Opowiada historię dramatycznych zmagań głównego bohatera z gruźlicą, która była "pamiątką" po obozie koncentracyjnym. Grzesiuk, mimo trudnego położenia, nie poddaje się, stara się sobie radzić, zachowuje poczucie humoru. To historia opowiedziana w iście Grzesiukowym stylu – prawdziwym, czasem brutalnym, ale lekkim i dość nonszalanckim, jak przystało na wychowanka przedwojennego Czerniakowa.

"Wikipedia"

Las voces silenciadas. Xinran Xue era presentadora de un influyente programa radiofónico chino cuando en 1989 recibió una carta angustiosa: una niña había sido secuestrada y forzada a casarse con un anciano que desde entonces la mantenía encadenada. Los hierros estaban lacerándole la cintura y se temía por su vida. Xinran obtuvo la liberación de la víctima, pero se percató de que un silencio histórico imperaba sobre la situación de las mujeres en su nación. Decidió difundir las historias de oyentes que cada noche llamaban a su programa. Esta iniciativa inédita tuvo por respuesta miles de cartas con increíbles relatos personales y convirtió a Xinran en una celebridad. Entre los numerosos testimonios que escuchó y dio a conocer, seleccionó quince para que integraran este libro. Nacer mujer en China es un relato colectivo revelador acerca de los deseos, los sufrimientos y los sueños de muchas mujeres que hasta ahora no habían encontrado expresión pública.

Wilbur, gerade mal 1,50 Meter groß, ist wirklich kein Glückskind: Seine irische Mutter stirbt bei der Geburt, sein schwedischer Vater macht sich aus dem Staub, und sein erstes Zuhause ist der Brutkasten. Erst als seine Großeltern ihn nach Irland holen, erfährt er, was Heimat ist. Doch das Glück währt nicht lang: Sein bester Freund kommt in die Erziehungsanstalt, und seine Großmutter Orla stirbt bei einem Unfall. Auch wenn er gern so stark wäre wie Bruce Willis: Er ist und bleibt ein Verlierer. Erst die charmante Aimee bringt ihm etwas anderes bei: Wilbur muss endlich lernen, zu leben — ob er will oder nicht. Rolf Lappert hat einen großen Roman über das Erwachsenwerden eines kleinen, an der Welt verzweifelnden Jungen geschrieben, der durch seine bezwingende Komik mitreißt.

Pierre Antón deja el colegio el día que descubre que la vida no tiene sentido. Se sube a un ciruelo y declama a gritos las razones por las que nada importa en la vida. Tanto desmoraliza a sus compañeros que deciden apilar objetos esenciales para ellos con el fin de demostrarle que hay cosas que dan sentido a quiénes somos. En su búsqueda arriesgarán parte de sí mismos y descubrirán que sólo al perder algo se aprecia su valor. Pero entonces puede ser demasiado tarde.

Nada es una novela escrita por Carmen Laforet en 1944, que ganó el Premio Nadal ese mismo año. Luego, en 1948 obtuvo el Premio Fastenrath de la Real Academia Española. Llamó la atención no solamente por la juventud de la escritora, que por aquel entonces tenía 23 años, sino también porque mostraba la sociedad de aquella época. Hay quien dice que la novela es autobiográfica. Aunque la novela contiene elementos biográficos, la autora misma escribe en su introducción al cuento dentro de la compilación llamada Novelas (Primera edición 1957 Barcelona, Editorial Planeta) lo siguiente: `No es, como ninguna de mis novelas, autobiográfica, aunque el relato de una chica estudiante, como yo fui en Barcelona, e incluso la circunstancia de haberla colocado viviendo en una calle de esta ciudad donde yo misma he vivido, haya planteado esta cuestión más de una vez`.

La protagonista de la novela es una joven, llamada Andrea, que llega a la ciudad de Barcelona en los años de la posguerra para estudiar y empezar una nueva vida. Llega con muchas ilusiones a casa de su abuela, de donde sólo tiene recuerdos de su infancia. Sin embargo al llegar allí -donde aparte de la abuela viven la criada, tía Angustias, su tío Román, su tío Juan y la mujer de este último- estos sueños se ven rotos. En esta casa padecen hambre, hay suciedad, violencia y odio. Andrea, que vive oprimida por su tía Angustias, siente que su vida va a cambiar a partir de que Angustias se marcha, pero las cosas no acaban de ir como a ella le gustaría. Sin embargo en la universidad conoce a Ena, una chica de la que se hará íntima amiga y desempeñará un papel importante en su vida, y junto con la que aprenderá lo que la vida y el mundo exterior pueden ofrecer.

La novela llega a crear una atmósfera tan asfixiante que consigue traspasar el papel y llegar al lector. Cuando ante toda esa miseria en una casa oscura, cerrada, sucia, maloliente y un ambiente opresivo, en esa especie de microcosmos, a alguno de los personajes le pregunta qué le pasa, qué piensa, qué siente, éste responde `Nada`.

Carmen Laforet se adelanta a su tiempo con una prosa intimista y fotográfica, en la que se describe perfectamente la Barcelona de la época.

In this collection of sixteen stories and three sketches, translated by Rakhshanda Jalil, Manto brazenly celebrates the warts of a seemingly decent society as well as its dark underbelly — tired and overworked prostitutes in 'The Candle's Tears' or 'Loser all the Way'; ruthless as also humane pimps in 'The Hundred Candle Watt Bulb' and 'Sahay'; the utter helplessness of men in the face of a sexual encounter in 'Naked Voices' and 'Coward'; and the madness perpetrated by the Partition as witnessed in 'By God!' and 'Yazid'. In one of the three sketches, which form part of this collection, the author brilliantly reveals himself to the world in a schizophrenic piece titled 'Saadat Hasan' calling 'Manto the writer' a liar, a thief and a failure! And in another titled 'In a Letter to Uncle Sam', Manto superbly couches his anti-imperialistic views in an innocent letter from a poor nephew to a capitalist and prosperous uncle in America.

Christopher, the only bookseller in the small farm town of Low Ferry, lives an uneventful life -- until one day he encounters a shy newcomer named Lucas, and accidentally sells him the wrong book. What follows is a journey for both men, in vastly different ways, set against the strange, ritualistic, magic backdrop of a midwestern winter. A tale about the masks people wear and a meditation on the power of magic, Nameless revels in the simple pleasure of storytelling.

Professor Murray Watson is rather a sad sack. His family, his career, his affair…not even drinking offers much joy. All his energies are now focused on his research into Archie Lunan, a minor poet who drowned 30 years ago off a remote stretch of Scottish coast. By redeeming Lunan's reputation, Watson hopes to redeem his own. But the more he learns about Lunan's sordid life, the more unlikely redemption appears.

Manuela Gretkowska, Namiętnik, 2005:Tom pięciu opowiadań Manueli Gretkowskiej mówi o potrzebie miłości-we wszystkich jej odmianach, obrazach, wcieleniach. Znajdziemy tu m.in. Sandrę K.-historię anorektyczki, ofiary kultu ciała, infantylnej czytelniczki pism kobiecych. Życie dwudziestoczteroletniej kobiety zatrudnionej w agencji reklamowej wypełnia praca, seks i nieustanna troska o swój wygląd. Zaskakującą historią życia Meksykanina jest Latin Lover. Po ślubie z cyniczną Szwedką bohater przenosi się do Europy, ale wkrótce okazuje się niepotrzebny. W akcie zemsty zostaje utrzymankiem bogatych koleżanek żony, jednak potem wraca do Meksyku. Namiętnik, mocny erotyczny tekst, którego narratorką jest kobieta, przynosi piękny opis aktu seksualnego. W ostatnich opowiadaniach Gretkowskiej eseistyczny temperament autorki ustępuje miejsca żywiołowi opowieści.

Amazon.co.uk Review

"Namma" meaning bride is the first-hand account of Kate Karko, a designer from London and her husband Tsedup, a Tibetan nomad. The couple met, fell in love and married in India where Kate was travelling and Tsedup was living in exile. After an absence of nine years, four of which were spent in London waiting for the right documents to come through, Tsedup was finally able to return to his family on the roof of the world.

With very limited grasp of the Amdo dialect, Kate throws herself into life with her new family. She keeps an open mind to all new experiences and approaches her time with the nomads with enduring positivity-not many erstwhile city dwellers would have been able to cope with the complete lack of personal space and the constant smell of burning yak dung. Kate's position within the family group gave her remarkable access to nomadic life in the 21st century and full-colour photographs help bring her descriptions of her numerous in-laws to life. The reader is left with the impression of a beautiful country and a proud people whose cultural heritage is under threat of extinction. Indeed, the reality of nomadic life does not quite match up with Kate's early romantic imaginings:

The nomads were a tough and diligent people but now the men had been rendered impotent. Because of the fences there was no reason to herd the animals and it was more difficult for bandits to attack an enclosed encampment. Their role in the family had been all but erased. The new laws had tragically accomplished their goal of nomad domestication.

Given the author's emotional involvement with the family and the many difficulties she must have encountered during her six-month stay with the Amdo tribe, her pervasive objectivity is something of a disappointment. The reader learns very little, for example, about the real impact of her stay on her relationship with her husband or of the more day-to-day frustrations. Despite such minor flaws, Namma remains an absorbing insight into a deeply spiritual yet fun-loving people, written by a woman whose son has become a bridge between two worlds. -Simon Priestly -This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Geographical Magazine

'Fascinating read… a glimmering insight into the nomadic lifestyle inherent to the country'

A Carl Streator, periodista de mediana edad, le han encargado que escriba una serie de artículos sobre la muerte súbita infantil, un tema que le resulta familiar pues él mismo perdió a su hijo en circunstancias extrañas. En el transcurso de la investigación descubre que en todas las casas donde ha muerto un bebé (o un niño, o un adulto) hay un ejemplar del mismo libro: una antología de poemas africanos que contiene una nana letal. Esta canción mata a aquel que la escucha; de hecho, su poder es tal que ni siquiera es necesario recitarla, con tan solo memorizarla y odiar a alguien intensamente, cae fulminado. Helen Hoover Boyle, agente inmobiliaria especializada en vender casas encantadas, también tenía un hijo que murió en circunstancias similares al de Streator. El periodista y la agente inmobiliaria emprenderán, acompañados por la secretaria de Helen, Mona, aficionada al esoterismo, y el novio de esta, Oyster, un ecologista ultrarradical, un viaje por carretera con el fin de destruir todos los ejemplares del libro y encontrar el grimorio original del que procede el hechizo. Con Nana damos la bienvenida a una nueva familia nuclear, un grupo disfuncional hasta extremos arrebantes. Y a una hilarante alegoría sobre la información y el poder.

The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing.

In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin — an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College — decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.

With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history.

At once epic and intimate, Nanjing Requiem is historical fiction at its most resonant.

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.

Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.

Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

"Native Believer stands as an important contribution to American literary culture: a book quite unlike any I've read in recent memory, which uses its characters to explore questions vital to our continuing national discourse around Islam."

— New York Times Book Review , Editors' Choice

"M.'s life spins out of control after his boss discovers a Qur'an in M.'s house during a party, in this wickedly funny Philadelphia picaresque about a secular Muslim's identity crisis in a country waging a never-ending war on terror."

— O, the Oprah Magazine

"[A] poignant and profoundly funny first novel….Eteraz combines masterful storytelling with intelligent commentary to create a nuanced work of social and political art."

— Booklist

"Eteraz's narrative is witty and unpredictable…and the darkly comic ending is pleasingly macabre. As for M., in this identity-obsessed dandy, Eteraz has created a perfect protagonist for the times. A provocative and very funny exploration of Muslim identity in America today."

— Kirkus Reviews

"In bitingly funny prose, first novelist Eteraz sums up the pain and contradictions of an American not wanting to be categorized; the ending is a bang-up surprise."

— Library Journal

"Who wants to be Muslim in post-9/11 America? Many of the characters in Ali Eteraz‘s new novel Native Believer have no choice in the matter; they deal in a variety of ways with issues of belonging and identity in a society bent on categorizing, stereotyping, and targeting Muslims."

— KPFA Pacifica

"Ali Eteraz’s fiction has encompassed everything from the surreal and fantastical to the urgently political. Native Believer, his debut novel, explores questions of nationality, religion, and the fears and paranoia in American society circa right now.

— Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Included in John Madera's list of Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 at Big Other

"Ali Eteraz has written a hurricane of a novel. It blows open the secrets and longings of Muslim immigration to the West, sweeping us up in the drama of identity in ways newly raw. This is no poised and prettified tale; buckle in for a uproariously messy and revealing ride."

— Lorraine Adams, author of The Room and the Chair

"Merciless, intellectually lacerating, and brutally funny, Native Believer is not merely a Gonzo panorama of Muslim America-it's one of the most incisive novels I've ever read on America itself. Eteraz paints our empire with the same erotic longing and black, depraved wit that Nabokov used sixty years ago in Lolita. But whereas Nabokov's work was set in the heyday of America's cheerful upswing, Eteraz sets the country in the new, fractious world order. Here, sex, money, and violence all stake their claims on treacherously shifting identities-and neither love nor god is an escape."

— Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood

Ali Eteraz's much-anticipated debut novel is the story of M., a supportive husband, adventureless dandy, lapsed believer, and second-generation immigrant who wants nothing more than to host parties and bring children into the world as full-fledged Americans. As M.'s life gradually fragments around him-a wife with a chronic illness; a best friend stricken with grief; a boss jeopardizing a respectable career-M. spins out into the pulsating underbelly of Philadelphia, where he encounters others grappling with fallout from the War on Terror. Among the pornographers and converts to Islam, punks and wrestlers, M. confronts his existential degradation and the life of a second-class citizen.

Darkly comic, provocative, and insightful, Native Believer is a startling vision of the contemporary American experience and the human capacity to shape identity and belonging at all costs.

Красота смерти…

Эстетика мрачного и изысканного стиля «Natura Morta» эпохи позднего маньеризма, перенесенная в наши дни…

Элегантная, изысканная, блистательно-циничная проза, концептуальная в самом высоком смысле слова.

Гибель ребенка…

Гибель Помпеи…

Заупокойные службы…

Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake, and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly.

In a precise writing style that is both subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. Natural Histories is the winner of the 3rd Ribera del Duero International Award for Short Narratives, an important Spanish literature prize.

It’s the summer of 1999 when the two children of wealthy video game executive Jose Francisco Vivar, Alicia and Bruno, go missing in the beach town of Matanza. Long after their disappearance, the people of Matanza and the adjacent towns of Navidad consistently report sightings of Bruno — on the beach, in bars, gambling — while reports on Alicia, however, are next to none. And every story and clue keeps circling back to a man named Boris Real. .

At least that’s how the story — or one of many stories, rather — goes. All of them are told by a journalist narrator, who recounts the mysterious case of the Vivar family from an underground laboratory where he and six other “subjects” have taken up a novel-game, writing and exchanging chapters over email, all while waiting for the fear-inducing drug hadón to take its effect, and their uncertain fates.

A literary descendent of Roberto Bolaño and Andrés Neuman, Carlos Labbé’s Navidad and Matanza is a work of metafiction that not only challenges our perceptions of facts and observations, and of identity and reality, but also of basic human trust.

“Carlos Labbé’s [Navidad & Matanza] begins to fuck with your head from its very first word — moving through journalese, financial reporting, whodunit, Joseph Conrad, Raymond Chandler, Nabokov to David Lynch.”—Toby Litt

An acclaimed, award-winning comic novel about truth, lies and storytelling, with an unforgettably unreliable narrator, translated from its innovative Swiss vernacular back into the Glaswegian that was its original inspiration.

Known only as ‘the goalie’, the novel’s narrator is always taking the blame. He’s just been released from jail, having kept schtum during a drugs bust at his local pub. The goalie is a sucker for a good story, he lives and breathes them, is forever telling stories to himself and anyone who’ll listen.

He returns to his hometown broke, falling in love with Regi, a barmaid. On a trip together to Spain, to hook up with his shady mates, Regi realises that this obsession with storytelling has its downsides, the goalie all too ready to believe the yarns his so-called friends spin.

Naw Much of a Talker is a charming, hilarious tour through the goalie’s anecdotes. Storytelling is his way of avoiding problems and conflict, his crowning achievement and tragic flaw. Regi concludes that it isn’t a woman the goalie needs, but an audience.

Inspired by a six month residency in Glasgow, Pedro Lenz harnesses his considerable powers as a performer and oral storyteller in this powerful and unforgettable celebration of the rhythms and musicality of the spoken word.

An exquisite debut novel that brilliantly captures the lives and romances of young expatriates in newly democratic Prague.

It’s October 1990. Jacob Putnam is young and full of ideas. He’s arrived a year too late to witness Czechoslovakia’s revolution, but he still hopes to find its spirit, somehow. He discovers a country at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, and a picturesque city overflowing with a vibrant, searching sense of possibility. As the men and women Jacob meets begin to fall in love with one another, no one turns out to be quite the same as the idea Jacob has of them — including Jacob himself.

Necessary Errors is the long-awaited first novel from literary critic and journalist Caleb Crain. Shimmering and expansive, Crain’s prose richly captures the turbulent feelings and discoveries of youth as it stretches toward adulthood — the chance encounters that grow into lasting, unforgettable experiences and the surprises of our first ventures into a foreign world — and the treasure of living in Prague during an era of historic change.

A propulsive, “chilling” (Lee Child) novel exploring the dangerous fault lines of female friendships, Necessary People deftly plumbs the limits of ambition, loyalty, and love.

One of them has it all. One of them wants it all. But they can’t both win.

Stella and Violet are best friends, and from the moment they met in college, they knew their roles. Beautiful, privileged, and reckless Stella lives in the spotlight. Hardworking, laser-focused Violet stays behind the scenes, always ready to clean up the mess that Stella inevitably leaves in her wake.

After graduation, Violet moves to New York and lands a job in cable news, where she works her way up from intern to assistant to producer, and to a life where she’s finally free from Stella’s shadow. In this fast-paced world, Violet thrives, and her ambitions grow—but everything is jeopardized when Stella, envious of Violet’s new life, uses her connections, beauty, and charisma to get hired at the same network. Stella soon moves in front of the camera, becoming the public face of the stories that Violet has worked tirelessly to produce—and taking all the credit. Stella might be the one with the rich family and the right friends, but Violet isn’t giving up so easily. As she and Stella strive for success, each reveals just how far she’ll go to get what she wants—even if it means destroying the other person along the way.