It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
The year is 1984, and life in Oceania is ruled by the Party. Under the gaze of Big Brother, Winston Smith yearns for intimacy and love - 'thought crimes' that, if uncovered, would mean imprisonment, or death. But Winston is not alone in his defiance, and an illicit affair will draw him into the mysterious Brotherhood and the realities of resistance.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has been described as chilling, absorbing, satirical, momentous, prophetic and terrifying. It is all these things, and more.
The Authoritative Text. With an introduction by Robert Harris.
*This stunning edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four features period artwork by Elizabeth Friedlander, one of Europe's pre-eminent 20th century graphic designers. Look out for complementary editions of Orwell's essential works Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London.*
Kotaro Isaka (Author) Kotaro Isaka is a bestselling and multi-award-wining writer who is published around the world. He has won the Shincho Mystery Club Award, Mystery Writers of Japan Award, Japan Booksellers'' Award and the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize and twelve of his books have been adapted for film or TV.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell's fable of revolutionary farm animals - the steadfast horses Boxer and Clover, the opportunistic pigs Snowball and Napoleon, and the deafening choir of sheep - who overthrow their elitist human master only to find themselves subject to a new authority, is one of the most famous warnings ever written.
Rejected by such eminent publishing figures as Victor Gollancz, Jonathan Cape and T.S. Eliot due to its daringly open criticism of Stalin, Animal Farm was published to great acclaim by Martin Secker and Warburg on 17 August 1945. One reviewer wrote 'In a hundred years' time perhaps Animal Farm ... may simply be a fairy story: today it is a fairy story with a good deal of point.' Seventy-five years since its first publication, Orwell's immortal satire remains an unparalleled masterpiece and more relevant than ever.
The Authoritative Text. With an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.
*This stunning edition of Animal Farm features period artwork by Elizabeth Friedlander, one of Europe's pre-eminent 20th century graphic designers. Look out for complementary editions of Orwell's essential works Nineteen Eighty-Four and Down and Out in Paris and London.*
When Anna McDonald's world is suddenly shattered, she tries to avoid her pain by listening to a true crime podcast. But when she hears one of the victim's names, she realises that this is a murder she can't ignore. This is a crime she must solve herself. CONVICTION isÿa topical, poignant thriller, touching on issues surrounding the #MeToo movement.
It's 1945: a German bomber flies over Iceland in a blizzard. Puzzlingly, there are both German and American officers on board. One of the senior German officers claims that their best chance of survival is to try to walk to the nearest farm and sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He soon disappears into the white vastness.
Philida decides to risk her whole life by lodging a complaint against Francois, who has reneged on his promise to set her free. His father has ordered him to marry a white woman from a prominent Cape Town family, and Philida will be sold on to owners in the harsh country up north.
Two decades after Portuguese novelist and Nobel Laureate José Saramago shocked the religious world with his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, he has done it again with Cain, a satire of the Old Testament. Written in the last years of Saramago's life, it tackles many of the moral and logical non sequiturs created by a wilful, authoritarian God, and forms part of Saramago's long argument with religion.
The stories in this book are witty and provocative. After Adam and Eve have been cast out of Eden, Eve decides to go back and ask the angel guarding the gate if he can give her some of the fruit that is going to waste inside. The angel agrees, and although Eve swears to Adam that she offered the angel nothing in return, their first child is suspiciously blond and fair-skinned. Cain, in his wandering, overhears a strange conversation between a man named Abraham and his son Isaac - and manages to prevent the father from murdering the son. The angel appointed by God to prevent the murder arrives late due to a wing malfunction. Cain brushes off his apology. 'What would have happened if I hadn't been here?' Cain asks, 'and what kind of god would ask a father to sacrifice his own son?'
A pure pleasure of a novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance. There is a fine line between coincidence and fate... London, 1799. Dora Blake is an aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents'' famed shop of antiquities. When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle''s suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young man seeking acceptance into the Society of Antiquaries. Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future. Dora sees it as a chance to restore her parents'' shop to its former glory, and to escape her uncle. But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has ever known about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it. As Dora uncovers the truth she starts to realise that some mysteries are buried, and some doors are locked, for a reason. Gorgeously atmospheric and deliciously page-turning, Pandora deals with themes of secrets and deception, love and fulfilment, fate and hope.
Elizabeth Costello is a writer of international renown. Famous for an early novel from which, it seems, she will never escape, she has reached the stage where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded. What matters to her is the search for a means of articulating her vision.
J.M. Coetzee''s work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace, Summertime, The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently, The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.>
A German businessman is the third to die: murdered in a seaside guesthouse. A note pinned on his body is addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favourite commando and once the most dangerous man in Europe, and warns Skorzeny that they are coming for him next.
In the wake of his parents'' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne.
Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear . . .
You know who I am. She''s going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There''s not a thing you can do about it.
When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence-and preserve his sanity-as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.
Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.
Karl Ove Knausgaard (Author) Karl Ove Knausgaard''s My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. From A Death in the Family to The End, the novels move through childhood into adulthood and, together, form an enthralling portrait of human life. Knausgaard has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes Out of the World, A Time for Everything and the Seasons Quartet, is published in thirty-five languages.
Martin Aitken (Translator) Martin Aitken''s translations of Scandinavian literature number some 35 books. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International DUBLIN Literary Award (2017) and the U.S. National Book Awards (2018), as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019.
A deeply moving novel about a boy and his dream, from the prize-winning author of As You Were Jamie O''Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.
How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community. Written with tenderness and verve, it''s about love, family and connection, the power of imagination, and how our greatest adventures never happen alone.
Louis de Bernieres is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli''s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers'' Prize Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are So Much Life Left Over, The Dust That Falls From Dreams and The Autumn of the Ace, the short story collection Labels, the children''s book Station Jim and the poetry collection The Cat in the Treble Clef.>
Freedom comes in many forms... At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind. Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice... With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
I look at all of Carver's work as just one story, for his stories are all occurences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn... In formulating the mosaic of the film Short Cuts, which is based on these nine stories and a poem, 'Lemonade', I've tried to do the same thing- to give the audience one look... But it all began here. I was a reader turning these pages. Trying on these lives' - Robert Altman in his introduction.
In 1910, while hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a shepherd called Elzeard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzeard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness.
Ten years later, after the war, he visits the shepherd again and sees the young forest he has created spreading slowly over the valley. Elzeard's solitary, silent work continues and the narrator returns year after year to see the miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man's creative instinct.
''A hugely entertaining first novel for lovers of traditional crime fiction, taking us from Kolkata to Brick Lane'' Ann Cleeves Kamil Rahman, disgraced detective, turned waiter, is about to find himself embroiled in a case that might just change his life ... for better or for worse Disgraced detective Kamil Rahman moves from Kolkata to London to start afresh as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. But the day he caters a birthday party for his boss''s friend on Millionaire''s Row, his simple new life becomes rather complicated. The event is a success, the food is delicious, but later that evening the host, Rakesh, is found dead in his swimming pool. Suspicion falls on Rakesh''s new wife, Neha, and Kamil is called to investigate for the family, with the help of his boss''s daughter Anjoli. Kamil and Anjoli prove a capable team - but as the investigation progresses, Kamil struggles to keep memories of the case that destroyed his career in Kolkata at bay. . . and his past will soon catch up with him in some rather unexpected ways.
From the award-winning author of The Waiter comes another fresh and page-turning mystery starring detective-turned-waiter Kamil Rahman. Praise for The Waiter : ''A hugely entertaining first novel, taking us from Kolkata to Brick Lane'' Ann Cleeves ''A rip-roaring mystery that''s engrossing from start to finish... a refreshing and welcome addition to the world of detective fiction. One of my favourite reads of the year'' Abir Mukherjee
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers'' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami''s unique and addictive fictional universe. Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami''s place as one of the world''s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.
