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Unfolding, turning and spinning, Kapow! is a startling new book told through Thirlwell's uniquely acrobatic voice. Taking place in the thick of the Arab Spring, this timely and incisive tale of revolution offers a clever, funny and bitingly critical cultural commentary. Using a number of spinning digressions, Thirlwell tells the stories of a group of interconnected characters in London and Egypt, each transformed by the idea of revolution.
'In case you had not noticed,' writes Adam Thirlwell in his first novel, Politics, 'in this book I am not interested in anything so small as the history of the USSR. I am not writing anything so limited.' In this epic miniature, therefore, Politics tells the story of three kids in their twenties falling in love with each in London. And, simultaneously, it tells other, smaller stories: of Stalin on the phone, Mao in the bathroom, Osip Mandelstam in another bathroom, Adolf Hitler on all fours, and Milan Kundera in an argument. Politics is not (quite) about politics.
The secret history of novelists is often a history of exile and tourism - a history of language learning. Like the story of Gustave Flaubert and Juliet Herbert, it is a history of loss and mistakes. As Flaubert finished Madame Bovary, Miss Herbert, his niece's governess, translated the novel into English. But this translation has since been lost. Miss Herbert provides a map to the imaginary country shared between writers and readers. For translation, and emigration, is the way into a new history of the novel. We assume that we can read novels in translation. We also assume that style does not translate. But the history of the novel is the history of style. Miss Herbert explores the solutions to this conundrum. This book demonstrates a new way of reading internationally - complete with maps, illustrations, and helpful diagrams. And it includes a slim appendix: 'Mademoiselle O', a story by Vladimir Nabokov, which he worked on in three languages, over thirty years, and whose original French version is now translated into English by Adam Thirlwell. Adam Thirlwell was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013.
'The more I knew of Haffner,' writes Adam Thirlwell in The Escape, 'the more real he became, this was true. And, simultaneously, Haffner disappeared.' In a forgotten spa town snug in the Alps, at the end of the twentieth century, Haffner is seeking a cure, more women, and a villa that belonged to his late wife. But really he is trying to escape: from his family, his lovers, his history, his entire Haffnerian condition. For Haffner is 78. Haffner, in other words, is too old to be grown up.
Like Chinese whispers, the rules of this literary game are simple: the first writer translates an unknown story into English, which a second writer then translates into a different language, and a third translates back into English, and so on, down the line. As the stories are told and retold, out of English and in again, they are transformed, twisted and turned into something new. Featuring an all-star international line-up of writers from Zadie Smith to Alejandro Zambra, via Jeffrey Eugenides, Laurent Binet, Javier Maras, David Mitchell, Colm Tibn, Etgar Keret and Sheila Heti, this collection is pure literary entertainment. Playful, provocative and wilfully inventive, Multiples asks fascinating questions about the relationship between a translation and a version, about the art of storytelling, and about the way that our individual linguistic choices reflect our shared cultural prejudices. Here, we see not so much what is lost in translation, but what is found.
Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola and starring Kirsten Dunst, this is the story of the five Lisbon sisters – beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the entire neighbourhood.
An ingenious international literary relay race in which stories pass from hand to hand, from language to language, changing all the while, with surprising, thought-provoking, and frequently funny results.
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The Book of Other People is just that: a book of other people. Open its covers and you’ll make a whole host of new acquaintances. Nick Hornby and Posy Simmonds present the ever-diverging writing life of Jamie Johnson; Hari Kunzru twitches open his net curtains to reveal the irrepressible Magda Mandela (at 4:30a.m., in her lime-green thong); Jonathan Safran Foer's Grandmother offers cookies to sweeten the tale of her heart scan; and Dave Eggers, George Saunders, David Mitchell, Colm Tóibín, A.M. Homes, Chris Ware and many more each have someone to introduce to you, too. With an introduction by Zadie Smith and brand-new stories from over twenty of the best writers of their generation from both sides of the Atlantic, The Book of Other People is as dazzling and inventive as its authors, and as vivid and wide-ranging as its characters.
William and Terry chanced upon monogamy before it became the symbol of a world ruled by illness and denial. The author--an acclaimed voice in the gay community--offers a brilliant, hilarious, and touching novel about love and desire in the plague years.