Sjoberg spent seven years on a tiny Swedish island collecting hoverflies, and then wrote this very remarkable book about nature, place, culture and 'what life has to offer'. By looking at something very small, Sjoberg has managed to see something very big indeed.
"The Fly Trap remains close to my heart. The minute observations from nature reveal sudden insights into one's life. Sometimes I almost think that Sjoberg wrote it for me." - Tomas Transtromer (Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature)
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. How appropriate - he's a fictional detective! (he featured in Galbraith/Rowling's very enjoyable The Cuckoo's Calling).
"Darkly gruesome!" - Lucy
Watch the trailer (not for lip-readers).
The third part of Knausgaard's astoundingly compelling struggle to burst the novel form by over-packing it with detail. His omnivorous "autobiography" began with A Death in the Family, and treats the meaningful and the meaningless with equal penetration, placing it somewhere between Proust and reality television. The six-volume 'My Struggle' will be regarded as one of the crucial works of our time.
"Even when I was bored I was interested." - James Wood
Between 175,000 and 265,000 New Zealand children live in poverty, depending on the measure used. These disturbing figures are widely discussed, yet often poorly understood. If New Zealand does not have ‘third world poverty’, what are these children actually experiencing? This book addresses what is unfortunately the most urgent problem facing New Zealand.
In the teeming, disordered, and sexually charged square half-mile centred on London's Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the eighteenth century. It was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'.
"Irresistible - fizzing with life." - Philip Pullman, Observer
A dark and very funny account, set in Pinto's native Mumbai, of a man's search for the truth behind his parents' lives.
"Profoundly moving. I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this." - Amitav Ghosh
"A beautiful book." - Salman Rushdie
"This is a rare, brilliant book." - Kiran Desai
Three generations of a radical New York family are revealed in this dazzling novel, based on the author's own family.
"Brilliant" - Guardian
The tattoos of scientists and others illustrate Zimmer's short essays on their subjects. Fascinating browsing.
So much begins on the Nile: all religion, all life, all stories, the script we write in, the language we speak, the gods, the legends and the names of stars. The river that flows through a quarter of Africa also flows through history.
"If you have read Twigger before, you will know to expect divergence, wit, a weakness with the esoteric, and an ability to make even the most obscure details seem relevant. All of which is perfectly suited to this subject and makes for an entertaining and absorbing read." - Guardian
A young woman boards a train in Moscow and finds herself sharing a carriage with foul-mouthed ex-soldier. As they travel across the winter vastness of Russia a kind of grudging companionship grows between them.
"Both atmospheric and beautiful, an elegy to the Soviet Union and its people, the land where 'unhappiness is perceived as happiness’.” - Helsingborgs Dagblad
Winner of the 2011 Finlandia Prize.
"Brimmingly insightful, fresh, enlightening and accessible. A gripping read from beginning to end." - Sunday Times
"So detailed and engaging is his methodology that any consumer of books, plays, TV or films will find the experience enhanced; and scriptwriters themselves will find useful guidance - because when you know the why, the how is natural." - Independent on Sunday
"There's nothing like a dental chair to remind a man that he's alone in the world, subject to pain, blood, decay, and a slow attenuation back down to the elements."
A humdrum dentist in a humdrum world collides with existential behemoths and becomes enmeshed in pseudobiblical esoterica! Funny (both haha and peculiar).
Grzelewski takes you to extraordinary, unknown, overlooked and inaccessible places, and introduces you to a diverse range of people, some forgotten, some 'elite', some 'ordinary'. From the author of the deservedly popular Trout Diaries and Trout Bohemia.
From the first pinprick raids of the eighth century to the great armies that left their Scandinavian homelands to conquer larger parts of France, Britain and Ireland. The epic voyages that took them across the Atlantic to the icy fjords of Greenland and to North America over four centuries before Columbus, and east to the great rivers of Russia and the riches of the Byzantine empire. And a bit of time at home, too.
A psychologically astute coming of age story of a teenage girl trying to find herself, and a taboo love affair and its inescapable consequences, for fans of Emma Donoghue and Lionel Shriver.
"In a world where most of us roll over when confronted by the power of authority, the antihero figure of the outlaw biker stands beyond the crowd, a beacon of social freedom."
One of Lebanon's leading writers recreates a village forever transformed by the massacre of one community by another, and its impact on a mother and her long-estranged son.
"January 22nd - Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold - which he has hitherto ignored - is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat."
A sharply observed comic novel, as funny and fresh today as when it was first written. Widely regarded as one of the funniest English authors and an heir to Jane Austen, E.M. Delafield was born in Sussex in 1890.
The Nuremberg Trials and Israeli statehood, Casablanca and Duke Ellington, smallpox and skyscrapers, FDR and Le Corbusier, zoot suits and Christian Dior, as seen by the columnists of The New Yorker.
An essential introduction to Chomsky's political theory.
"Tim Parks has written a book about Italian railways that is engrossing, entertaining, and wonderfully revealing about the country and its people. It makes perfect armchair travelling - a delight from beginning to end" - David Lodge
Wreck This Journal Everywhere will have you travelling the city streets and country byways, filling the pages with man-made and natural objects, recording what you see, drawing, doodling - and destroying pages as you go! Perfect for sliding in your pocket or stuffing in your bag - the ideal creative companion!
Dozens of new activities, and favourites from the very popular Wreck This Journal.
Selected stories from the last fifteen years, from the 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"Munro is still one of our most fearless explorers of the human being, as she descends, time and again, headlamp on full beam, pickaxe and butter-knife at the ready." - The Times
A stunningly illustrated edition of Gaiman's tale of family, the otherworld and a search for hidden treasure.
One in ten Russian men spend time in jail. This book, by the oligarch who fell foul of the politicos, is an indictment of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality.
The autobiography of the winner of the 100th Tour de France.
"Much more than a thriller. Slaughter's unforgettable female characters, and stunning evocation of time and place, make Cop Town one of the most powerful and moving reads of recent memory. A masterpiece." - Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help.
Ignorance and fear have caused 'normal' human society to turn against the Next, and the authorities, afraid of anything or anyone not deemed 'normal', order that all Next children be imprisoned.
#3 of 'The Long Earth' series.
Told through the eyes of a killer, The Murder of Harriet Krohn poses the question: how far would you go to turn your life around, and could you live with yourself afterwards? Inspector Konrad Sejer has never lost a case yet!
In 1963, twenty-five-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, who would become America's bestselling 'gonzo journalist', completed a year-long journey across South America, filing a series of dispatches for a now-defunct paper called the National Observer. With the gritty humour and keen political observations for which he later became known, correspondent Thompson reflected on topics that continue to make headlines today: the rise of leftist populism, struggles over resource extraction, the marginalization of indigenous peoples. Brian Kevin follows his skid-marks.
Dostoyevsky's profound tale of a shy clerk whose life is progressively usurped by a more confident and aggressive version of himself has now been made into a film. Read the book first!
Brilliant German physicist Klaus Fuchs worked on the Manhattan Project and developed many of the significant calculations that led to the creation of nuclear weaponry. He was also a spy. Thanks to him, the Russians were at work on their own bomb, and the nuclear arms race was born.
After a stranger and his daughter move to a remote Scottish Island, the locals start to disappear...
"Dreamlike, delicate and compelling." - The Big Issue
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