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In this wry, candid and sometimes poignant memoir, Peter Owen recalls his lonely Jewish boyhood in Nazi Germany and migration to England where he survived the London Blitz, a teenage dalliance with aspiring actress Fenella Fielding, and working with a motley variety of book publishers. He founded his eponymous publishing firm in 1951, becoming one of the youngest publishers in Britain. A pioneer of books on social themes, gay and lesbian writing and literature in translation, Owen’s authors included ten Nobel laureates and brought Hermann Hesse, Ezra Pound and Anaïs Nin to a wider audience. Enjoying their success, he and his wife Wendy were memorably stylish and eccentric figures at the literary parties of the 1960s and 1970s. Owen describes his often hilarious encounters with many of those he published, including John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Salvador Dalí, his adventures in Japan with Yukio Mishima and Shūsaku Endō, and in Morocco with Tennessee Williams and Paul and Jane Bowles. As one of the last of the great émigré publishers, his death in 2016 aged 89 signalled the end of a literary era.
Matias is fearful of losing his friends over an obsession with his ex-girlfriend Sara. To prove that he has moved on from her, he embarks on an odyssey of dates around the city of Ljubljana. Matias adventures with women are recorded in the chapters that follow, with each chapter devoted to a different woman. The dates and women are wonderfully varied, the interactions perspicuously observed, the preoccupations of the characters drawn from lively and ambitious dialogue will speak directly to Generation Y.
Chronicles the life and times of Tambimuttu (1915-1983). Over a period of forty years, Tambimuttu occupied a unique position in the world of letters. Himself a writer, In 1939 he launched Poetry London, An illustrated journal which was to exert a dec
"Kappa" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1927) is a satirical novella that explores existential themes through the eyes of a mental patient. He recounts his surreal journey to the land of the Kappa, mythical creatures from Japanese folklore. In the Kappa world, social norms are inverted: fetuses decide whether to be born, theft is acceptable, and art exists without regard for public understanding. As the protagonist observes these strange customs, he becomes increasingly disillusioned with human society, drawing parallels between the absurdities of both worlds. The story reflects Akutagawa's struggles with depression and alienation shortly before his suicide, offering a dark critique of societal values and human existence.
A unique hill-walking guide to 20 of Britain's peaks, adding up to the exact height of Everest. Scaling the peaks of Everest, the world's highest mountain, is the ultimate physical and mental challenge that the human race can aspire to. But as it takes years of preparation and a minimum of £25,000 to achieve, it remains out of reach to most of us. This book allows ordinary people to embark on their own personal "Everest" without leaving England's green and pleasant land. Ascending hills of varying sizes whose ascents add up to the same height as Everest--29,016 feet--celebrity vicar and countryman Peter Owen Jones guides the reader on a road trip covering over 20 hill-climbs in different pa...
In this dazzling, often shocking novel, the young anarchist narrator, Terry Blake, sets forth on a journey through the political fringe of society. His thirst for knowledge leads to brutality, sexual excess, and finally, self-destruction. A fast-paced, funny, and ironic story straight from today's headlines.
"In a frozen, apocalyptic landscape, destruction abounds: great walls of ice overrun the world and secretive governments vie for control. Against this surreal, yet eerily familiar broken world, an unnamed narrator embarks on a hallucinatory quest for a strange and elusive "glass-girl" with silver hair. He crosses icy seas and frozen plains, searching ruined towns and ransacked rooms, all to free her from the grips of a tyrant known only as the warden and save her before the ice closes all around. A novel unlike any other, Ice is at once a dystopian adventure shattering the conventions of science fiction, a prescient warning of climate change and totalitarianism, a feminist exploration of vio...
Part of the Peter Owen World Series: BalticsInstitutionalized in an asylum, a woman with a record of hallucinations commits her life story to paper. She records, from the age of six, her earliest memories of a drunken and abusive father, the strange men her mother introduced to repair the family, the imaginary forest to which she would run for safety and, of course, the talking Green Crow who appeared when she most needed her. The Green Crow is a conceited, boisterous creature who follows the novel's nameless protagonist throughout her life, until the day that the crow's presence begins to embarrass her. Confined to a tedious domestic life, she is desperate to hide the crow's very existence. Failing to do so, she winds up in a psychiatric hospital. Can she repress and renounce her acerbic, sharp-beaked daemon - or learn to love herself, bird and all? Translated from the Latvian by Zanete Vevere Pasqualini
A collection of illustrated nonsensical poems from the celebrated author and illustrator of the Gormenghast Trilogy.
With a cover design by Lucienne Day When Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a 'pisseur de copie', that he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.