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Whose stories deserve to be told? And whose words should do the telling? In Felix Culpa, Jeremy Gavron conjures up a work of extraordinary literary alchemy: a novel made out of lines taken from a hundred great works of literature. It follows a writer on the trail of a boy recently released from prison, who has been discovered dead in the cold north, frozen and alone. But in searching for the boy’s story, will he lose his own? Magical and moving, Felix Culpa is a living demonstration of how storytelling works, by sound and by rhythm, by elision and by omission, as well as by reference and by allusion. It asks what happens when we lose the narrative of our own life, and fall into someone else’s.
By bringing out the comic and quotidian in 130 years of Jewish history, Gavron paints a fresh portrait of a dissipating identity. He tells the story of the members of one Jewish family, described in the letters, journals and speeches of the people around them.
At number 30 the victim of a savage serial killer is found, and Inspector Abberline wonders whether he'll ever find the murderer they're calling Jack. At number 41 a man tries to hide his family in the shadows of a ruined London; 1500 years later, a gangster plays out the same story. At 246 a mammoth dies, and long afterwards, a giant's thighbone is discovered. Bangladeshis, Jews, Huguenots, brewers, soldiers, farmers and medieval monks - men on the run and families determined to make a new home. Each has come to Brick Lane. Each has left its ghosts.
In 1965, at the age of twenty-nine, the young sociologist Hannah Gavron took her own life. A year later, the book based on the research she carried out for her thesis was published as The Captive Wife. Based on first-hand accounts of the lives of working-class and middle-class women in Kentish Town in London, it was one of the earliest works of British, sociological feminism and has since become a feminist classic. Arguing that motherhood stripped women of independence as it often brought an end to paid work, Gavron explores how their values and aspirations as women came into conflict with the traditional role they had to play as mothers. Written in simple prose and fair-minded in its approach, it became an inspirational book for many mothers, feminists and activists seeking equality for women and remains a vital book today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Ann Oakley.
The classic story of an otter living in the Devonshire countryside which captures the feel of life in the wild as seen through the otter's own eyes.
Twenty-two-year-old Karla is thrilled to be hired as an entertainer on the Sound of Music cruise ship—where the rum punch is 80 percent Kool-Aid, the ice sculp- tures are plastic, and her "fake it till you make it" M.O. seems adventuresome. Karla is less thrilled when her new boyfriend, Jack, suggests that they form a singing duo on land, but by now faking enthusiasm has become a way of life. She and Jack buy backing tracks, crib lyrics from the radio, and embark on a not-as-glamorous-as-it-should-be career performing in the luxury hotel bars of the Middle East and China. But after a thousand and one nights on the road, Karla and Jack find themselves struggling to keep their act—both personal and professional—together. Funny, fast-paced, and incisive, A Thousand and One Nights captures the performances, large and small, we use to make it through life.
Lyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, a place from which `a ship takes fourteen days to reach anywhere that matters'. Born to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors, Lyndall was her secret sharer, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. It was an exciting, precious world, pure and rich in dreams and imagination - untainted by the demands of reality. But a daughter grows up. Despite her own inability to leave home for long, Lyndall's mother believed in migration, a belief that became almost a necessity once the horrors of apartheid gripped their country. Lyndall loves the rocks, the sea, the light of C...
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 GORDON BURN PRIZE It's 1965, and in Primrose Hill, north London, a beautiful young woman has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a suicide note, two small children, and an about-to-be-published manuscript: The Captive Wife. Like Sylvia Plath, who died in eerily similar circumstances two years earlier just two streets away, Hannah Gavron was a writer. But no-one had ever imagined that she might take her own life. Bright, sophisticated, and swept up in the progressive politics of the 1960s, Hannah was a promising academic and the wife of a rising entrepreneur. Surrounded by success, she seemed to live a gilded life. But there was another side to Hannah, as Jer...
A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey. **RADIO 4's BOOK OF THE WEEK FROM 15 March 2021** "A truly remarkable book . . . fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL *WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE JEWISH WINGATE PRIZE* "I've read no memoir that moved me more" MIRANDA SEYMOUR "The writing is always scrupulous . . . [a] compelling memoir" BLAKE MORRISON "Beautifully written and utterly compelling" Sunday Times "An original, probingly thoughtful memoir" EVA HOFFMANN In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her w...
This sweet celebration of the magic and wonder of books will delight readers of all ages through André Letria's whimsical illustrations of a book as a kite, a tent, a ship, and more are paired with José Jorge Letria's thoughtful musings on the joys of reading. In the hands of this internationally acclaimed father-and-son duo, a book becomes a mountaintop with a spectacular vista ("If I were a book, I'd be full of new horizons"), and an endless staircase of imagination ("If I were a book, I would not want to know at the beginning how my story ends"). Seamlessly weaving together art and prose, this petite tribute to a reader's best friend makes a timeless addition to every bookshelf.