Wu Cheng’en’s 16th-century novel Journey to the West is widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written. Here, in Julia Lovell’s witty and charismatic translation, we meet one of its heroes: Sun Wukong, or Monkey King, whose powers include shape-shifting, immortality and being incredibly rude. Though he rises to a position of power in the heavenly bureaucracy, Monkey King’s arrogant exploits attract the attention of the Buddha – with very unfortunate consequences.
On a military base in 1930s Georgia, Private Ellgee Williams catches sight of his captain’s wife in the nude and becomes obsessed with her. But Captain Penderton – unhappily married to the unfaithful Leonora – in turn erotically fixates on Williams. Spare, muscular and sensual, with the dramatic vision of a Greek myth, Carson McCullers’ novella is a timeless work about the alienation of forbidden desire.
The whole town got involved with the hunger-artist; from day to day of his starving, people’s participation grew; everyone wanted to see the hunger-artist at least once a day; on the later days there were season-ticket holders who sat for days on end in front of his little cage
Reading these stories by the master of the absurd is like entering a dreamworld in which nothing, and yet somehow everything, makes sense.
Why should I bother to invent things? My life has been far more exciting and wonderful than any fairy-tale’
In the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by irritatingly polite relatives and hopeless sycophants, Lady L. is celebrating her eightieth birthday. But as the guests disperse, she feels the undeniable pull of a mysterious pavilion in the lush grounds, and the terrible secret she buried there many years ago . . .
‘I walked in a daze of illusions toward my future.’
Deeply felt and told with an intrepid spirit, Tales from the Heart are the intimate, formative stories from the childhood of the legendary Caribbean writer, Maryse Condé.
These affecting vignettes follow Condé’s early encounters with love, grief, friendship, as she navigates the pernicious legacy of slavery and colonialism in her home of Guadeloupe and as a student in Paris.
It is 1837 and a brilliant German artist sets out to cross the mountains between Chile and Argentina. Perhaps nobody before him has been able to paint the sights that unfold: vast chasms, surreal plants and animals… But then something goes appallingly wrong.
This is one of Aira’s great works, filled with his baffling ability to veer between grandeur and absurdity. Each page fails to provide clues as to what lies in wait for the reader on the next.
Arrested in Cologne for remarking that the Fuhrer looked sweaty, nineteen-year-old Sanna has fled to Frankfurt. But her troubles are far from over. Her best friend Gerti has fallen for a Jewish boy, her brother writes books that have been blacklisted, and her own aunt could turn her in to the authorities at any moment. Darkly humorous and utterly heart rending, this gripping novel vividly captures the terror and hysteria of pre-war Nazi Germany.
In October Nights, Gerard de Nerval takes us on a gentle meander through nighttime Paris – a dreamlike journey towards getting lost. Also included in this volume is Sylvie, his haunting novella of love and memory, the ‘masterpiece’ that inspired Proust to write In Search of Lost Time. Together, these works by the French poet, visionary and pioneering modernist are a testament to the power of jewelled thinking, and an inspiration for flaneurs and romantics everywhere.
Ancient Assyria, 9th century BC. An orphan is raised on the outskirts of a brutal empire. Heir to a tragic prophecy, Semiramis dreams of wielding power and escaping her destiny.
Far away, a reluctant prince walks the corridors of his gilded palace in a city built by the gods. Ninus would rather spend his days in books and poetry than conquering the world of men. But when he meets Onnes, a broken, beautiful warrior, something awakens in them both.
That is until Semiramis arrives. A savage love soon erupts between them all. And before long, all three will be forced to learn the lesson of the gods - in Babylonia, you must bend the world to your will. What doesn't bend, you break.
A definitive annotated edition of one of the greatest of Terry Pratchett’s multi-million-bestselling Discworld novels
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is in hot pursuit of a serial killer. The trouble is, a well-timed lightning strike has thrown both policeman and pursued into the city’s past. Now Vimes must relive the history that made him: a cruel regime, a bloody revolution, a corrupt police force, and, most unnerving of all, a keen young recruit named Sam Vimes… Night Watch, which draws on inspirations as far ranging as Victor Hugo and M*A*S*H, is a keen satire about the true nature of political power, and the sacrifices made in the name of the greater good; but also a profoundly empathetic novel about community, connection and the tenacity of the human spirit.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are among the most successful and influential fantasy titles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This edition of Night Watch – written at the height of Pratchett’s imaginative powers – includes a new foreword by Rob Wilkins and an introduction and annotations by Dr David Lloyd and Dr Darryl Jones, contextualising the novel and Pratchett’s far-reaching legacy for new readers and current fans alike.
When Gill Swanley decides to take up gardening to fight the menopause she never expected it to become quite such a threatening hobby...
Joining the Bromley chapter of The Golden Trowel Gardening Society, Gill finds a group run by self-proclaimed horticultural guru Mike ‘Potato’ Berisford and top of the agenda is how the club can snatch the National Gardening Club of the Year Award.
But when a dead body turns up in the greenhouse, and a brick flies through the window telling them to take themselves out of the running, the group have to turn their attention to the sinister goings on.
Is is their arch-rivals Croydon? Or is someone someone else is targeting their rag tag group?
The body was cold as ice; the heart had long ceased to beat: yet there were no other signs of death.'
The phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore are in this book driven back into the world of the living. Mysterious brides melt into mist, paintings come alive, and man-eating goblins barter for redemption. Traditional Japanese folktales and legends, infused with memories of Lafcadio Hearn’s own haunted childhood, are here masterfully retold.
Marian Forrester enchants everyone around her: her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; the small town of Sweet Water; and Niel Herbert, her unwavering confidant. Yet, her irresistible charm and dazzling wit conceal a dangerous vulnerability – and her greatest secret. A significant inspiration for The Great Gatsby, this exquisite novella is a poignant elegy for a bygone era, fading into history.
'I decided that my trip had evidently been in vain, since nothing of interest could possibly occur on this visit. I was mistaken.'
Condemned to sleeplessness by the chatter permeating his guesthouse room, a forlorn traveller turns his ear to the riotous tale spun by the garrulous, meddlesome, inane and utterly unprincipled Márya Martýnovna next door. Her exuberant deformations of morality and language scandalized Tsarist society, and she remains one of Russian literature’s most uproarious anti-heroes.
Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest authors of his generation. In these two short stories – ‘The Broken Nest’ and ‘Dead or Alive’ – he is at his devastating best, charting the slow, then fast, implosion of two perfect Bengali households. No-one understands each other; everything is misconstrued; all is lost.
I went down, I climbed back up into the light of the jaguar sun – into the sea of the green sap of the leaves. The world spun, I plunged down, my throat cut by the knife of the king-priest … The solar energy coursed along dense networks of blood and chlorophyll; I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibres that absorb the sun
Best known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time for armed robbery. Selected here are some of his best stories – from a satirical tale about a student bet that purportedly disproves the existence of racism in Los Angeles to a chilling drama in which a snake invades a family home.
Following the death of his sister, middle-aged Dr Graesler leaves his winter home in Lanzarote for a health resort in Germany, where he practised medicine for many years. There he meets the Schleheim family, and is particularly drawn to their daughter Sabine. But a simple, stilted courtship soon unravels a web of hushed-up suicide and illicit sexual liaisons. Arthur Schnitzler’s tumultuous psychodrama remains as startling now as it did on first publication.
Best known for his existentialist novel The Outsider, set in French-occupied Algeria, Albert Camus was profoundly influenced by the landscapes, towns and traditions of his youth. Selected here are some of his finest personal essays about Algeria and its environs, including the luminous ‘Nuptials at Tipasa’, one of his earliest works where he developed the themes that would inform his later philosophy: to thrive now, without hope for paradise, as mortal life alone can be worthwhile.
‘I’m not the sort of husband you dream of when you’re walking alone along the avenue in the evening, am I? And it would be a disaster, wouldn’t it?’
How does love die? This question lies at the heart of Tolstoy’s desperately sad novella. It tells the story of seventeen-year-old Masha who, despite their differences, falls passionately in love with an older man, and marries him. Soon, however, the gap between them becomes unbridgeable.
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