Free-wheeling, self-mythologizing, exquisitely written: an astounding rebel classic of French literature of the 1960s. Based on the author's own experiences, this is the story of a young Algerian woman who breaks her ankle escaping from jail and is picked up by a passing motorcyclist.
"Albertine Sarrazin was my guide. I truly wonder if I would have become as I am without her." - Patti Smith (who has carried a copy of this book with her for forty years).
An intense psychological thriller about family and love, tyranny and freedom; the long-lost final novel (withdrawn on the eve of publication in 1971) by the acclaimed author of The Watch Tower (1966).
"Harrower can pierce your heart." - Washington Post
"Utterly hypnotic." - Eimear McBride, Irish Times
A full reproduction of an 18th century merchant's sample book, providing a fascinating record of the eighteenth-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices. Stunning (and interesting!).
Two groups, almost a hundred years apart, find themselves on the same desolate Antarctic island.
"Nothing short of stunning: an adventure story, a psychological investigation of physical and mental breakdown, and a remarkable account of weather and endeavour. Hunt's measured restraint, her dry humour and idiosyncratic eye have created something very powerful and unusual indeed." - Guardian
An accessible and thought-provoking book exploring the ways in which contemporary artists are confronting nature, the environment, climate change and ecology. Very well presented, too.
The Chernobyl disaster is only one of the ways in which humans, individually and collectively, bring about their own demise in this novel set in Russia in 1986.
"Powerful and moving." - John Burnside, Guardian
"Daring, ambitious, epic, moving." - Colm Toibin
"With its unsettlingly arbitrary developments, inconsistencies and uncertainties, its ambivalences of clutching and relinquishment, this book resembles ‘real life’ more than most fiction. Coetzee is a writer of great weight and precision, and here he continues to push at the edges of his territory." - Thomas
Now in paperback.
"A destination and a song, a shadow and a single word with two chambers."
A major new collection from this fine poet, her first since her laureate collection Mirabile Dictu (2009).
This wide-ranging and controversial book delivers unexpected answers when asking hard questions about invasive species and the reasons for their intrusive success.
Taking the pulse through the backbone of seven decades of history.
"Maconie succeeds in being at once elegant and approachable, definitive but also self-deprecating." - Guardian
"A fine writer: sharp, funny, tender and thoughtful." - Spectator
"Blends lyricism with wisdom, humour with admonition, nay-saying with affirmation, making a marvellous statement of what it is to be both an animal and a human in the strange, terrifying and exquisite world into which we find ourselves thrown." - John Banville, Guardian
"Interesting, original and memorable. A beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind." - Philip Hensher, Spectator
Delightful. A re-issue of a gem from 1942.
Hugo-Bader hitch-hiked the entire 2025km length of the Road of Bones (so called because the bones of thousands of gulag prisoners who died building it lie just beneath its surface). He has brought back some fascinating stories from the bottom drawer of Soviet history, as well as of the otherworldliness of the taiga.
"A fascinating composite impression of one of the wildest bits of one of the world’s weirdest countries." -Telegraph
This challenging book reasserts biology as a contender with environment for the explanation of aberrant behaviour, with implications for the treatment of criminals and the understanding of mind and motivation.
"An enchanting and enlightening account of the most scientifically significant islands in the world." - Tim Birkhead, author of Bird Sense.
The author of You Are Not a Gadget imagines an alternative future where the benefits of information and endeavour are invested in those who have created them, rather than appropriated by the faceless corporates concealed behind social media.
"Daringly original, sharp, accessible. Terrifically exciting." - The New York Times
Lively, outspoken and provocative: the inimitable Mary Beard breathes life into the distant past and makes it (appropriately) much larger than life.
"Written with Beard's customary intellectual assurance and wit, these essays make the archaic seem accessible and relevant." - Guardian
The Moth is a forum for live storytelling, without notes, renowned for the wide range of human experience it showcases ("New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket”, according to The Wall Street Journal). Here, fifty outstanding stories, from the hilarious to the poignant, have been collected with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.
"Passionate, brilliant and quietly addictive." - Guardian
Doniger's scholarly efforts to recover multifaceted, heterodox and Tantric forms of Hinduism from beneath the dominant Vedanta led to an outcry from conservatives and Penguin's withdrawal and destruction of this book earlier this year.
"A tribute to Hinduism's complexity." - Guardian
"A earthy, revelatory and brilliant book." - William Dalrymple
An acute assessment of the strengths, weaknesses and potentials of post-Independence India.
"Magnificent. A major work by two of the world's most perceptive and intelligent India-watchers." - William Dalrymple
The attendees of a meditation retreat at the site of a concentration camp attempt to deal with suffering, conflict and longing on a personal and metaphysical level.
From the double National Book Award winner, who has participated in Zen retreats at Auschwitz.
A widower discovers his wife's correspondence with her lover and sets out to gain her posthumous devotion.
"A deft and original portrayal of grief, longing and forgiveness." - Gideon Haigh
Winner of The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award 2014.
"A brave, profound meditation on identity, trauma, loss and courage… reminds us that there are two sides to every war and that history never ceases to be written." - Judges' report.
"A grounded, character-driven thriller and a sci-fi tour-de-force, as breathtakingly visionary as it is poignantly human. The best kind of speculative fiction, the story takes its wildest leaps only to cut more closely to the quick of the world we live in every day." - Max Borenstein
Set against the 1978 Bastion Point occupation, this novel for younger readers has a ten-year-old Pakeha boy enlisting the help of Tane, god of the forest.
A novel about the peculiar people who write and read an international newspaper based in Rome.
"The novel is alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching. It is so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off. I still haven’t answered that question." - The New York Times
"Electrifying. Clever, funny and very entertaining." - The New York Times "Tremendous, big, clever. This novel has much to say about what it means to live, love and lose in the twenty-first century." - Guardian
Dark, compelling alt-history set in the period following Churchill's overthrow and peace with Hitler.
"If le Carre scares you, try Jo Walton." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Jesse is an eleven-year-old boy tackling many problems in life, but some things are too big for a boy to solve. A funny story about the small gestures that help to make the world a better place.
Scientists have taken test tube embryos and given them life. These beings - the Vitros - have knowledge and abilities most humans can only dream of. But they also have one enormous flaw..
What lies between Hello Kitty and the tsunami? Translations of some of the most interesting writers in Japanese today, alongside works in English.
Are the arts able to solve intractable social problems?
Adam Phillips, Zadie Smith, Rachel Cusk, photographs of Francesca Woodman, &c, &c.
Join the author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland on a wide-eyed tumble into the world of numbers.
"Immediate, relevant and fun." - Independent
Exposes the secret side of the American War on Terror, fought on undeclared battlefields by units that do not officially exist.
Captures the joys and sorrows of adolescence and the maddening claustrophobia of a small Irish village. Has been compared with The Catcher in the Rye and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2013.
"A gritty, modern Romeo and Juliet told by a compelling and original voice ." - Independent
"Astonishing. Inventive. Playful. Unique. A novel to savour." - Colum McCann
