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Bêtes, hommes et dieux: à travers la Mongolie interdite, 1920-1921
By Ferdinand Ossendowski. 2000
"Un livre-culte de la littérature d'aventure vécue. Krasnoïarsk (Sibérie centrale), hiver 1920. L'homme vient d'apprendre qu'on l'a dénoncé aux Rouges,…
et que le peloton d'exécution l'attend. Il prend son fusil, fourre quelques cartouches dans la poche de sa pelisse, sort dans le froid glacial - et gagne la forêt. Commence alors une course-poursuite dont il ne sortira vivant, il le sait, que s'il ose l'impossible : gagner à pied l'Inde anglaise à travers l'immensité sibérienne, puis les passes de Mongolie, puis le désert de Gobi, puis le plateau tibétain, puis l'Himalaya... L'itinéraire qu'il suivra sera quelque peu différent, et si possible plus sidérant encore. Mais ce que le livre révèle - et que le lecteur n'attend pas - c'est, parallèle au voyage réel, une étrange odyssée intérieure qui nous introduit au cœur des mystères de l'Asie millénaire. Car Ossendowski, géologue de son état, n'est pas qu'un savant doublé d'un aventurier. C'est un esprit exalté et curieux qui vit sa marche folle à la manière d'une initiation... [...]" -- 4e de couvPELLEGRINI DI SHAMBALA
By Rafael T llez Romero. 2016
Thomas, un giovane uomo che ha perso tutto, inizia un viaggio in India per cercare di reindirizzare il corso della…
sua vita. Presto troverà compagni interessanti con i quali condividerà momenti indimenticabili, conoscerà scuole di saggezza e imparerà gli insegnamenti fondamentali. Tutto questo in un viaggio zaino in spalla, dove il caso e il karma sembrano giocare un'epica partita di scacchi, avendo come scacchiera, posti sia sacri che emblematici per il ricercatore spirituale. Un viaggio ricco di esperienze, pieno di incontri con personaggi saggi e pittoreschi, che poco a poco riveleranno piccole "perle di saggezza" per aiutare il protagonista a trovare la sua strada. Il protagonista e il lettore quindi, potranno trovare le chiavi spirituali che permetteranno loro di andare avanti. D'altra parte, il viaggiatore vivrà altri incontri più banali, facendo posto all'amore, alla delusione e al dolore. Incontri che poco a poco, si trasformeranno in un "romanzo mandala" che ci lascerà a bocca aperta.Betty: The International Bestseller
By Tiffany McDaniel. 2020
'Breahtaking'Vogue'So engrossing! Betty is a page-turning Appalachian coming-of-age story steeped in Cherokee history, told in undulating prose that settles right…
into you'Naoise Dolan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Exciting Times 'I felt consumed by this book. I loved it, you will love it' Daisy Johnson, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Everthing Under'I loved Betty: I fell for its strong characters and was moved by the story it portrayed' Fiona Mozley, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Elmet 'A girl comes of age against the knife.' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.Despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.A heartbreaking yet magical story, Betty is a punch-in-the-gut of a novel - full of the crushing cruelty of human nature and the redemptive power of words. 'Not a story you will soon forget' Karen Joy Fowler, Booker Prize shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'Shot through with moonshine, Bible verses, and folklore, Betty is about the cruelty we inflict on one another, the beauty we still manage to find, and the stories we tell in order to survive' Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow ChildThe Folded Earth: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2012
In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day…
she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place is remote enough or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town's new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who divide people and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and soon Maya understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible. When Diwan Sahib's nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, and finally she is forced to confront bitter and terrible truths. A many-layered and powerful narrative, by turns poetic, elegiac and comic, by the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2010
On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family live in solitude in their vast new house. Here,…
swathed in silence, a widower struggles with feelings for an unmarried cousin while his motherless daughter Bakul runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined at the top of the house, the matriarch goes slowly mad, while her husband shapes and reshapes his glorious garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. Although he prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, his thoughts are all of what was once his home - and he knows that he must return. This is a love story, as intricate as it is enchanting, about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else.The Weekend: The international bestseller, shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2020
By Charlotte Wood. 2020
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER One of The Times books of the year: 'Ripples with wit, insight and vitality' 'The Weekend…
is so great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice... Wood is an agonisingly gifted writer: I am now going to read all her other books!'Marian Keyes'It was refreshing to encounter a novel that so profoundly sympathises with women on the forbidding cusp of being classified as "elderly". Wood ably conveys that older women didn't used to be old, and that the experience of ageing is universally bewildering'Lionel Shriver (Observer, Books of the year) 'Riveting' Elizabeth Day 'A perfect, funny, insightful, novel about women, friendship, and ageing. I loved it'Nina Stibbe 'Authentic, funny, brutally well-observed... As with the novels of Elizabeth Strout or Anne Tyler, these are characters not written to please, but to feel true'The Sunday Times 'Glorious... Charlotte Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout' Guardian'The Weekend triumphantly brings to life the honest, inner lives of women' Independent'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book' Tessa Hadley 'One sharp, funny, heartbreaking and gorgeously-written package. I loved it' Paula Hawkins'One of those deceptively compact novels that continues to open doors in your mind long after the last page' Patrick GaleSylvie, Jude, Wendy and Adele have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three.These women couldn't be more different: Jude, a once-famous restaurateur with a spotless life and a long-standing affair with a married man; Wendy, an acclaimed feminist intellectual; Adele, a former star of the stage, now practically homeless. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for one last weekend at Sylvie's old beach house. But fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface - a storm that will either remind them of the bond they share, or sweep away their friendship for good.What's Left of Me is Yours
By Stephanie Scott. 2020
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE DAILY MAIL AND WOMAN AND HOMEA New York Times 'Editor's Pick'One of the…
Observer's Ten Best Debut Novelists of 2020Shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel AwardLonglisted for the Jhalak PrizeLonglisted for the CWA John Creasy New Blood Dagger'Enrapturing... This richly imagined novel considers the many permutations of love and what we are capable of doing in its name' New York Times'A brilliant debut' Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard'You'll have the heart rate of an Olympic hurdler' Sunday Express'I read it with my heart in my throat' Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton 'An exquisitely crafted masterpiece you'll be pressing into the hands of others' Woman & Home 'An intoxicatingly atmospheric mystery' Daily Mail'Dark, addictive and eye-opening, this is a brilliant debut' StylistA gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, What's Left of Me Is Yours follows a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life - and her murder.In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the wakaresaseya (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings.When Sato hires Kaitaro, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Sato has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitaro's job is to do exactly that - until he does it too well.While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitaro fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter Sumiko's life.Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, What's Left of Me Is Yours explores the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.Fault Lines
By Emily Itami. 2021
'A brilliant modern love story. I found it atmospheric and transporting but also wise, clever and universal in its exploration…
of love, family and identity. I loved it' Cathy RentzenbrinkMizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It's everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether it would be more fun to throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband or hanging up laundry. Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, a voice, and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. But the further she falls into their relationship, the clearer it becomes that she is living two lives - and in the end, we can choose only one. Alluring, compelling, startlingly honest and darkly funny, Fault Lines is a bittersweet love story and a daring exploration of modern relationships from a writer to watch.The Night Tiger: The Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
By Yangsze Choo. 2019
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'The two main characters will captivate you as their paths are destined to cross... you won't…
be able to put this one down!'Reese Witherspoon'I was willingly propelled into a fascinating and exotic world'Daily MailThey say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk among us... In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master's severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth forever. Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother's debts. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. As time runs out for Ren's mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin's paths will cross in ways they will never forget.Captivating and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores the rich world of servants and masters, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and unexpected love. Woven through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.'An exuberant medley of magic, romance and weirdness'The Times'[A] highly imaginative and a spellbinding read'Woman's WeeklySleeping on Jupiter: A Novel
By Anuradha Roy. 2016
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015A stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence…
in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.The Office of Gardens and Ponds
By Didier Decoin. 2017
A mesmerising fable with a difference, set in Japan over 1000 years agoFor readers of Alessandro Baricco's Silk, Patrick Süskind's…
Perfume and Takashi Hiraide's The Guest Cat.The village of Shimae is thrown into turmoil when master carp-catcher Katsuro suddenly drowns in the murky waters of the Kusagawa river. Who now will carry the precious cargo of carp to the Imperial Palace and preserve the crucial patronage that everyone in the village depends upon?Step forward Miyuki, Katsuro's grief-struck widow and the only remaining person in the village who knows anything about carp. She alone can undertake the long, perilous journey to the Imperial Palace, balancing the heavy baskets of fish on a pole across her shoulders, and ensure her village's future.So Miyuki sets off. Along her way she will encounter a host of remarkable characters, from prostitutes and innkeepers, to warlords and priests with evil in mind. She will endure ambushes and disaster, for the villagers are not the only people fixated on the fate of the eight magnificent carp. But when she reaches the Office of Gardens and Ponds, Miyuki discovers that the trials of her journey are far from over. For in the Imperial City, nothing is quite as it seems, and beneath a veneer of refinement and ritual, there is an impenetrable barrier of politics and snobbery that Miyuki must overcome if she is to return to Shimae.Betty: The International Bestseller
By Tiffany McDaniel.
'NOT A STORY YOU WILL SOON FORGET' Karen Joy Fowler, author of Man Booker Prize finalist We Are All Completely…
Beside Ourselves'A girl comes of age against the knife.' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.Despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.A heartbreaking yet magical story, Betty is a punch-in-the-gut of a novel - full of the crushing cruelty of human nature and the redemptive power of words.The Third Squad: A Noir Novel
By V. Sanjay Kumar. 2017
"Kumar evokes [Mumbai] with lyrical prose."--Publishers WeeklyIncluded in Publishers Weekly's Crime Fiction feature on police corruption and brutality."A melancholy cop's…
obsessions are just the tip of the iceberg as he leads a two-fisted team determined to clean up Mumbai's mean streets...Kumar's style, blunt but often by turns poetic and droll, is arresting...As unusual as it is compelling, this entry lays the groundwork for an entertaining series."--Kirkus Reviews"[A] gripping thriller...Kumar has created some thoroughly intriguing characters...but the most fascinating of Kumar’s characters is Mumbai itself--enormous, crowded, hyperactive, roiling, stunningly rich and grindingly poor, and teeming with almost unfathomable energy. International-crime fans should flock to this one."--Booklist"The Third Squad enveloped me in Mumbai, in its strangeness even to people who call it home. Each of the many odd but totally real characters who populate this book shines a light on the city and on one another. It's a page-turner, but as I got closer to the end I slowed down because I didn't want to have to leave this world."--S.J. Rozan, author (as Sam Cabot) of Skin of the Wolf"Against a backdrop of debilitating poverty, ancient religion, staggering wealth, and corruption, Mumbai comes alive in The Third Squad as the perfect storm for twenty-first-century noir. Driving this absolutely compelling tale is Karan, a police sharpshooter who is essentially a trained assassin. Initially distanced from his own actions by both Asperger's syndrome and Old World devotion to authority, he's ultimately forced to reconcile personal morality with obedience in a grim new age of blind opportunism."--Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old CountryThe Third Squad is an arresting, ripped-from-the-headlines noir novel that deftly explores how in recent decades, to ostensibly combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai's underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspected criminals. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch of the Indian police dispensed with dishing out this peculiar blend of vigilante justice, has a difficult choice to make: should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or should he take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?Belonging to a hit squad whose members all fall somewhere along the autism spectrum, Karan, who has been diagnosed with mild Asperger's syndrome, is notorious for his ruthless precision and efficiency in carrying out these assassinations, yet he remains aloof and distant. Gradually, his impenetrable façade begins to crack, and Karan's emotional and psychological depth reveals itself as he is forced to make decisions where the stakes are literally life-and-death. Also at play is the looming specter of the city of Mumbai itself, seemingly at the cusp of a neoliberal era of enlightenment and progress, yet still trapped under the ineluctable burden of old Bombay history, which can never quite be forgotten or suppressed.Dark and gritty, raw and fast-paced, and never sentimental, The Third Squad distills the best aspects of classic American noir writing into a uniquely Indian context, revealing V. Sanjay Kumar as a singular talent on the crime fiction circuit.The Night Tiger: The Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
By Yangsze Choo. 2019
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'The two main characters will captivate you as their paths are destined to cross... you won't…
be able to put this one down!'Reese Witherspoon'I was willingly propelled into a fascinating and exotic world'Daily MailThey say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk among us... In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master's severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth forever. Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother's debts. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. As time runs out for Ren's mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin's paths will cross in ways they will never forget.Captivating and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores the rich world of servants and masters, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and unexpected love. Woven through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.'An exuberant medley of magic, romance and weirdness'The Times'[A] highly imaginative and a spellbinding read'Woman's WeeklyI Called Him Necktie
By Sheila Dickie, Milena Michiko Flasar. 2014
"The best of the best from this year's bountiful harvest of uncommonly strong offerings ... Deeply original." -O, The Oprah…
Magazine"Exceptional ... In today's less-than-brave new world in which sincere human interaction is disappearing even as the numbers of so-called 'friends' are multiplying, Necktie is a piercing reminder to acknowledge, nurture, and share our humanity."-Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center blog BookDragon"The quiet reflection of this jewel of a novel is revelatory, redemptive and hypnotic until the last word."-Kirkus Reviews"A spare, stunning, elegiac gem of a book. Milena Michiko Flašar writes with a poet's clarity of language and vision, probing deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes ... to tell a compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship."-Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being"Flašar's exquisite, finely wrought novel is both a prose poem and a parable about how we deflect, defer and disconnect from life, and what is needed before we can bravely embrace it again."- Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth"A tender, melancholy book of great linguistic beauty and clarity. A flawless novel."-Süddeutsche Zeitung"With high artistry . . . this seductive beauty is also strangely religious: the book treats life with an almost Buddhist serenity."-Der SpiegelTwenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori-a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction-in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred.Milena Michiko Flašar was born in 1980, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. She lives in Vienna. I Called Him Necktie won the 2012 Austrian Alpha Literature Prize.Sleeping on Jupiter
By Anuradha Roy. 2015
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015A stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love and violence…
in the modern world.A train stops at a railway station. A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping.The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers?Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons.The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear, as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it.An Atlas of Impossible Longing
By Anuradha Roy. 2008
On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family live in solitude in their vast new house. Here,…
swathed in silence, a widower struggles with feelings for an unmarried cousin while his motherless daughter Bakul runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined at the top of the house, the matriarch goes slowly mad, while her husband shapes and reshapes his glorious garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. Although he prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, his thoughts are all of what was once his home - and he knows that he must return. This is a love story, as intricate as it is enchanting, about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else.The Folded Earth
By Anuradha Roy. 2011
In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day…
she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place is remote enough or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town's new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who divide people and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and soon Maya understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible. When Diwan Sahib's nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, and finally she is forced to confront bitter and terrible truths. A many-layered and powerful narrative, by turns poetic, elegiac and comic, by the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.Necropolis
By Avtar Singh. 2016
"Someone is cutting off victims' fingers in New Delhi and vampires and lycans are suspects in this ambitious mix of…
detection and the supernatural from Singh."--Publishers Weekly"Sajan Dayal, a Delhi detective, pursues a serial (though nonlethal) collector of human fingers. Dayal's team encounters would-be vampires and werewolves, plus a woman named Razia who may or may not be centuries old."--Publishers Weekly, Spring 2016 Announcements"An intriguing mix of history, myth and the realities of contemporary New Delhi...Astonishing and satisfying."--Reviewing the Evidence"Superbly gothic...The novel is a compelling one and certain to be a great addition to courses on detective fiction and noir, especially given its focus on a city that has not necessarily or traditionally been attached to mystery and mayhem. Singh is giving places like Los Angeles and San Francisco a run for their money in this re-envisioning of the urban noir."--Asian American Literature Fans"Necropolis is a ravishing beauty of prose that is as sumptuous as it is gripping...Imagine a cocktail of V.S. Naipaul, Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard, and E.M. Forster, and you have the essence of this haunting and ferociously charming novel."--Ken Bruen, author of Green Hell"I tore though Necropolis with great pleasure and a fair measure of unease. It's a grisly, wonderfully written novel that interweaves disparate genres and styles into a whole that satisfies thoroughly. As fine a crime novel as I've read in the last year."--Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest"Avtar Singh's Necropolis is an ode to ancient, medieval, and Old Delhi, a romantic ballad that cuts across time, if not place, and melds features of classic detective fiction with those of the hard-boiled and roman noir in a style that is exquisitely the author's."--Sumana Mukherjee, MintNecropolis follows Sajan Dayal, a detective in pursuit of a serial (though nonlethal) collector of fingers. He encounters would-be vampires and werewolves, and a woman named Razia who may or may not be centuries old. Guided by Singh's gorgeous and masterful writing, the novel peels back layers of a city in thrall to its past, hostage to its present, and bitterly divided as to its future. Delhi went from being an imperial capital to provincial backwater in a few centuries: the journey back to exploding commercial metropolis has been compressed into a few decades. Combining elements of crime, fantasy, and noir, Necropolis tackles the questions of origin, ownership, and class that such a revolution inevitably raises. The world of Delhi, the sweep of its history--its grandeur, grimness, and criminality--all of it comes alive in Necropolis.Small Pleasures: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
By Clare Chambers. 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021'A WORD-OF-MOUTH HIT' Evening Standard 'A very fine book... It's witty and sharp…
and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche'David Nicholls'Perfect'India Knight 'Beautiful' Jessie Burton'Wonderful'Richard Osman 'Miraculous'Tracy Chevalier 'A wonderful novel. I loved it'Nina Stibbe 'Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind' Lissa Evans 'This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I honestly don't want you to be without it'Lucy Mangan'Gorgeous... If you're looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more' Pandora Sykes'Remarkable... Small Pleasures is no small pleasure'The Times'An irresistible novel - wry, perceptive and quietly devastating'Mail on Sunday'Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian'An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish' The Sunday Times 1957, the suburbs of South East London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness. But there will, inevitably, be a price to pay.Book of the Year for: The Times, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Daily Express, Metro, Spectator, Red Magazine and Good Housekeeping