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'A blistering story' STYLIST | 'A distinctive voice' OBSERVER | 'A skilful, absorbing novel that is so much about seeing and being seen' SPECTATOR Searingly incisive, darkly funny and achingly poignant, Wet Paint is a novel about attempting to navigate the world as a twenty-something woman, exploring the highs and lows of friendship, love and loss. Since the death of her best friend Grace, twenty-six-year-old Eve has learned to keep everything and everyone at arm's length. Safe in her detachment, she scrapes along waiting tables and cleaning her shared flat in exchange for cheap rent, finding solace in her small routines. But when a chance encounter at work brings her past thundering into he...
Colours of Art takes the reader on a journey through history via 80 carefully curated artworks and their palettes. For these pieces, colour is not only a tool (like a paintbrush or a canvas) but the fundamental secret to their success. Colour allows artists to express their individuality, evoke certain moods and portray positive or negative subliminal messages. And throughout history the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But as something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant colour palettes can be, and how much they can tell us. When Vermeer painted The Milkmaid, the amount of ultramarine he could ...
Look At This If You Love Great Art is a must read for anyone with a passion for exceptional art. Featuring 100 of the best artworks ever produced, inside is a collection of insightful summaries on just what it is that makes each one so vital. Art writer Chloë Ashby talks you through the pieces that resonate with her, revealing the fascinating stories behind them and offering her considered take on why each work should be regarded as a pinnacle of artistic endeavour. With entries curated to offer a unique juxtaposition of styles, mediums and schools of art, expect a contemporary take on classic artworks, where titans of art history cross paths with under-appreciated examples from outside the traditional canon, and where rebellious visionaries blaze trails that still influence today’s cutting-edge artists. Covering all the most important genres of art –Abstraction, Pop Art, Surrealism, Renaissance art, Impressionism and more – this engaging summary only deals with artworks that really matter and the reasons why you have to see them.
A “gripping, inspiring, and politically revolutionary” novel about loneliness, inadequacy, and connection, set against the backdrop of the Norwegian postal service—for fans of Nicole Krauss and Sheila Heti (Vanity Fair). From the prize-winning Norwegian author of Will and Testament, longlisted for the National Book Award. Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she’s not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognize the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she’s ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months. This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written in Vigdis Hjorth’s trademark spare, rhythmic and cutting style.
A genre-warping, time-travelling horror novel-slash-feminist manifesto for fans of Clarice Lispector and Jeanette Winterson. Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her work, things start stirring themselves up. In a corner of Oslo a coven of witches begin cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a death metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. And awful things happen in aspic. Jenny Hval's latest novel is a radical fusion of queer feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, writing and art. "Strange and lyrical. Hval’s writing is surreal and rich with the grotesque banalities of human existence." —Publishers Weekly "The themes of alienation, queerness, and the unsettling nature of desire align Hval with modern mainstays like Chris Kraus, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Maggie Nelson." —Pitchfork
From flash fiction to mini-novelette, Fairlight presents twenty-four of its best short stories from some of the world's most talented new and emerging English language writers. Chosen from work sent to Fairlight over several years by writers around the globe, this anthology celebrates the art of the short story form: a vehicle with the power to delight, entertain or instantly transport the reader to another state, another world, another emotion. Twenty-four stories by twenty-four writers, including various award-winning short story authors, and Women's Prize-longlisted author Sophie van Llewyn.
'A very funny and brilliant book. Feigel does a thorough and virtuosic job of describing the dilemmas of contemporary middle-class women' Rachel Cusk The five of them - Stella, Priss, Kay, Helena and Polly - met at university, their lives full of lazy afternoons and late nights. Friendship seemed simple and there was such pleasure in the endless talk and in just living alongside each other. Now the women are turning forty and they're finding that a shared past can sometimes be a burden. They're all struggling to navigate the ways in which their lives have differed from the plans they made themselves and the hopes they had for each other. In the past, solidarity came easily, but now they compare lovers, husbands, jobs, children and sofas, asking how the choices they've made or failed to make hold up. As marriages end and secrets emerge, they wonder whether these people, the ones who know so much about them, are really the ones they can confide in.
THE WORD-OF-MOUTH PHENOMENON THAT EVERYONE HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT: 'Intelligent, moving and darkly comic . . . taking us deftly from serious explorations of trauma to riotously funny scenes of modern life' The Sunday Times 'Haunting and hilarious' Daily Mail 'A brilliant debut' Cariad Lloyd 'Full of heart, wit and feeling' Caroline O'Donoghue 'I loved it!' Lauren Bravo 'Heartfelt, sharp-but-tender' Erin Kelly 'I couldn't stop reading' Angela Scanlon 'A glorious new talent has arrived' Emma Gannon 'Raw and utterly brilliant' Otegha Uwagba 'Absorbing and clever . . . I fell in love with Mathilda' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'Will be read for years by any and all young women looking for a friend' Scarle...
'As cryptic and compelling as a fever dream... Bae Suah is one of the most unique and adroit literary voices working today' Sharlene Teo Finishing her last shift at Seoul's only audio theatre for the blind, Kim Ayami heads into the night with her former boss, searching for a missing friend. The following day, she looks after a visiting poet, a man who is not as he seems. Unfolding over a night and a day in the sweltering summer heat, their world's order gives way to chaos, the edges of reality start to fray, and the past intrudes on the present in increasingly disorientating ways. Untold Night and Day is a hallucinatory feat of storytelling from one of the most radical voices in contemporary Korean literature. 'Highly original... Once I finished it, much of it slipped into my subconscious' Daily Telegraph
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2020* *ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020* 'One of the best debut novels I have ever read. Shockingly good ... A classic.' Max Porter 'Haunting . . . reminded me a lot of Iain Banks. It's incredible that it's a debut.' Douglas Stuart The sensational Dutch bestseller: 'Exceptional' ( Financial Times) ' Exhilarating' ( Independent) ' Luminous' ( Observer) 'Beautifully wild' ( Guardian) I asked God if he please couldn't take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit. 'Amen.' Ten-year-old Jas has a unique way of experiencing her universe: the feeling of udder ointment on her skin as protection against harsh winters; the texture of green warts, like ...