You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A small, furious masterpiece of dominance and submission, longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize
'I felt the powerful strength of my family overrunning me like a heavy rush of water' For André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of 'the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table and our family'. He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father who preaches from the head of the table as if it is a pulpit, and loathes himself, as he starts to harbour shameful feelings for his sister Ana. Lyrical and sensual, told with biblical intensity, this classic Brazilian coming-of-age novel follows André's psychological and sexual awakening, as he must choose between body and soul, duty and freedom.
A small, furious masterpiece of dominance and submission, longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize A pair of lovers—a young female journalist and an older man who owns an isolated farm in Brazil—spend the night together. The next day they proceed to destroy each other. Amid vitriolic insults and scorching cruelty, their sexual adventure turns into a savage power game between two warring egos. This intense, erotic masterpiece—written by one of Brazil’s most highly regarded modernists—explores alienation, arrogance, machismo meltdown, the desire to dominate, and the wish to be dominated.
From the debris of her troubled early life, Lidia Yuknavitch weaves an astonishing tale of survival. It is a life that navigates, and transcends, abuse, addiction, self-destruction and the crushing loss of a stillborn child. A kind of memoir that is also a paean to the pursuit of beauty, self-expression, desire – for men and women – and the exhilaration of swimming, The Chronology of Water lays a life bare.
The End centers on five friends in Rio de Janeiro who, nearing the end of their lives, are left with memories—of parties, marriages, divorces, fixations, inhibitions, bad decisions—and the physical indignities of aging. Alvaro lives alone and spends his time going from doctor to doctor and bemoaning the evils of his ex-wife. Silvio is a junkie who can’t give up the excesses of sex and drugs even in his old age. Ribeiro is an athletic beach bum enjoying a prolonged sex life thanks to Viagra. Neto is the square member of the group, a faithful husband until his last days. And Ciro is the Don Juan envied by all—but the first to die, struck down by cancer. For all of them, successful careers, personal revelations, and Zen serenity are out of the question, blocked by a seemingly insurmountable wall of frustrations. Orbiting around them are a priest questioning his vocation and a cast of complicated women, neglected and embattled by these self-involved men. Edgy and wise, this tragicomic debut delves into taboo subjects—death, infidelity, impotence, the difficulties of marriage—with unsentimental honesty, and brings Rio and these characters to life in full color.
An NYRB Classics Original Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious. Italo Calvino has written that no other writer “better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Jorge Luis Borges flatly declared, “Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature.” Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s most individual and finest.
A searingly funny and passionate fictional monologue of woman who refuses to accept the constraints of life in 1950s Brazil.
International Bestseller Shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and Schlegel-Tieck Prize What makes us who we are? Arno Geiger's father was never an easy man to know and when he developed Alzheimer's, Arno realised he was not going to ask for help. "As my father can no longer cross the bridge into my world, I have to go over to his." So Arno sets out on a journey to get to know him at last. Born in 1926 in the Austrian Alps, into a farming family who had an orchard, kept three cows, and made schnapps in the cellar, his father was conscripted into World War II as a "schoolboy soldier" - an experience he rarely spoke about, though it marked him. Striking up a new friendship, Arno walks with him in the village and the landscape they both grew up in and listens to his words, which are often full of unexpected poetry. Through his intelligent, moving and often funny account, we begin to see that whatever happens in old age, a human being retains their past and their character. Translated into nearly 30 languages, The Old King in His Exile will offer solace and insight to anyone coping with a loved one's aging.
What does it take to survive? This is the question posed by the extraordinary Finnish novella that has taken the Nordic literary scene by storm. 1867: a year of devastating famine in Finland. Marja, a farmer's wife from the north, sets off on foot through the snow with her two young children. Their goal: St Petersburg, where people say there is bread. Others are also heading south, just as desperate to survive. Ruuni, a boy she meets, seems trustworthy. But can anyone really help? Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'Like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, this apocalyptic story deals with the human will to survive. And let me be honest: There will come a point in this book where you can take n...
“A brilliant debut novel” about a young Bosnian War refugee who finds the secret to survival in language and stories (Los Angeles Times). For Aleksandar Krsmanović, Grandpa Slavko’s stories endow life in Višegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. But then soldiers invade Višegrad—a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides—and it’s no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister. Alive with the magic of childhood, the surreality of war and exile, and the power of language, every page of this glittering novel thrums with the joy of storytelling. “Wildly inventive.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Poignant and hauntingly beautiful.” —The Village Voice “A funny, heartbreaking, beautifully written novel.” —The Seattle Times