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The Illuminations
How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it? Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne's secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.
The Missing
One of the most original, moving and beautifully written non-fiction works of recent years, The Missing marked the acclaimed debut of one of Britain's most astute and important writers.In a brilliant merging of reportage, social history and memoir, Andrew O'Hagan clears a devastating path from the bygone Glasgow of the 1970s to the grim secrets of Gloucester in the mid 1990s.'A triumph in words.' Independent on Sunday'The Missing, part autobiography, part old-fashioned pavement-pounding, marks the most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time.' Gordon Burn, Independent'A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now.' Will Self, Observer Books of the Year'His vision of modern Britain has the quality of a poetic myth, with himself as Bunyan's questing Christian and the missing as Dantesque souls in limbo.' Blake Morrison, Guardian
Featherhood
In this “vivid…lovely and inviting” (The New York Times) coming-of-age memoir—the “best piece of nature writing since H Is for Hawk” (Neil Gaiman)—a young man saves a baby magpie as his estranged father is dying, only to find that caring for the bird saves him. This is a story of two men who could talk to birds—but were completely incapable of talking to each other. A father who fled from his family in the dead of night, and the jackdaw he raised like a child. A son obsessed with his absence—and the young magpie that fell into his path and refused to fly away. This is a story about the crow family and human family; about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one’s own.
Be Near Me
"The uneasy friendship between an English priest and a pair of teenagers kindles the smoldering hatreds of a working-class Scottish town and forces a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present." From the bookjacket.
Mayflies
An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?
The Atlantic Ocean
Reflections on topics from war and crime to pop culture, in “a stunning collection . . . from the best essayist of his generation” (The New York Times). For more than two decades, Andrew O’Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed, brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his working-class Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing examination of the life of William Styron. O’Hagan’s subjects range from the rise of the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe—in essays that are “stupendously unflinching, bursting with possibility” (Booklist, starred review). “A brilliant essayist, [O’Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Julian Assange
In the midst of allegations about his personal life, and angry denunciations of American politicians after US Embassy Cable releases, Julian Assange began writing the story of his life. This book describes not only the work of WikiLeaks, but the moral and political development of its founder, from his childhood in Australia to the present day.
The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe
Given as a Christmas present to Marilyn Monroe, Maf the dog provides keen insight into the world of the Hollywood starlet during the last two years of her life.
Sea State
‘Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice’ Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2021
Tales from the Colony Room
'Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixty-year history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like ...
