, about school, her friends, her hopes, dreams and fears, and then he works it up into a comic strip. This book consists of 52 of those strips, telling between them the story of a year in the life of this sharp, spirited and funny child. The result is a moving, insightful and utterly addictive glimpse into the real lives of children growing up in today's world.
Inspirations for Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch - fascinating essays on Paris by some of the twentieth century's finest writers.
A funny, wistful and utterly beguiling novel about a man whose life is falling apart, and how he learns to put it back together
A boy goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at the face of the woman who sells sandwiches. She is beautiful to him, and he calls her "Ms Ice Sandwich," and endlessly draws her portrait. When the boy's friend hears about this hesitant adoration, suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, and with them the last hopes of his childhood.
A female writer tries to make it against adversity, in this return from the winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize and the Icelandic Literary Prize.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 MAN BOOKER PRIZEIn this dazzling debut novel, four young brothers in a small Nigerian town encounter a madman, whose prophecy of violence threatens the core of their familyTold from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman, who predicts that one of the brothers will kill another. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact - both tragic and redemptive - will transcend the lives and imaginations of both its characters and its readers. Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the best new voices of modern African literature, echoing its older generation's masterful storytelling with a contemporary fearlessness and purpose.'Obioma's beautiful, quasi-biblical allegory-like debut... is set to be one of the novels of the year' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times'A startling debut... auspicious... leaps off the pages' Mariella Frostrup, Open Book'A striking, controlled and masterfully taut debut... The tale has a timeless quality that renders it almost allegorical and it is the more powerful for it' FT'It's like being in a Zola or Theodore Dreiser novel... The Fishermen is an elegy to lost promise... and yet it remains hopeful about the redemptive possibilities of a new generation' Guardian'Awesome in the true sense of the word... a truly magnificent debut' Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries'Suffused with an air of legend and the supernatural... The Fishermen establishes Obioma as a writer to be taken seriously... ingenious, subtle, ambitious and intriguing' TLS'Terrific' Irish Examiner'Full of deceptive simplicity, lyrical language and playful Igbo mythology and humour... an impressive and beautifully imagined work' Economist'A novel with an intimate canvas but also an undercurrent of something larger, more primal' We Love This Book'A debut that is packed with power and tragedy' Shortlist'Chigozie Obioma truly is the heir to Chinua Achebe' The New York Times'Mr Obioma's long-limbed and elegant writing is shot through with strikingly elevated phrasings... its lessons may be slippery, but its power is unmistakable' Wall Street Journal'The most frustrating thing about The Fishermen is that the author has no other books for the reader to devour once the final page is reached' Chicago Tribune'Searing, incandescent' Harvard Crimson'Succeeds as a convincing modern narrative and as a majestic reimagining of timeless folklore' Publisher's Weekly, Starred review'A powerful, haunting tale of grief, healing, and sibling loyalty' Kirkus'Darkly mythic... a kind of African Cormac McCarthy' USA Today'[A] confident debut novel... frank and lyrical' New Yorker
I had never heard of Zweig until six or seven years ago, as allthe books began to come back into print, and I more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I immediately lovedthis book, his one, big, great novel-and suddenly there weredozens more in front of me waiting to read.' Wes Anderson The Society of the Crossed Keys contains Wes Anderson's selections from the writings of the great Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whose life and work inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel . A CONVERSATION WITH WES ANDERSON Wes Anderson discusses Zweig's life and work with Zweig biographer George Prochnik. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY Selected extracts from Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, an unrivalled evocation of bygone Europe. BEWARE OF PITY An extract from Zweig's only novel, a devastating depictionof the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN THE LIFE OF A WOMAN One of Stefan Zweig's best-loved stories in full-a passionate tale of gambling, love and death, played out against the stylish backdrop of the French Riviera in the 1920s. ' The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed.' -- David Hare ' Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel' -- Antony Beevor 'One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories.'--Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and, between the wars was an international bestselling author. With the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath, New York and Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Wes Anderson's films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel.
A hilarious and moving road trip around Iceland in an old car, told by a recently divorced woman with a five year-old boy 'on loan'
Stefan Zweig based his biography of Marie Antoinette, who became the Queen of France when still a teenager, on her correspondence with both her mother and her great love the Count Axel von Fersen. Zweig analyses the chemistry of a woman's soul, from her intimate pleasures to her public suffering as a Queen under the weight of misfortune and history. Zweig describes Marie Antoinette in the king's bedroom, in the enchanted and extravagant world of the Trianon and with her children. He also gives an account of the Revolution, the Queen's resolve during the failed escape to Varennes, her imprisonment in the Conciergerie and her tragic end under the guillotine. This has been the definitive biography of Marie Antoinette since its publication, inspiring later biographers, including Antonia Fraser, and the recent film adaptation.
Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news - the son of one of the island's most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger - with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters' lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophecy, and to protect the three women if he can.As Kosuke Kindaichi attempts to unravel the island's secrets, a series of gruesome murders begins. He investigates, but soon finds himself in mortal danger from both the unknown killer and the clannish locals, who resent this outsider meddling in their affairs.Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the fiendish Death on Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries.
A new edition of this classic Zweig story - an epic chess match on a transatlantic liner during WW2 unearths a story of persecution and obsession.
Masterful stories of faith and superstition from a much-loved Russian author, in English for the first time'A magnificent edition of the works of a writer who deserves her seat at the top table of Russian authors' Sara Wheeler, Wall Street JournalThese stories conjure a vanished Russia, where Orthodox Christianity coexists with the shapeshifters and house spirits of ancient folk belief. Celebrated for her sublime wit and graceful style, Teffi here plumbs the darker aspects of psychology, infusing tales of domestic conflict with the occult spirituality that thrived in the country of her youth.A young girl, haunted by the sinister sound of a church bell, resolves to become first a brigand, then a saint. A reluctant participant in a pilgrimage to the Solovetsky Islands has a shatteringly profound experience. A recently married couple's relationship becomes strained as they each silently nurse the fear that their maid is a witch. By turns playful and profound, solemn and drily sceptical, these tales of other worlds precisely illuminate human desires, fears and failings.
An offbeat, blackly comic thriller from the author of You Were Never Really Here.
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