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Struggling with grief and financial hardships after the death of her beloved husband, widow Nora struggles to support her four children and clings to secrecy in the intrusive community of her childhood before finding her voice. By the award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills...
A New York Times Notable Book, Critic’s Top Pick, and Top Ten Book of Historical Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek From one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War that is “a feat of literary sorcery in its own right” (Oprah Daily). The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young...
Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family, and reveals the intense connection between grandmother, mother and daughter. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen – have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen’s adored brother Declan is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen and come to terms with one another. 'It is in his emotional choreography that Tóibín shows himself to be an exceptional writer' – Sunday Telegraph
A provocative imagining of the later years of the mother of Jesus finds her living a solitary existence in Ephesus years after her son's crucifixion and struggling with guilt, anger, and feelings that her son is not the son of God and that His sacrifice was not for a worthy cause.
Colm Tóibín’s “lovely, understated” novel that “proceeds with stately grace” (The Washington Post Book World) about an uncompromising judge whose principles, when brought home to his own family, are tragic. Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships—with his father, his first “girl,” his wife, and the children who barely know him—and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power, “seductive and absorbing” (USA Today).
The streets of Buenos Aires are empty at night, and people notice nothing because they have trained themselves not to see. This is Argentina in the time of the generals. Richard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his homosexuality from her and from the world. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take chances, both sexual and professional. But in the aftermath of the Falklands War, new freedoms seem possible, and the arrival of two American diplomats offer him hope and the prospect of making his fortune. As his country slowly makes its peace with the outside world, Richard tentatively begins a love affair—but the Faustian bargain he has made with experience gradually darkens. The Story of the Night is a powerful and moving mix of politics, passion, and intrigue that confirms Tóibín as one of the finest writers of his generation.
A highly acclaimed novel from the author of Brooklyn and an “immensely gifted and accomplished writer” (The Washington Post), about an Irishwoman who creates a new life in post-war Spain. In 1950, Katherine Proctor leaves Ireland for Barcelona, determined to escape her family and become a painter. There she meets Miguel, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and begins to build a life with him. But Katherine cannot escape her past, as Michael Graves, a fellow Irish émigré in Spain, forces her to reexamine all her relationships: to her lover, her art, and the homeland she only thought she knew. The South is a novel of classic themes—of art and exile, and of the seemingly irreconcilable yearnings for love and freedom—to which Colm Tóibín brings a new, passionate sensitivity.
The bestselling and award-winning author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín, returns with a stunning collection of stories—“a book that’s both a perfect introduction to Tóibín and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure” (The Seattle Times). Critics praised Brooklyn as a “beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s.” In The Empty Family, Tóibín has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters—people linked by love, loneliness, desire—“the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart” ( The Observer, UK). In the breathtaking long story “The Street,” Tóibín imagines a relationship between Pakistani work...
THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard her muffled screams.' On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife see...