This stunning novel explores desire and anxiety, beauty and youth, memory and power.“By writing down what happened, by telling the story as truthfully as I can, I’m trying to bring them together into one body—the woman from 2021 and the girl from 1983. I don’t know if it can be done.”Paris, a winter’s night in 1983. She is sixteen years old, lost in unfamiliar streets. On a scrap of paper in her pocket is the address of a photographer, K, thirty ye...

Inspired by tape-recorded conversations with her late father, a woman reflects on her childhood in an unusual family in this acclaimed biographical novel."I've long admired Linn Ullmann's fiction, and Unquiet is her masterpiece. Based on her upbringing as the child of two great artists, it is the portrait of complex loves; of a youth divided and inspired by diametrically opposed creative influences; and of the ra...

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, this subtle psychological thriller explores the gray areas between innocence and guilt, truth and lies.Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer’s block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri’s stylish and unforgiving mother.Siri and...

Morally intricate and full of sly humor, Grace is a touching and unexpectedly dramatic exploration of the territory between life and death."Consistently absorbing . . . An elegant stylist with an original voice (and a top-notch translator, Barbara Haveland), Ullmann is especially good at capturing moments of poignancy, often with a trace of gallows humor.”–The New York Times Book ReviewWhen Johan was a boy, he bargained wi...

**On a warm summer night in Oslo, Martin draws Stella into one of the risky games that have defined their ten years together: a balancing act on the edge of their rooftop, nine stories up."Exquisitely written. . . . As hallucinatory as August heat.” –The Washington Post**Amid the shouts of horrified onlookers, Stella stumbles, falling for a moment into Martin’s arms before plummeting to her death. (Did he try to save her?)So begins Linn Ullmann’s transfixin...

**A captivating story of sisterhood and of the inescapable chords of childhood memory.“A hauntingly beautiful novel of family ties, A Blessed Child takes on what it means to be old, what it means to have loved selfishly, deeply and — equally - to no longer love.” - A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress’s Daughter**Every summer Isak Lövenstad gathers his three daughters by different wives to the windswept Baltic island of Hammarsö. Here Erika, Laura, and Molly...

This stunning novel explores desire and anxiety, beauty and youth, memory and power."By writing down what happened, by telling the story . . . I'm trying to bring them together into one body—the woman from 2021 and the girl from 1983. I don't know if it can be done."Paris, a winter's night in 1983. She is sixteen years old, lost in unfamiliar streets. On a scrap of paper in her pocket is the address of a photographer, K, thirty years her senior. Al...

Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer's block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri's stylish and unforgiving mother.Siri and Jon's marriage is loving but difficult and troubled by painful secrets. They have a strained relationship with their elder daughter, Alma, who struggles to find her place in the family conste...

Slavery in the Islamic world has a complex and controversial history. In the earliest days of Islam, Arab Muslims enslaved men, women, and children as the spoils of war. In the following centuries, young boys were imported to imperial Islamic courts in enormous numbers. Some were castrated to serve as guardians of sacred spaces, while others were "harvested" by the Ottomans to serve in the sultan's elite infantry unit. Some even rose to the highest levels of political and military command,...

**A new biography of Cicero, one of the most influential and fascinating figures in classical history.This program is read by the author.**When the Roman statesman Cicero was murdered in 43 BCE, his head was cut off, and his tongue pierced with pins – a final, brutal act of revenge against a man whose words had shaped a generation and made him many enemies. Rising from provincial obscurity to the highest elected office in Rome, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age, ...

**Brought to you by Penguin.What does it mean for us all when death is treated as a glitch and Silicon Valley invests in the “science” of eternal life?**From the epic of Gilgamesh to the alchemy of the philosopher’s stone, humanity’s eternal quest for immortality – and its rejuvenation tricks, therapies and tinctures – has always been our most mortal endeavour.But now the giants of invention and investment are building a fountain of youth of their own creation: one ...

A tour of an ancient library transports us to Mesopotamia, introducing us to its people, their ideas, and their humanity.The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, held an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, clay tablets inscribed with cuneifo...