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Showing 1 - 20 of 36 items
By Charles Margerison. 2011
Most people enjoy reading in some form or other, be it newspapers or a heavy novel. This unique short story…
collection from The Amazing People Club explores the lives and achievements of some of the world's most influential writers, including Charles Dickens. Find out why he wrote his books and what inspired the characters which would become famous. Get a unique insight into the amazing life of William Shakespeare and his relationship with Anne Hathaway, his dreams of becoming a playwright in London, and how he worked to produce great plays like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. His story contrasts wonderfully with Mark Twain's, who has been deemed the 'father of american literature'. Get to know Twain as he travelled through the USA, from tiny towns in Missouri to the streets of New York. Each story comes to life through BioViews®. These are short biographical narratives, similar to interviews. They provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world.By Michel Tremblay, Sheila Fischman. 1994
In Birth of a Bookworm, Michel Tremblay takes the reader on a tour of the books that have had a…
formative influence on the birth and early development of his creative imagination; the physical and emotional world of his childhood is celebrated as the fertile ground on which his new, vivid way of seeing and imagining is built.By Gregor Von Rezzori, H. F. Broch De Rothermann. 1989
Gregor von Rezzori was born in Czernowitz, a onetime provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was later to be…
absorbed successively into Romania, the USSR, and the Ukraine--a town that was everywhere and nowhere, with a population of astonishing diversity. Growing up after World War I and the collapse of the empire, Rezzori lived in a twilit world suspended between the formalities of the old nineteenth-century order which had shaped his aristocratic parents and the innovations, uncertainties, and raw terror of the new century. The haunted atmosphere of this dying world is beautifully rendered in the pages of The Snows of Yesteryear.The book is a series of portraits--amused, fond, sometimes appalling--of Rezzori's family: his hysterical and histrionic mother, disappointed by marriage, destructively obsessed with her children's health and breeding; his father, a flinty reactionary, whose only real love was hunting; his haughty older sister, fated to die before thirty; his earthy nursemaid, who introduced Rezzori to the power of storytelling and the inevitability of death; and a beloved governess, Bunchy. Telling their stories, Rezzori tells his own, holding his early life to the light like a crystal until it shines for us with a prismatic brilliance.By James Womack, Sergio Del Molino. 2013
Winner of the Premio Ojo Crítico and Premio Tigre Juan, The Violet Hour is the celebration of a life cut…
short. A deeply moving memoir that shows us the inner life of a man confronted with his own limitations.Children who lose their parents are orphans, and those who have to close their spouse's dead eyes are widows and widowers. But we, the parents who sign the documents authorizing our children's funerals, we have no name, no civil status. We remain parents forever.Sergio del Molino is a Spanish writer and journalist who lives in Zaragoza. He has worked for almost ten years as a reporter in the Heraldo de Aragón, where he writes a Sunday column.By Robert Barr, Douglas Lochhead, Louise K. Mackendrick. 1973
Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was…
educated in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States and England. However, since most of his serious novels are either set in Canada or have some Canadian connection, Barr deserves attention. The Measure of the Rule, originally published in 1907, is the nearest he came to writing an autobiographical novel. It concerns the Toronto Normal School and the experiences there in the 1870s of a young man who undoubtedly is Barr himself. In this novel, Barr is exorcising unhappy memories and is ironic, even bitter, about the school's quality of education, the rigid discipline observed by its staff and their indifference to their students, and the sexual segregation practiced. A number of men under whom Barr actually studied are vividly caricatured. As a realistic study of Ontario's only central teacher-training institution in the late nineteenth century, The Measure of the Rule will appeal both to those interested in Canadian fiction of that period and to those more concerned with the evolution of the system of education established by Egerton Ryerson. Also included with this reprint of the novel is an essay originally published in 1899 and entitled 'Literature in Canada.' In this essay, Barr elaborated upon his opinions of the school system and its quality of education.By George Bowering. 2015
George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far…
from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 - poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is "Driving to Kelowna" from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering's trilogy of historical novels. "Desert Elm" takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.By Renee Rodin. 2010
Composed of autobiographical stories that sketch the resonant heights and depths of a memoir, Subject to Change is a series…
of portraits along the road of a life well-lived. These stories are articulate, intelligent, passionate records of how encounters with others have changed and shaped the humanity, character and community - the "subject" - of the writer.By James Womack, Sergio Molino. 2013
Winner of the Premio Ojo Crítico and Premio Tigre Juan, The Violet Hour is the celebration of a life cut…
short. A deeply moving memoir that shows us the inner life of a man confronted with his own limitations.Children who lose their parents are orphans, and those who have to close their spouse's dead eyes are widows and widowers. But we, the parents who sign the documents authorizing our children's funerals, we have no name, no civil status. We remain parents forever.Sergio del Molino is a Spanish writer and journalist who lives in Zaragoza. He has worked for almost ten years as a reporter in the Heraldo de Aragón, where he writes a Sunday column.By Natalia Ginzburg, Cynthia Zarin. 2019
A sophisticated new package for Natalia Ginzburg's classic fiction This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from…
1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the Allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief.The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers-and perhaps the father of one of her children-is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise.What was once rooted, local, and specific has become general and common, a matter of strangers and of pointless arrivals and departures. And at the edge of the novel are people no longer able to form any sustained or sustaining relationships. Here, once again, Ginzburg pulls us through a thrilling and true exploration of the disintegration of family in modern society. She handles a host of characters with a deft touch and her typical impressionist hand, and offers a story full of humanity, passion, and keen perception.By Pat Conroy. 1972
The bestselling Pat Conroy memoir--now available as an ebookThe moving story of a young teacher's experience on an island forgotten…
by the worldThough the children of Yamacraw Island live less than two miles from the coast of South Carolina, they can't name the president or the ocean that surrounds them. Many can't sign their names. Most can't read or write--they're unable to reach their potential to grow and learn because they have been failed by their school district and handicapped by their poverty and isolation. But with the arrival of an eager young teacher, their prospects begin to brighten.Based on Pat Conroy's experiences teaching elementary school for a year on South Carolina's Daufuskie Island, The Water Is Wide is a revealing portrait of the inequalities of the American education system and a powerful story of the group of children that changed one man's life forever.By Enrique Serna. 2019
«No pedía mucho, carajo, sólo que lo dejaran prostituirse a su modo.» A mediados del siglo XX, Carlos Denegri era…
el líder de opinión más influyente de México. Reportero estrella del diario Excélsior, tenía una red de contactos internacionales envidiada por todos los periodistas. Mimado por el poder, como columnista político sobresalió por su falta de escrúpulos, al grado de que Julio Scherer lo llamó "el mejor y el más vil de los reporteros". Industrializó el "chayote" cuando esa palabra todavía no se usaba en la jerga política. En su Fichero Político, donde fungía como vocero extraoficial de la Presidencia y cobraba todas las menciones, podía difamar a cualquiera con impunidad absoluta. Según Carlos Monsiváis, un coscorrón en esa columna representaba "una temporada en el infierno" para cualquier aspirante a un cargo público. Aunque ganaba millones por publicar alabanzas, se hizo más rico aúnpor medio de la extorsión, callándose lo que sabía de sus poderosos clientes. La personalidad pública de Carlos Denegri es indisociable de las atroces vejaciones misóginas que cometió en su vida privada. Era tan prepotente y déspota en el trato con las mujeres como en el periodismo, de modo que su patología fue a la vez íntima y social. Radiografía del machismo a la mexicana y epitafio de la dictadura perfecta, esta novela es un estudio de carácter incisivo y mordaz, sustentado en un arduo trabajo de investigación, que por momentos linda con la farsa trágica. Enrique Serna vuelve a una de sus vetas narrativas predilectas, la reconstrucción del pasado, para entregarnos un fresco histórico apasionante. La crítica ha dicho: «El arte de Serna consiste en una serie de procedimientos encaminados a hacernos más persuasiva la ilusión realista -esa que sólo puede darse en la mejor literatura-, a comunicar al lector la sensación de estar directamente enfrentado con la vida.» Ignacio Solares «En sus novelas y cuentos descubrimos un arte consumado de la sorpresa, una ferocidad no exenta de gracia y un sentido del sarcasmo que nunca se rebaja a la mera caricatura.» Claude Fell «Quien se acerca a las narraciones de Enrique Serna ríe mucho durante la lectura y al llegar al punto final un ligero malestar lo hace quedarse un tiempo pensativo, como si se reconociera de pronto en el patetismo de los personajes.» Eduardo Antonio Parra «Reconozco en Serna el entendimiento profundo, casi quisquilloso, que consiste en poner el archivo al servicio de la ficción y no ejercer ni de amanuense erudito ni de mero coleccionista de avisos y extravagancias.» Christopher DomínguezBy Natalia Ginzburg. 2019
Winner of the Bagutta Prize, The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro…
Manzoni—celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)—and the women of his life. The dynastic tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giulia, the mother whom the young Alessandro Manzoni found in Paris after she had abandoned him as an infant. Following her, there is Enrichetta, the woman he and his mother chose to be his wife, and the many children she had by him until her death; literary friends from the beau monde in Italy and Paris; and Alessandro's second wife, Teresa, and her children. Against the background of Napoleonic occupation, the reestablishment of Austrian hegemony, and the stirrings of the revolutionary urge for unification and independence, Ginzburg gracefully weaves the story of the Manzoni dynasty, a family that seems to grow autonomously around the life of the writer, effortlessly incorporating the epic tumult and emotion of the age. Ginzburg explores this fascinating true story and celebrated author with the elegance that has assured her rightful place among history’s acclaimed literary titans.By Sergio Del Molino. 2020
Sergio del Molino nos lleva a un territorio que nos pertenece a todos: la piel. El autor de La España…
vacía vuelve para hacer que nos miremos como nunca lo habíamos hecho. «Sergio del Molino mira donde nadie mira y por eso ve lo que nadie ve. Y lo cuenta con trazo de escritor grande.»Iñaki Gabilondo «Tendrá que hacer como yo: mirar a los demás para evitar mirarse a sí mismo.» Los monstruos existen y se pasean entre nosotros, quizá seamos nosotros mismos. Este es el punto de partida de la nueva obra de Sergio del Molino, un viaje que esta vez nos enseña a mirar hacia el territorio más común y a la vez el más individual: la piel humana. Una grave psoriasis, que llena el cuerpo de costras y hace imposible mostrar la desnudez, le sirve al narrador para analizar la vida de diversos personajes conocidos que han sufrido las consecuencias de la mala piel. La vergüenza de sentirse observado y la necesidad de ocultarse, la cultura de la imagen y de la hipermedicalización, el racismo y el clasismo son paradas de este viaje por los secretos que cubrimos con la ropa y que hacen de nuestra piel una frontera con el mundo. La crítica ha dicho...«Sergio del Molino se deja la piel [...]. El escritor deslumbra con unas memorias propias y ajenas, [...] un libro atípico. No se puede catalogar como unas memorias ni tampoco como un ensayo científico, una novela convencional ni un bestiario. [...] Hiere y hace sonreír. Conmueve y escuece. Sacude y divierte. [...] La mejor virtud del libro consiste en la naturalidad de la narración, la atención que suscitan sus vaivenes, la armonía con que se traslada de la ironía a la sensibilidad, del sarcasmo a la angustia, de la erudición al coloquialismo.»Rubén Amón, El Confidencial «Sergio del Molino mira donde nadie mira y por eso ve lo que nadie ve. Y lo cuenta con trazo de escritor grande.»Iñaki Gabilondo «La crónica personal de una enfermedad, la soriasis, pero también una historia cultural de la monstruosidad, del racismo y el estigma. Con apariciones estelares de Nabokov, Cyndi Lauper, Stalin#»Carlos Pardo, Babelia «No sabemos cómo clasificar el libro, es un híbrido. Memorias propias y ajenas. Escrito con sentido del humor, dureza, ironía y mucha lucidez, que habla de lo autobiográfico con todo lo que implica mentir sobre uno mismo. [...] Todos los recuerdos son un ejercicio de ficción, así que nunca sabes cuál es la barrera que separa la memoria de la literatura. [...] Sergio ha escrito un libro extraordinario.»Ahora que el autor no nos oye - La Cultureta (Onda Cero) «Sergio del Molino sabe de lo que habla cuando se detiene en los pormenores de esta maldición cutánea y sabe de lo que escribe cuando juega con los espejos de los monstruos yde la sociedad. [...] Puede que la verdadera memoria se Sergio del Molino se encuentre más en su piel que en sus recuerdos.»Rubén Amón, La Cultureta (Onda Cero) «La piel es una obra sincera y libre y el relato se construye a partir de su condición de enfermo de psoriasis, arriesgando como una buena persona sin complejos y sin miedo a mostrarse cruel o temeroso en según qué circunstancias. [...] Muchos dermatólogos deberían recetar este libro en lugar de muchas cremas con corticoides. [...] Un libro que me ha emocionado muchísimo, un auténtico disfrute.»Isabel Vázquez, La Cultureta (Onda Cero) «Un libro muy entretenido, lleno de caminos, te sorprende y te deja bien desconcertado, esperando qué te va a contar. [...] Un libro de libros, muy recomendable: me hubiese gustado tanto aunque no fuese de un amigo; de hecho, me hubiese gustado aunque fuese de un enemigo.»Guillermo Altares, La Cultureta (Onda Cero) «No es una novela estrictamentBy José Luís Peixoto. 2020
Autobiografía funde realidad y ficción en un juego de espejos que enfrenta a dos genios: José Saramago y José Luís…
Peixoto. «Relatarme a mí mismo a través del otro y relatar al otro a través de mí mismo, esto es la literatura.» En la Lisboa de finales de los años noventa, el camino de un joven escritor en plena crisis creativa -tal vez el propio Peixoto cuando comenzaba- se cruza con el de un gran escritor: José Saramago. De esa relación nace esta historia, en la que se diluyen las fronteras entre lo ficcional y lo puramente biográfico. La valentía de proponer al premio Nobel como protagonista de una novela titulada Autobiografía ya nos avisa de que estamos ante una sorprendente propuesta narrativa que solo puede llevar al lector a un final inesperado. José Luís Peixoto, al que José Saramago calificó como «una de las revelaciones más sorprendentes de la literatura portuguesa», explora en estesingular juego de espejos la creación literaria y los traslúcidos límites entre la vida y la literatura. Y al mismo tiempo, ahonda en sus obsesiones, como es habitual en él, con una prosa cargada de detalle y de lirismo, en esta impactante obra que sin duda marcará el futuro de las letras portuguesas. Reseñas:«Ningún lector que se aproxime a Autobiografía lo hará desprevenido. Sabrá -pues para eso existen los medios de comunicación- que un joven escritor llamado José, tal vez el propio Peixoto cuando comenzaba, se encuentra con un autor maduro y consagrado, José Saramago, este sí con nombre y apellido. Entre ambos, con lo que no existe fuera del libro y lo que existió en la vida real y literaria de por medio, surge una historia de encuentros y desencuentros en una atmósfera que a veces recuerda a la que, en otro tiempo y en otra circunstancia, José Saramago creó para relatar la vida de Ricardo Reis Y Fernando Pessoa durante el año en que ambos murieron. La historia de Peixoto, al contrario que la de José Saramago, no trata sobre la muerte, sino que relata una vida que comienza con orgullo y deseos. El escritor consagrado es la referencia, el futuro deseado, que provoca a la vez admiración y un incontrolable repudio: en todas las circunstancias de la vida los maestros son la medida de las cosas, el estímulo que necesita ser combatido para que el aprendiz no se vea cercenado. Este libro es la agónica lucha de un escritor joven con amores y pérdidas, aventuras diversas aquí y allí, personajes que vienen de otros mundos, voces diáfanas y voces misteriosas, todas ellas al compás del ritmo propio y ya consagrado de José Luís Peixoto.»Pilar del Río «Un reto brutal del que José Luis Peixoto sale más que airoso, componiendo un texto lúcido y en ocasiones brillante, emocionante para los seguidores de Saramago y que respaldan a su autor como uno de los nombres de referencia de la actual literatura portuguesa.[...] Un libro lleno de momentos portentosos, instantes repletos de imaginación...» Ramón Rozas, Diario de Pontevedra «Una personal y original lectura del legado saramaguiano que se funde con el universo y las obsesiones que [...] José Luís Peixoto persigue.»Luís Ricardo Duarte, Visão «El principal riesgo de Autobiografía era agotarse en el plano del mero homenaje, pero Peixoto evita esa trampa al construir una narración que se expande en varias direcciones acumulando capas de complejidad.»José Mário Silva, Expresso «Peixoto tiene una extraordinaria forma de interpretar el mundo, expresado por preciosas imágenes y un excelente uso del lenguaje.»The Times Literary Supplement «Una de las revelaciones más sorprendentes de la literatura portuguesa actual.»José SaramagoBy Javier Cercas. 2019
"A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory and unflinchingly honest" WILLIAM BOYD"There is no-one writing in English like this:…
engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom" DAVID MILLS, The TimesLord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleadingperspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama?Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation.By Karen Maitland. 2016
1361. An unlucky thirteen years after the Black Death, plague returns to England.'Fear and hysteria are portrayed with claustrophobic skill'…
THE TIMES'Dark and enthralling... with an unexpected hero' JULIE COHENFrom the bestselling author of Company of Liars, Karen Maitland, The Plague Charmer is a darkly compelling novel following a stranger who arrives in an isolated community in the grips of a medieval pandemic. When the sickness reaches the village of Porlock Weir, who stands to lose the most? And who will seize this moment for their own dark ends?The dwarf who talks in riddles? The mother who fears for her children? The wild woman from the sea? Or two lost boys, far away from home?PESTILENCE IS IN THE AIR. BUT SOMETHING DARKER LURKS IN THE DEPTHS. Why readers are gripped by The Plague Charmer'Its horrors are vividly told but with an underlying sense of human resilience and hope''A real page turner''The best and worst of human behaviour in troubled times''Poignant, shocking and haunting''It was so easy to be drawn into this world...'By Per Olov Enquist. 2013
"The love that dare not speak its name . . ." Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a…
garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of?Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to "come out" - but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write.This poignant memoir of love as a religious experience - as a modern form of the Resurrection - is also a deeply felt reflection on the transitoriness of friendship, the fraught nature of family relationships, and the importance of giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. A parable as hauntingly intense as any Bergman film.Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-TurnerBy Beth Powning. 2021
A novel of orphans and widows, terror and hope, and the relationships that hold us together when things fall apart.With…
murder dominating the news, the respected wife of a New Brunswick sea captain is drawn into the case of a British home child whose bad luck has turned worse. Mortified that she must purchase the girl in a pauper auction to save her from the lechery of wealthy townsmen, Josephine Galloway finds herself suddenly the proprietor of a boarding house kept afloat by the sweat and tears of a curious and not completely compatible collection of women, including this English teenager, Flora Salford. Flora's place in her new "family" cannot be complete until she rescues the missing person in her life, the only one who understands the trials she has come through and fresh horrors met since they were separated years before.Reconnecting with characters of Beth Powning's beloved The Sea Captain's Wife, The Sister'sTale is a story of women finding their way, together, through terrible circumstances they could neither predict nor avoid, but will stop at nothing to overcome.By Enrique Serna. 2019
«No pedía mucho, carajo, sólo que lo dejaran prostituirse a su modo.» Novela ganadora del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2019. "El…
asunto histórico corresponde a tiempos próximos al nuestro, transformados en su novela en materia literaria gracias al brío de su discurso narrativo, la verosimilitud de personajes y situaciones, la velocidad de su prosa y su empeño en no dejar nada al azar, en atar todos los cabos. Serna obliga al lector a acompañarlo en cada una de sus acciones y a vivirlas con él." El jurado del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia. A mediados del siglo XX, Carlos Denegri era el líder de opinión más influyente de México. Reportero estrella del diario Excélsior, tenía una red de contactos internacionales envidiada por todos los periodistas. Mimado por el poder, como columnista político sobresalió por su falta de escrúpulos, al grado de que Julio Scherer lo llamó "el mejor y el más vil de los reporteros". Industrializó el "chayote" cuando esa palabra todavía no se usaba en la jerga política. En su Fichero Político, donde fungía como vocero extraoficial de la Presidencia y cobraba todas las menciones, podía difamar a cualquiera con impunidad absoluta. Según Carlos Monsiváis, un coscorrón en esa columna representaba "una temporada en el infierno" para cualquier aspirante a un cargo público. Aunque ganaba millones por publicar alabanzas, se hizo más rico aún por medio de la extorsión, callándose lo que sabía de sus poderosos clientes. La personalidad pública de Carlos Denegri es indisociable de las atroces vejaciones misóginas que cometió en su vida privada. Era tan prepotente y déspota en el trato con las mujeres como en el periodismo, de modo que su patología fue a la vez íntima y social. Radiografía del machismo a la mexicana y epitafio de la dictadura perfecta, esta novela es un estudio de carácter incisivo y mordaz, sustentado en un arduo trabajo de investigación, que por momentos linda con la farsa trágica. Enrique Serna vuelve a una de sus vetas narrativas predilectas, la reconstrucción del pasado, para entregarnos un fresco histórico apasionante. La crítica ha dicho: «Es una importante aportación a la historia y la literatura contemporáneas de México, salida de la pluma -o la laptop- de un autor caracterizado por su implacable ironía y su valiente voluntad estilística, virtudes que lo convierten en uno de los narradores imprescindibles de nuestro tiempo.» El jurado del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2019 «El arte de Serna consiste en una serie de procedimientos encaminados a hacernos más persuasiva la ilusión realista -esa que sólo puede darse en la mejor literatura-, a comunicar al lector la sensación de estar directamente enfrentado con la vida.» Ignacio Solares «En sus novelas y cuentos descubrimos un arte consumado de la sorpresa, una ferocidad no exenta de gracia y un sentido del sarcasmo que nunca se rebaja a la mera caricatura.» Claude Fell «Quien se acerca a las narraciones de Enrique Serna ríe mucho durante la lectura y al llegar al punto final un ligero malestar lo hace quedarse un tiempo pensativo, como si se reconociera de pronto en el patetismo de los personajes.» Eduardo Antonio Parra «Reconozco en Serna el entendimiento profundo, casi quisquilloso, que consiste en poner el archivo al servicio de la ficción y no ejercer ni de amanuense erudito ni de mero coleccionista de avisos y extravagancias.» Christopher DomínguezBy Prof Bernhard Schlink. 2018
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart' New York Times'Brilliant... A tale of love and loss in…
20th century Germany' Evening Standard'A cleverly-constructed tale of cross-class romance' Mail on Sunday'A poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time' Observer Olga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era's dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.This is the story of that love, of Olga's devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.