A wonderful, balanced novel about how the remains of the past reverberate in the present, Shutterspeed sensitively and delicately describes the powerful emotions which lie just beneath the surface of the unruffled sheen of village life. Joris’ father died young, and his mother moved to Spain, so he has lived with his aunt and uncle since early childhood. He is quiet and introverted, and his aunt and uncle fear that he harbours a deep resentment for the loss of his parents. The gen...

In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves's "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write.Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War's centenary...

'What makes me saddest, is the double silence of her being. Language has packed its bags and jumped over the railing of the capsizing ship, but there is also another silence in her or around her. I can no longer hear the music of her soul.'One day, the author's mother no longer remembers the word for 'book'. This seemingly innocuous moment of distraction is the first sign of the slow disintegration of her mind.As Alzheimer's disease sets in and language increasingly escapes ...

My Fellow Skin is a beautiful, affectionate novel told from the point of view of an impressionable young boy. The novel opens before the boy can talk, and we follow Anton’s first, tentative steps on the path to adulthood. He gradually begins to grasp an understanding of time and death, and when he goes to school he falls in love for the first time – not with the schoolgirls his peers are interested in, but with his classmate, Willem. A gentle, protective relationship develops betw...

Best Translated Fiction of the Year, The IndependentThis stunning historical fiction novel about the magnitude and impact of World War I—told through the written memories of an elderly Belgian woman—has “the footprint of Proust . . . on every page” (Financial Times)As a girl, Helena is sent to her uncle’s country house just before the Great War, and from here she witnesses scenes of indescribable horror. But it is also whe...

Written from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy who lives with his grandmother, Marcel is a striking debut novel describing the vivid history of a family in a Flemish village. The mysterious death of Marcel, the family favourite, has always haunted the young boy. With the help of his schoolteacher, he starts to discover the secrets of Marcel’s ‘black’ past. The story of his death on the Eastern Front for the sake of Flanders, and the shame this brought upon his family gradual...

Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two little girls, extracted from their homes in wartime London, encounter something terrifying in a forest. Later when they meet as grown women, they realise the experience has coloured their lives. A dark tale about the nature of stories themselves.Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was originally published in the collection Little Black Book of Stories.

_______________'The autobiography comes full circle - appropriately enough, because this is a book in which people come to terms with the past, make peace with inner demons, learn to say goodbye to loved ones and become sensitive, caring human beings' - The Independent**_______________First published in 1993, A Short Walk from Harrods is volume six of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirs.**Forced to return to...

'Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar' Deborah Levy, from the introductionAn old woman lives alone in a tiny attic flat in Paris, counting out coffee beans every morning beneath the roar of the overhead metro. Starving, she spends her days walking around the city, each step a bid for recognition of her own existence. She rides crowded metro carriages to feel the warmth of other bodies, and watches the hot batter of pancakes drip from ...

WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS C.J. DENNIS PRIZE FOR POETRYSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2011 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PREMIER'S BOOK AWARDSDisarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and ...

'Though their house was new, the wall had been there a long time.'In these two stories, which have never before been translated into English, Tsushima shows how memories, dreams and fleeting images describe the borders of our lives.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Ack...

Collected here for the first time are stories spanning five decades of writing by the "short story master" ( Harold Bloom).As John Banville writes in his introduction to The Love Object, Edna O'Brien "is, simply, one of the finest writers of our time." The thirty-one stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without.Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and...