Books published by Seagull Books London Ltd

A poetically written and bitterly sweet memoir about nature, death, life in Palestine, and the universal concept of home. Palestinian writer Hussein Barghouthi was in his late forties when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. He had feared it was HIV, so when the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, he left the hospital feeling a bitter joy because his wife and son would be spared. The bittersweetness of this reaction characterizes the alternating moods of narration and reflection that distinguish this meditative memoir, Among the Almond Trees. Barghouthi's way of dealing with finality is to return to memories of childhood in the village of his birth in central Palestine, where the house in which he grew up is surrounded by almond and fig orchards. He takes many healing walks in the moonlit shadows of the trees, where he observes curious foxes, dancing gazelles, a badger with an unearthly cry, a weasel, and a wild boar with its young-a return not only to the house but to nature itself. The author decides to build a house where he would live with his wife and son, in whom he sees a renewal of life. The realization of his impending death also urges him to vocalize this experience, and he relates the progress of the disease at infrequent intervals. And, ultimately, he details the imaginative possibility of a return to life-to the earth, where he would be buried among the almond trees.

Disguised as a passenger, a homeless woman lives in Paris‿s Roissy airport until she meets a man who makes her confront her past. Every day the narrator of this gripping novel hurries from one terminal to another in Charles de Gaulle Roissy airport, Paris, pulling her suitcase behind her, talking to people she meets‿but she never boards an airplane. She becomes an “unnoticeable,â€? a homeless woman disguised as a passenger, protected by her anonymity. When a man who comes to the airport every day to await the Rio-to-Paris flight‿the same route on which a plane crashed into the sea a few years earlier‿attempts to approach her, she flees, terrified. But eventually, she accepts his kindness and understands his loss, and she gives in to the grief they share, forming a bond with him that becomes more than friendship. A magnificent portrait of a woman who rediscovers herself through a chance connection, Roissy is a powerful, polyphonic book, a glimpse at the infinite capacity of the human spirit to be reborn. Â

Mingling fact and fiction, The Three Rimbauds imagines how Rimbaud‿s life would have unfolded had he not died at the age of thirty-seven. The myth of Arthur Rimbaud (1854‿1891) focuses on his early years: how the great enfant terrible tore through the nineteenth-century literary scene with reckless abandon, leaving behind him a trail of enemies, the failed marriage of an ex-lover who shot him, and a body of revolutionary poetry that changed French literature forever. He stopped writing poetry at the age of twenty-one when he left Europe to travel the world. He returned only shortly before his death at the age of thirty-seven.    But what if 1891 marked not the year of his death, but the start of a great new beginning: the poet‿s secret return to Paris, which launched the mature phase of his literary career? This slim, experimental volume by Dominique Noguez shows that the imaginary “matureâ€? Rimbaud‿the one who returned from Harar in 1891, married Paul Claudel‿s sister in 1907, converted to Catholicism in 1925, and went on to produce some of the greatest works in twentieth-century French prose‿was already present in the almost forgotten works of his childhood, in style and themes alike. Only by reacquainting ourselves with the three Rimbauds‿child, young adult, and imaginary older adult‿can we truly gauge the range of the complete writer.

The moving yet humorous story of a girl struggling to care for herself and others in post-communist Slovakia. Emotionally neglected by her immature, promiscuous mother and made to care for her cantankerous dying grandmother, twelve-year-old Jarka is left to fend for herself in the social vacuum of a post-communist concrete apartment-block jungle in Bratislava, Slovakia. She spends her days roaming the streets and daydreaming in the only place she feels safe: a small garden inherited from her grandfather. One day, on her way to the garden, she stops at a suburban railway station and impulsively abducts twin babies. Jarka teeters on the edge of disaster, and while struggling to care for the babies, she discovers herself. With a vivid and unapologetic eye, Monika Kompaníková captures the universal quest for genuine human relationships amid the emptiness and ache of post-communist Europe. Boat Number Five, which was adapted into an award-winning Slovak film, is the first of two books that launch Seagull‿s much-anticipated Slovak List.

What does it take to succeed as a queer teenage Eastern European sex worker in the 1990s? Eleven inches and a ruthless attitude. Western Europe, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall: Two queer teens from Eastern Europe journey to Vienna, then Zurich, in search of a better life as sex workers. They couldn‿t be more different from each other. Milan, aka Dianka, a dreamy, passive naïf from Slovakia, drifts haplessly from one abusive sugar daddy to the next, whereas MichaÅ¿, a sanguine pleasure-seeker from Poland, quickly masters the selfishness and ruthlessness that allow him to succeed in the wild, capitalist West‿all the while taking advantage of the physical endowment for which he is dubbed “Eleven-Inch.â€? By turns impoverished and flush with their earnings, the two traverse a precarious new world of hustler bars, public toilets, and nights spent sleeping in train stations and parks or in the opulent homes of their wealthy clients. With campy wit and sensuous humor, MichaÅ¿ Witkowski explores in Eleven-Inch the transition from Soviet-style communism to neoliberal capitalism in Europe through the experiences of the most marginalized: destitute queers.Â

Four classical Greek myths retold with unexpected twists by an East German dissident.  Franz Fÿhmann‿s subversive retellings of four Greek legends were first published in East Germany in 1980. In them, Fÿhmann plumbs the ancient tales‿ depths and makes them his own. Attuned to conflict and paradox, he sheds light on the complexities of sex and love, art and beauty, politics and power. In the title story, the love of the goddess Eos for the mortal Tithonos reveals the blessing and curse of transience, while “Hera and Zeusâ€? probes the divine couple‿s tumultuous relationship and its devastating consequences for a world embroiled in war. Fÿhmann‿s unflinching account of Marsyas‿ flaying by Apollo has been widely read as a dissident political statement that has lost none of its incisive force. At times charged with sensuality, and at others honed to a keen analytical edge, Fÿhmann‿s shimmering prose is matched by Sunandini Banerjee‿s exquisite collages.

A brief, evocative memoir from one of India‿s greatest writers. “Like a dazzling feather that has fluttered down from some unknown place. . . . How long will the feather keep its colours, waiting? The ‿feather‿ stands for memories of childhood. Memories don‿t wait.â€?   In Our Sanitikentan, the late Mahasweta Devi, one of India‿s most celebrated writers, vividly narrates her days as a schoolgirl in the 1930s. As the aging author struggles to recapture vignettes of her childhood, these reminiscences bring to the written page not only her individual sensibility but an entire ethos.   Santiniketan is home to the school and university founded by the foremost literary and cultural icon of India, Rabindranath Tagore. In these pages, a forgotten Santiniketan, seen through the innocent eyes of a young girl, comes to life‿the place, its people, flora and fauna, along with its educational environment, culture of free creative expression, vision of harmonious coexistence between natural and human worlds, and the towering presence of Tagore himself. Alongside, we get a glimpse of the private Mahasweta‿her inner life, family and associates, and the early experiences that shaped her personality.   A nostalgic journey to a bygone era, harking back to its simple yet profound values‿so distant today and so urgent yet again‿Our Santiniketan is an invaluable addition to Devi‿s rich oeuvre available in English translation.

Poetically written and originally given as lectures, this is a moving essay collection from Durs Grÿnbein. In his four Lord Weidenfeld Lectures held in Oxford in 2019, German poet Durs Grÿnbein dealt with a topic that has occupied his mind ever since he began to perceive his own position within the past of his nation, his linguistic community, and his family: How is it possible that history can determine the individual poetic imagination and segregate it into private niches? Shouldn‿t poetry look at the world with its own sovereign eyes instead?   In the form of a collage or “photosynthesis,â€? in image and text, Grÿnbein lets the fundamental opposition between poetic license and almost overwhelming bondage to history appear in an exemplary way. From the seeming trifle of a stamp with the portrait of Adolf Hitler, he moves through the phenomenon of the “Fÿhrer‿s streetsâ€? and into the inferno of aerial warfare. In the end, Grÿnbein argues that we are faced with the powerlessness of writing and the realization, valid to this day, that comes from confronting history. As he muses, “There is something beyond literature that questions all writing.â€?

The first anthology of Latin American drama to uniquely focus on the important Argentine dramatist, Santiago Loza. “Nothing to Do with Love:â€? And Other Plays brings together, for the first time in English, several of Argentine playwright Santiago Loza‿s major works, along with visual documentation of the playwright‿s productions and their historical and thematic contexts. For nearly twenty years, Loza has written scripts that document the experiences of marginalized individuals who live outside Buenos Aires or in its overlooked barrios, exploring how rural, working-class, and otherwise marginal individuals inhabit a reality different from many of the urban audiences who flock to the nation‿s theater. Loza focuses his dramaturgy on individuals who lead lives as seamstresses, orphans, ranch hands, or disaffected adults talking about their problems without any expectation of resolution. His plays provide a sense of the richness of Argentina‿s contemporary theater by giving voice to individuals whose lives are complicated by the economic fallout caused by Argentina‿s adoption of neoliberal policies and the economic crash of 2001, as well as by the nation‿s rapidly changing viewpoints on race, gender identity, and sexuality.   The first anthology of Latin American drama to uniquely focus on the important Argentine dramatist, Santiago Loza, this book will draw attention anew to the contemporary theaters of Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

An enchanting novel of magical realism from a new voice, Kenyan author Wanjiku Wa Ngugi.

German author Friedrich Ani combines deep sorrow, human darkness, and breath-taking tension in his latest crime novel. Happiness is extinguished completely one cold November night when eleven-year-old Lennard Grabbe fails to return home. Thirty-four days later, he is found to have been murdered, and former inspector Jakob Franck, the protagonist of Friedrich Ani‿s previous novel The Nameless Day, is entrusted with delivering the most horrible news any parent could ever dream of, setting off a chain reaction of grief among family and friends.   As the special task force is unable to make any progress in the case and the family is unable to deal with the loss, Franck‿driven by the need to bring them clarity but also by the painful memories of all the unsolved murder cases from when he was still on active duty‿buries himself in witness statements and reports up to the point of exhaustion. He spends hours at the crime scene and employs his special technique of “thought sensitivity,â€? an abstract, intuitive process that may very well lead him to the “fossilâ€?‿that crucial piece of information he needs to solve the case.   Once again, Ani combines deep sorrow, human darkness, and breath-taking tension in a novel whose melancholy can hardly be surpassed.

One of few books translated into English from Sesotho, In My Heart introduces a long-neglected voice to global readership. Elsewhere Texts, edited by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and Hosam Aboul-Ela, presents radical new engagements with non-European literary cultures. This volume, the latest in this ambitious series, is a brilliant collection of essays originally written in Sesotho by Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng. Often confined to the role of “native informantsâ€? in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, writers working in African languages laid the foundation for the politics and poetics of decolonization and are legendary among their own communities of readers, though their work remains little known elsewhere. In My Heart belongs to this tradition of colonial renegades. Writing in the 1950s during the cataclysmic events of apartheid that were transforming life in South Africa, Mofokeng offers a series of meditations that provide his readers with a Sesotho worldview outside the categories authorized by colonial knowledge. In My Heart, expertly translated by Nhlanhla Maake, introduces a significant African thinker‿s influential work to a global readership.

An experimental novel that explores the complexity of Palestinian identity through extended metaphor and dark humor. On a plastic chair in a parking lot in Ramallah sits a young man writing a novel, reflecting on his life: working in a dance club on the Israeli side of the border, scratching his father‿s amputated leg, dreaming nightly of a haunting scorpion, witnessing the powerful aura of his mountain-lodging aunt. His work in progress is a meditation on absence, loss, and emptiness. He poses deep questions: What does it mean to exist? How can you confirm the existence of a place, a person, a limb? How do we engage with what is no longer there? Absurd at times, raw at others, The Dance of the Deep-Blue Scorpion explores Palestinian identity through Akram Musallam‿s extended metaphors in the hope of transcending the loss of territory and erasure of history.

Two plays about the legal battle to decriminalize homosexuality in India. On September 6, 2018, a decades-long battle to decriminalize queer intimacy in India came to an end. The Supreme Court of India ruled that Section 377, the colonial anti-sodomy law, violated the country's constitution. "LGBT persons," the Court said, "deserve to live a life unshackled from the shadow of being 'unapprehended felons.'" But how definitive was this end? How far does the law's shadow fall? How clear is the line between the past and the future? What does it mean to live with full sexual citizenship? In Love and Reparation, Danish Sheikh navigates these questions with a deft interweaving of the legal, the personal, and the poetic. The two plays in this volume leap across court transcripts, affidavits (real and imagined), archival research, and personal memoir. Through his re-staging, Sheikh crafts a genre-bending exploration of a litigation battle, and a celebration of defiant love that burns bright in the shadow of the law.

An engrossing novel about love and grief that introduces an important francophone author to English-speaking readers. Rome, 2014, late summer. While he is reading on his sun-drenched terrace, Giangiacomo‿s heart stops. A quick, painless death‿something he had always hoped for, his daughter, Elvira, remembers. A few days later, Elvira comes across an unfinished manuscript in her father‿s flat. In it, she discovers a love story between Giangiacomo‿Gigi, to his loved ones‿and a Belgian journalist, Clara, which had been going on for over four years. Gigi‿s manuscript tells of how their “mature love,â€? an expression that became code between Gigi and Clara, blossomed unexpectedly and of the happiness of their meetings, the abandon of their bodies, their laughter, the films they watched and rewatched together. As she struggles to cope with the loss of Gigi, Clara writes her own version of their story. Her “journal of absenceâ€? is first addressed to Gigi, then, gradually, to Elvira. She confides in the young woman on the threshold of adult life, with discretion and tenderness, describing the fullness of the hidden love she shared with her father.

Introducing a refreshing young French voice to English readers, this slim novel is both a riveting love story and an examination of humanity‿s assault on the natural world. After a seven-day journey on the South Atlantic Ocean aboard a lobster boat servicing Cape Town, Ida arrives on the island of Tristan. In the little island community, a village nestled on the slopes of a volcano whose only limits are the immense sky and the ocean, her bearings are gradually shifted as time slowly begins to expand.   When a cargo ship runs aground near a neighboring island, spilling massive amounts of oil, there is suddenly frantic activity in the town. Ida eagerly joins a team of three men who go to the small island to rescue oil-drenched penguins. One night, one of the men walks her back to the cabin where she is staying. They experience a night of love that continues to grow on the secluded island. For two weeks away from the world‿the sea is rough, no boat can come to pick them up‿the dance of their bodies and their all-consuming love is their only horizon.   Following the rhythm of the ocean and the untamed wind, Clarence Boulay brilliantly gives flesh to a dizzying sensation of sensual abandonment. Tristan raises emotional sails and upends all certainty.

An experimental novel that pushes the constraints of language to bear witness to the history of both Germany and the individual.

The first comprehensive volume in English from one of Hungary's most popular twentieth-century writers.

A collection of essays on renowned French writers, including Sarraute, Renard, and Gide. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   In this collection of brief, insightful essays, we find ourselves face to face with Sartre the literary critic, as he carefully examines the works of renowned French writers such as François Mauriac, Nathalie Sarraute, Jean Giraudoux, and Jules Renard. Most moving is an essay on André Gide, written right after his death, in which Sartre writes, “We thought him scared and embalmed; he dies and we discover how alive he was.â€? Â

A collection of pieces on politically engaged fiction of Sartre‿s day, including works by André Gorz and Paul Nizan. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.  Political Fictions includes Sartre‿s long foreword to André Gorz‿s The Traitor, which has often been called the most intimate and profound book to emerge from the existentialist movement. Sartre also presents a detailed portrait of his friend and fellow writer Paul Nizan (1905‿1940), once a committed communist, who died fighting the Nazis at the Battle of Dunkirk. Also featured here is Sartre‿s famous foreword to Nizan‿s novel The Conspiracy, which made the novel famous on its republication in the 1960s, when it was adopted as an iconic text during the events of May ‿68. Â

A trio of short pieces on two cities of eternal magic, Venice and Rome. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   “Venice speaks to us; this false witness‿s voice, shrill at times, whispering at others, broken by silences, is its voice.â€? In these three moving short pieces, we discover Sartre as a master stylist, lyrically describing his time in two bewitching eternal cities‿Venice and Rome. “Antiquity,â€? Sartre writes, “is alive in Rome, with a hate-filled, magical life.â€? Â

A hopeful, music-infused poetry collection from Congolese poet Alain Mabanckou.

In an unnamed African nation, the people are subject to a state of perpetual warfare and an Orwellian abuse of language that strips away meaning and renders life senseless. And in a bare room lit only by moonlight, a young man hides, waiting for the mysterious crocodile-men to come and help him escape from the violent tyranny of the state.

In a world full of devils, the giant ape Kong defends what he loves the most. But who and what is this undomesticated animal? Might it reside within us? As we tread confidently, is this where the earth opens up beneath us?   In Kong‿s Finest Hour, Alexander Kluge explores anew the accessible spaces where Kong dwells within us and in our million-year-old past. The more than two hundred stories contained in this volume form a chronicle of connections that together survey these spaces using diverse perspectives. These include stories about the folds of Kong‿s nose, the voice of the author‿s mother, the poet Heinrich von Kleist and Jack the Ripper, the indestructability of the political, and the supercontinent Pangaea that once unified the earth. Dissolving theory into storytelling has been Kluge‿s lifelong pursuit, and this magnificent collection tells stories of people as well of things.   First in a series of Kluge‿s Chronicles forthcoming from Seagull Books, Kong‿s Finest Hour will delight those familiar with his writing as well as introduce readers to the brilliance of one of Germany‿s greatest living writers. Â