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Gardening at Night
By Diane Awerbuck. 2003
Gardening at Night follows the unfolding of a young girl's life through a childhood filled with silences, through adolescence and…
young womanhood. It is about how much people are the total of their longings, how high drama can also be low comedy. It probes how much of the old century a girl should take with her into the new one, and examines the merging of families in the Eighties and their emerging into the florescence of the Nineties and beyond. It is especially the story of a girl's escape from a ghost town. The South African mining town of Kimberley was created over a hundred years ago when men with buckets scraped out the insides of the earth like a thousand black dentists. Now it is a place where the only tales are those of leaving.Winner of 2004 Commonwealth Best First Book Award.The Forest of Wool and Steel: Winner of the Japan Booksellers’ Award
By Natsu Miyashita, Philip Gabriel. 2015
OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD''A mesmerising reading experience for all of us seeking a meaningful life' JAPAN TIMESWhat he experienced…
that day wasn’t life-changing . . . It was life-making.Tomura is startled by the hypnotic sound of a piano being tuned in his school. It seeps into his soul and transports him to the forests, dark and gleaming, that surround his beloved mountain village. From that moment, he is determined to discover more.Under the tutelage of three master piano-tuners – one humble, one jovial, one ill-tempered – Tomura embarks on his training, never straying too far from a single, unfathomable question: do I have what it takes?Set in small-town Japan, this warm and mystical story is for the lucky few who have found their calling – and for the rest of us who are still searching. It shows that the road to finding one’s purpose is a winding path, often filled with treacherous doubts and, for those who persevere, astonishing moments of revelation.Mega-bestselling winner of the Japan Booksellers Award, selected by bookshop staff as the book they most wanted to hand-sell: A tender and uplifting novel for fans of A WHOLE LIFE by Robert Seethaler.[Contains 5 exquisite hand-drawn illustrations]Emma (The Penguin English Library)
By Jane Austen. 2012
With an essay by David Lodge.'I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and…
I do not think I ever shall'Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.The Penguin English Library - 100 paperbacks of the best fiction written in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.Flying To Nowhere
By John Fuller. 1983
WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE.John Fuller's first novel opens with the arrival of church…
agent Vane on a remote Welsh island where he is to investigate the disappearance of pilgrims visiting its sacred well. While Vane looks for clues and corpses the local Abbot seaches for the location of the soul. Magical and poetic, Flying to Nowhere awakens our secret hopes and fears and our need to believe in miracles.Emma
By Jane Austen. 2015
'Her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility' Robert McCrum, ObserverAlthough described by Jane Austen…
as a character 'whom no one but myself will much like', the irrepressible Emma Woodhouse is one of her most beloved heroines. Clever, rich and beautiful, she sees no need for marriage, but loves interfering in the romantic lives of others, until her matchmaking plans unravel, with consequences that she never expected. Jane Austen's novel of youthful exuberance and gradual self-knowledge is a brilliant, sparkling comic masterpiece. Edited with an Introduction by FIONA STAFFORD'A finely drawn evocation of Japan, of youth, age, dreams, disillusionment, struggles and strength... A poignant and beautiful book.' Hazel…
Prior, author of Away with the PenguinsFrom the author of The Cat and The City - 'vibrant and accomplished' David Mitchell - a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick.Flo is sick of Tokyo. Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a fellow passenger on the Tokyo Subway. From the very first page, Flo is transformed and immediately feels compelled to translate this forgotten novel, a decision which sets her on a path that will change her life...It is a story about Ayako, a fierce and strict old woman who runs a coffee shop in the small town of Onomichi, where she has just taken guardianship of her grandson, Kyo. Haunted by long-buried family tragedy, both have suffered extreme loss and feel unable to open up to each other. As Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair's burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author. And, as her two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge. The journey is just beginning.From the author of The Cat and The City, Four Seasons in Japan is a gorgeously crafted book-within-a-book about literature, purpose and what it is to belong.The Flea Palace
By Elif Shafak. 2005
By turns comic and tragic, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense…
of social justice.Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families.There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the garbage at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth."An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade" - Orhan Pamuk"Hyper-active and hilarious" - IndependentElif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.Finnegans Wake (Penguin Modern Classics #1)
By James Joyce. 2001
A daring work of experimental, Modernist genius, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the greatest literary achievements of the…
twentieth century, and the crowning glory of Joyce's life. The Penguin Modern Classics edition of includes an introduction by Seamus Deane'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs'Joyce's final work, Finnegan's Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the day. Supreme linguistic virtuosity conjures up the dark underground worlds of sexuality and dream. Joyce undermines traditional storytelling and all official forms of English and confronts the different kinds of betrayal - cultural, political and sexual - that he saw at the heart of Irish history. Dazzlingly inventive, with passages of great lyrical beauty and humour, Finnegans Wake remains one of the most remarkable works of the twentieth century.James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter's mental illness.If you enjoyed Finnegans Wake, you might like Virginia Woolf's The Waves, also available in Penguin Classics.'An extraordinary performance, a transcription into a miniaturized form of the whole western literary tradition'Seamus DeaneThe Finest Type of English Womanhood
By Rachel Heath. 2009
It is 1946, and seventeen-year-old Laura Telling is stagnating in her dilapidated Sussex family home, while her eccentric parents slip…
further into isolation. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell offers her the chance to alter the course of her destiny - and to embark on a new life in South Africa. Many miles north, sixteen-year-old Gay Gibson is desperate to escape Birkenhead. When the girls' paths cross in Johannesburg, Laura is exposed to Gay's wild life of parties and inappropriate liaisons. Each in their own worlds, but thrown together, the girls find their lives inextricably entangled, with fatal consequences...Flamingo Feather
By Sir Laurens Van Der Post. 1955
Flamingo Feather, which Laurens van der Post dedicated to the 'fast vanishing Africa' of his boyhood, is a story of…
adventure - adventure unfolded in the great tradition of story-telling.It is the tale of two white hunters - one old, experienced and wise, one young and resolute - who suspect that something evil is being prepared on a vast scale in their country and who, with little to guide them, set out to track down its source. In the unfolding of their story, the immense scene of bush, forest, jungle, lake and mountain, the untamed wildlife and vivid animal beings, and the background mind and culture of the indigenous people in all their archaic reality, are evoked as never before. Indeed so deeply does the story draw on Laurens van der Post's knowledge of the country, so directly does it touch on vital elements in African life, that it carries the conviction of an authentic personal experience. Africa itself lies at the heart of the story, Africa as it has been and as it may yet become.The Figure In The Distance
By Otto De Kat. 1998
Cambridge, Budapest, New York, Zurich, The Hague, Tel Aviv, the South Downs of England: the narrator has travelled everywhere. He…
has observed some of the major upheavals of the century - the Six Day War, the Prague Spring - and collected friends, lovers, and passions every step of the way. As he ages, the memories of his past grow sharper, the events of his childhood more vivid - so vivid, in fact, that his present life recedes into oblivion. He inhabits a world of ghosts and shadows and absence. Throughout his perambulations of time and space, one absence always looms largest: that of his father. The figure of his dead father materializes again and again, drawing the narrator back into the past, reviving the people and places of long ago. The Figure in the Distance is a hypnotic novel, told with a cinematic cross-cutting that suspends the reader in the cobwebs of memory and longing that haunt the narrator.The Fight For Manod
By Raymond Williams. 1979
Matthew Price and Peter Owen both have their roots within the borders of Wales. Together they decide to build a…
new town, Manod, in the depopulated valleys of South Wales. Seemingly a splendid idea, and yet a world of plotting, scheming and resistance lies in store.Epitaphs for Underdogs
By Andrew Szepessy. 2020
'A wonderful discovery' (Ian McEwan), this is a beguiling dystopian tale of a young man confronted with the truth about…
freedom. On a hot summer night, a young man sits in a dark cell in a Hungarian prison. The guards do not explain why he is here; he does not know if he will ever be released. But he is far from alone. Others, too, are trapped within the stone walls - singers and students, sages and spies. As the days pass, the man is drawn into their conversations and their lives, and soon becomes a witness to their sometimes outlandish acts of rebellion.Written in the early 1980s and inspired by Andrew Szepessy's own experiences, Epitaphs for Underdogs is a beguiling and exhilarating novel about power, justice and freedom, and about the solidarity that can be found in even the most unexpected places.'Beautiful... With its sense of the absurd, its laughter in the dark, it belongs in the great tradition of dystopian literature, with echoes of early Kundera and Nabokov' IAN McEWANFirst Novel
By Nicholas Royle. 2013
Paul Kinder, a novelist with one forgotten book to his name, teaches creative writing in a university in the north-west…
of England. Either he's researching his second, breakthrough novel, or he's killing time having sex in cars.Either eternal life exists, or it doesn't. Either you'll laugh, or you'll cry.Or maybe both.Eugenie Grandet
By Honore De Balzac. 2011
'This brilliant but devastatingly sad novel moved me so much, I began it again the moment I got to the…
end' Rose Tremain Monsieur Grandet is a very rich man whose chief care is his gold. He runs his household with exacting miserly attention and his wife and daughter suffer a Spartan existence. On the evening of his daughter Eugénie's twenty third birthday his foppish nephew Charles suddenly arrives from Paris. Eugénie has never known passion. Now, in an instant, she falls in love and her life is changed forever. Monsieur Grandet will not countenance his daughter's marriage to her penniless cousin and Eugénie's determination to follow her heart leads her into direct conflict with her father.The Enchanted April (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Elizabeth Von Arnim. 2012
'This delicious confection will work its magic on all' Daily TelegraphThe discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed 'To Those who…
Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine', offers a small medieval castle for rent, above a bay on the Italian Riviera. Four very different women - the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester - are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur.The Enchanted April, published in 1922, is a witty and delightful depiction of what it is like to rediscover joy.'Brims with magic and laughter' Amanda Craig, GuardianIncludes a new introduction by Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet's AngelThe Dumb House
By John Burnside. 1997
As a child, Luke’s mother often tells him the story of the Dumb House, an experiment on newborn babies raised…
in silence, designed to test the innateness of language. As Luke grows up, his interest in language and the delicate balance of life and death leads to amateur dissections of small animals – tiny hearts revealed still pumping, as life trickles away. But as an adult, following the death of his mother, Luke’s obsession deepens, resulting in a haunting and bizarre experiment on Luke’s own children.The Echo Chamber
By John Boyne. 2021
'His relish is infectious' Times'The funniest book I've read in ages. Savage but compelling' Ian Rankin'Funny, rumbustious, unstinting and wonderfully…
Hogarthian' The Observer'Sharp, funny, and beautifully written... a brilliant reflection on the landscape we now live in' Joanna Cannon_______________What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.Powered by John Boyne's characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.The new novel by John Boyne, WATER, is available for pre-order now.The Fall Girl
By Denise Sewell. 2007
The day Frances Fall steals a baby from outside a shop, is the day her past catches up with her.…
At the age of thirty-six, Frances is forced to relive a life dominated on one side by a harsh unloving mother, and on the other by friendship with the most dazzling girl in their no-hope town. As she puts together the pieces of her past, Frances must finally confront and forgive betrayals that she has never understood. But most of all, at the end of a stunning and moving journey of pain and redemption, Frances must forgive herself - if she can.An Experiment in Leisure
By Anna Glendenning. 2021
'I adore this book! ... An Experiment in Leisure shows us the burning, intense, messy beauty of youth and what…
it means to be alive' Maxine Peake 'Can I get a refund?' I asked the bus driver. 'You taking the piss, love?' It's the eve of Brexit, and Grace is supposed to have what she wants. She's swapped West Yorkshire for north London, her accent carefully edited. Her friends drink beer out of artful tins. She makes flat whites for people with berets. She's found a psychoanalyst. But this fantasy of metropolitan cool is turning out to be more costly than she thought and Grace faces complicated crises of identity, class, sexuality and geography. Can she remember how to love? Can she find a way home? 'A dizzying yet powerful read' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Checkout 19