'Subtle, skillful, and clear. It's so clear, in fact, that you can see a very long way down, into the heart of a flawed but valiant human being, into the sickness of a nation, into the depths of political evil. It's the most impressive novel I've read for years, and one of the very few that feels truly necessary' - Philip PullmanIn the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal's dictatorship of António Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms w...

Brought to you by Penguin.In the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal's dictatorship of António Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms with the rise of fascism around him and its insidious impact on his work. Consumed by the passing of his wife and the child he never had, Pereira lives a quiet and lonely existence. One day, the young and charismatic Monteiro Rossi enters his life, changing everything. A man who once shied away from criti...

November 1917. When Austrian forces advance into Northern Italy, the aristocratic Spada family find their estate requisitioned by enemy soldiers. A cruel act of violence against a group of local village girls sparks their desire for revenge. The whole family - from the eccentric grandparents to the secretive servants - have their own ideas about how to fight the enemy, but their courage is soon put to the test and it seems that some are willing to compromise. Seventeen-year-old Paolo Spada...

When Samuele Stocchino is two years old the village sage can already see a heart shaped like a wolf's head beating in his breast: the heart of a murderer. As a colonial soldier in Northern Africa, recruited from one subject land to subdue another, the sixteen-year-old Stocchino learns to kill before he has learned to love, and it is a skill he hones to perfection on the pitiless battlefields of the Corso Front in the Great War.Returning to Sardinia a hero to a pauper's welcome, he ...

Tabucchi’s masterpiece “conjures a state between waking and dreaming” (The New York Times)Dr. Pereira is an aging, lonely, overweight journalist who has failed to notice the menacing cloud of fascism over Salazarist Lisbon. One day he meets Montiero Rossi, an aspiring young writer whose anti-fascist fervor is as strong as Pereira’s apolitical languor. Eventually, breaking out of the shell of his own inhibitions, Pereira reluctantly rises to heroism—and thi...

A boy is found murdered in a well near a beach resort. A Senegalese peddler is accused in a hopeless case soaked in small town racism. The Italian judicial process revealed and an affectionate portrait of a deeply humane hero.