This novel by Nobel Prizewinning author Patrick Modiano is one of the most seductive and accessible in his oeuvre: the story of a mans memories of fleeing responsibility, finding love, and searching for meaning in an uncertain world The narrator of Villa Triste , an anxious, roving, stateless young man of eighteen, arrives in a small French lakeside town near Switzerland in the early 1960s. He is fleeing the atmosphere of menace he feels around him and the fear that grips him. Fear of war? Of imminent catastrophe? Of others? Whatever it may be, the proximity of Switzerland, to which he plans to run at the first sign of danger, gives him temporary reassurance. The young man hides among the other summer visitors until he meets a beautiful young actress named Yvonne Jacquet, and a strange doctor, René Meinthe. These two invite him into their world of soirees and late-night debauchery. But when real life beckons once again, he finds no sympathy from his new companions. Modiano has written a haunting novel that captures lost youth, the search for identity, and ultimately, the fleetingness of time.
B>This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artists work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene./b>br> br> In 1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France--her only trip to Europe, and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own.br> br> Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp.br> br> Using Kahlos whirlwind romance with the authors father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.
B>b>The new novel from the acclaimed poet and publisher asks fundamental questions about love and sex, friendship and rivalry, desire and power, and the age-old dance of benevolence and attraction between teacher and student./b>/b>br>br>Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticuts renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.br>;;;;;;;;Then Leveretts headmaster asks Sam to help investigate a charge brought by one of his classmates that he was abused by a teacher. Sam is flooded with memories, above all of his overwhelming love for his friend Eddie and the support of his most inspiring mentor, Theodore Gibson.br>;;;;;;;;Sams search for the truth becomes a quest to get at the heart of Leverett, then and now. The school has changed enormously over the years, but at its core lie assumptions about privilege and responsibility untested for more than a century. And Sams assumptions about his own life are shaken, too, as he struggles to understand what really happened all those years ago.
B>b>An eloquent, powerful reckoning with incest and trauma, which made a profound impact with its denunciation of a prominent French public intellectual and the literary and political elite that enabled his abuse./b>/b>br>br>In February 2017, Camille Kouchner gathered with family in Sanary-sur-Mer to bury her mother, who died with none of her five children present. Her passing would stir up old emotions, ultimately leading Camille to publicly confront a long-held and corrosive secret: her stepfather sexually abused her twin brother when they were adolescents. This violation of the parent-child relationship was compounded by the complicity of their mother, who learned of her husbands actions and stood by him, shifting blame to Camille and her twin.br>;br>La Familia Grande poignantly explores the family dynamics of abuse, and the questions of guilt and shame surrounding it. Camille grapples with her own sense of responsibility--for not having stopped her stepfather at the time, and for agreeing to keep silent as her brother asked--and also considers the wider societal forces that have allowed influential men to commit such crimes and avoid the consequences for so long.
The highly anticipated final book in the internationally bestselling The Art of Hearing Heartbeats trilogy, a moving story about love''s power to transcend distances and heal seemingly irreparable wounds. Twelve-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people''s emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father comes to visit him once a year, and he can hardly remember his mother, who, for unclear reasons, keeps herself away from her son. Everything changes when Bo Bo discovers the story of his parents'' great love, which threatens to break down in the whirlwind of political events, and of his mother''s mysterious sickness. Convinced that he can heal her and reunite their family, Bo Bo decides to set out in search of his parents. A gripping, heartwarming tale that takes the reader from Burma to New York and back, The Heart Remembers is a worthy conclusion to Jan-Philipp Sendker''s beloved series.
Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes , now available for the first time in paperback. "Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know what you think of me." So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met. At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.
B>b>A new story collection from one of Europes most exciting writers (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. /b>br>;/b>br>br>Georg is on the verge of retirement. No one notices him anymore at the office, and there is no dinner waiting for him at home. He seems to dissolve slowly and a nameless horror seizes him.br>;br>Sabrina is flattered when an artist approaches her. But when she sees herself as a work of art for the first time, she shudders.br>;br>David wants to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but he wont be using it today. Hes heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So hes started to lurk.br>;br>We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.
B>b>A New York Times bestseller and a "Best Thriller of the Year/b>"br>br>b>Winner of the Goncourt Prize and now an international phenomenon, this dizzying, whip-smart novel blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight./b>/b>br>br>Who would we be if we had made different choices? Told that secret, left that relationship, written that book? We all wonder--the passengers of Air France 006 will find out. br>br>In their own way, they were all living double lives when they boarded the plane:br> Blake, a respectable family man who works as a contract killer.br> Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star who uses his womanizing image to hide that hes gay.br> Joanna, a Black American lawyer pressured to play the good old boys game to succeed with her Big Pharma client.br> Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet largely obscure writer suddenly on the precipice of global fame.br> About to start their descent to JFK, they hit a shockingly violent patch of turbulence, emerging on the other side to a reality both perfectly familiar and utterly strange. As it charts the fallout of this logic-defying event, The Anomaly takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House and a top-secret hangar.br> In Hervé Le Telliers most ambitious work yet, high literature follows the lead of a bingeable Netflix series, drawing on the best of genre fiction from chick lit to mystery, while also playfully critiquing their hallmarks. An ingenious, timely variation on the doppelgänger theme, it taps into the parts of ourselves that elude us most.
In this charming, deeply atmospheric novel set against the dazzling Amalfi Coast of the 1950s, two women form an intense and lasting friendship. Inspired by her own adventurous, unconventional life, actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza''s recently rediscovered novel takes the reader to the sun-drenched town of Positano in southern Italy. There, while working on a film, Goliarda encounters the captivating Erica, a beautiful widow called "Princess" by the locals, who has been the object of much speculation. As the two women grow closer in spite of their different personalities, they gradually reveal more about their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and the ghosts from their pasts that continue to hang over them. Writing the story of this transformative friendship thirty years later, Goliarda offers a profound reflection on love in its many forms, and opens a window onto an enchanting time and place that lingers in the mind.
In 1980s South Korea, 20-something Jung Yoon is forced to re-live the most intense period of her life, including the death of her beloved mother, first love and friendship, when she receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation. Original.
He was the brother of «the Arab» killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus's classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name-Musa-and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Observer, and Sydney Morning Herald. The true story of a love affair between two extraordinary women becomes a literary tour deforce in this novel that recreates the surrealist movement in Paris and the horrors of the two world wars with a singular incandescence and intimacy. In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As sisters they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail. Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dalí to André Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitlers occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy. Brilliantly imagined, profoundly thought-provoking, and ultimately heartbreaking, Never Anyone But You infuses life into a forgotten history as only great literature can.
B>b>From the internationally bestselling author of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, a moving tale of forbidden love and extraordinary courage in the face of disaster. /b>/b>br>br>Eighteen-year-old Niri and his family live a modest but secure life working in the villa of the wealthy Benzes. But when the pandemic comes, they are all let go, and left staring into the abyss of abject poverty. As their situation grows increasingly desperate, the once rule-abiding monastery student decides he wont wait at the mercy of a corrupt, indifferent government, and rebels against his fathers resigned acceptance.br>;;;;;;;;;;; Sneaking through the locked-down city at night, past the military patrols, Niri returns to the villa to take what his family needs to survive. Waiting for him there is his childhood friend--and the Benzes daughter--Mary, who has a bigger plan that will change their lives forever.br>A universal story of love across social classes, The Rebel and the Thief poignantly shows how adversity can teach us what matters most: courage to resist, will to change, and unconditional trust in each other.
Zeruya Shalev is one of my favorite contemporary writers, her work always spiky and original, and Pain is a searing book, a wild and ravenous story of family entanglement and impossible yearning. -- Lauren Groff, author of Florida and Fates and Furies A powerful, astute novel that exposes how old passions can return, testing our capacity to make choices about what is most essential in life. Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her. Iris's marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated. Is this an impossible predicament, or on the contrary a scintillating revelation of the many ways life's twists and turns can bring us to a place we would never have expected to be?
When her boyfriend, Elias, dies from a serious soccer injury, Masha, a young immigrant living in Germany who is studying to become an interpreter, must finally confront a past that has haunted her for years. Original.
When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be--until they find a love letter he wrote many years before, to a Burmese woman they never heard of. (This book was previously listed in Forecast .) Original.
Andreas returns to his hometown in Switzerland to escape the monotony of his life in Paris and to rekindle a romance with his first love after his doctor reveals he may have lung cancer.
Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women--and he can’t make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts at starting a family get the best of them. Alex soon finds himself kindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona, Alex is inexplicably drawn to her while despising himself for it. Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. But when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn, and Alex is puzzled more than ever by the mysteries of his heart.Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. Seven Years is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.
A follow-up to Seven Years presents an anthology of stories that employ the acclaimed Swiss author's use of direct prose, deceptively simple narratives and deep psychological insights into the existential dilemmas of contemporary life. Original.
