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Africa Is Not A Country
A bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story. 'Warm, funny, biting and essential reading.' Adam Rutherford You already know these stereotypes. So often Africa is depicted simplistically as an arid red landscape of famines and safaris, uniquely plagued by poverty and strife. In this funny and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective. He examines each country's colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture. By turns intimate and political, Africa Is Not A Country brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before. 'Hilarious, ferocious, generous and convincing. It made me reconsider almost everything I thought I knew about Africa.' Oliver Bullough 'This book should be on the curriculum.' Nikki May, author of WAHALA
The Black Count
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2013 ‘Completely absorbing’ Amanda Foreman 'Enthralling’ Guardian ‘The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas’s own father, Alex - the son of a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up among slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality. Alex Dumas was the stuff of legend’ Daily Mail So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are there no statues of ‘Monsieur Humanity’ as his troops called him? The Black Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played in Dumas’s downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti to the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto – Reiss, like the novelist before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. ‘Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud’ Independent ‘Brilliant’ Glasgow Herald
The Sunken Road
'Ciarán McMenamin confirms his exceptional talent with this admirably powerful and authentic novel about the First World War and the struggle for Irish independence. Tremendous' William Boyd Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Annie, Francie and Archie were inseparable growing up, but in 1914 the boys are seduced by the drama of the Great War. Before leaving their small Irish village for the trenches, Francie promises his true love Annie that he will bring her little brother home safe. Six years later Francie is on the run, a wanted man in the Irish war of Independence. He needs Annie's help to escape safely across the border, but that means confronting the truth about why Archie never came back.... For readers of Sebastian Faulks, Ian McEwan and Sebastian Barry
Braised Pork
A Chinese woman embarks on a dream-like journey through Beijing, Tibet, and mysterious worlds beyond in this novel of “startlingly original imagination” (Guardian, UK). One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead in their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange watery figure next to the tub. The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments to its hidden bars, as her path crosses some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender who may be able to offer her the kind of love she had long thought impossible. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into her past in search of unspoken secrets. Her journey takes her to the high plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld. An atmospheric evocation of middle-class urban China, An Yu’s Braised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of unseen worlds, and a young woman’s empowering journey of self-discovery.
Revenge
A woman goes into a bakery to buy a strawberry cream tart. The place is immaculate but there is no one serving so she waits. Another customer comes in. The woman tells the new arrival that she is buying her son a treat for his birthday. Every year she buys him his favourite cake; even though he died in an accident when he was six years old. From this beginning Yoko Ogawa weaves a dark and beautiful narrative that pulls together a seemingly disconnected cast of characters. In the tradition of classical Japanese poetic collections, the stories in Revenge are linked through recurring images and motifs, as each story follows on from the one before while simultaneously introducing new characters and themes. Filled with breathtaking images, Ogawa provides us with a slice of life that is resplendent in its chaos, enthralling in its passion and chilling in its cruelty.
Fobbit
At Baghdad's Forward Operating Base Triumph, a combat-avoiding staff sergeant named Chance Gooding spends his time composing press releases that spin grim events into statements more palatable to the public
Diary of a Void
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker · NPR · WBEZ’s Nerdette · The New York Public Library · Literary Hub A New York Times Editors’ Choice “One of the most passionate cases I’ve ever read for female interiority, for women’s creative pulse and rich inner life.” ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker “Always expect the unexpected when you’re not expecting.” ―Sloane Crosley A woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she’s pregnant in this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about the mother of all deceptions, for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata ...
Our Women on the Ground
‘Determination, grit and humour shine through’ Lindsey Hilsum, Observer Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection. A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat – female journalists – are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. Here, nineteen of these women tell us, in their own words, about what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood. With a foreword by CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour. INCLUDING ESSAYS BY: Donna Abu-Nasr, Aida Alami, Hannah Allam, Jane Arraf, Lina Attalah, Nada Bakri, Shamael Elnoor, Zaina Erhaim, Asmaa al-Ghoul, Hind Hassan, Eman Helal, Zeina Karam, Roula Khalaf, Nour Malas, Hwaida Saad, Amira Al-Sharif, Heba Shibani, Lina Sinjab, and Natacha Yazbeck
Highway Blue
“You’ve never read a road trip novel like Ailsa McFarlane’s Highway Blue.”—Entertainment Weekly A hypnotic debut of broken love on the run, from a blazingly original young writer “In front of me the long length of the road wound out, wound out and wound on under hot sky. And I drove . . .” In the lonely town of San Padua, Anne Marie can never get the sound of the ocean out of her head. And it’s here—dog-walking by day, working bars by night—where she tries to forget about her ex-husband, Cal: both their brief marriage and their long estrangement. When Cal shows up on Anne Marie’s doorstep one day, clearly in trouble, she reluctantly agrees to a drink. But later that nig...
Here and Gone
Wrongly arrested after fleeing from her abusive husband, a mother desperately fights corrupt authorities to recover her stolen children; while a man across the country hears the story on the news and identifies links to similar events in his own past.
