Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided?Rippling across time like the river that runs through it, Selva Almada's latest novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style and singular vision of rural Argentina.One of the Best Books of 2020 in Clarin and La NacionShortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEBerlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024WINNER OF THE AUGUST PRIZE 2022 (BEST FICTION)'[A] miraculous sort of novel' Hernan Diaz'I wish I could write like this' Fredrik Backman'So good that I kept underlining passages so I could reread them later' Mark Haddon'Mesmerizing and hot to the touch' THE NEW YORK TIMES'Textured insights into human nature' NEW YORKER'Wistfully recalls a time when what was lost stayed lost' THE TIMESA famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.MORE PRAISE FOR THE DETAILS:'A novel that, through its very bones, encapsulates one of the most important ideas of our current political moment - the necessity of connection, and our vulnerability to one other' Susannah Dickey, author of TENNIS LESSONS'A woozy, affecting dive into desire, domination and memory' FINANCIAL TIMES'An ode to the different kinds of love that form us . . . I won't forget this beautiful book' Jenna Clake, author of DISTURBANCE'A fever dream . . . A feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life' LITERARY HUB
**LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024**'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you.'A fascinating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny, from the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize.In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history.Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own.Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson One of Europe's most decorated authors... Seasoned fans [of Kadare] will be enthralled Sunday Times
**A Summer 2024 pick in the Times Literary Supplement and the Financial Times**"e;Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine's greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre"e; New York Times"e;A very intriguing and atmospheric novel by a highly accomplished writer . . . A fascinating read in the light of contemporary events"e; Alexander McCall Smith, Bestselling Author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective AgencyKyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion.When Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father's collection of abacuses for company.Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him - or finish what the Cossack started.Inflected with Kurkov's signature humour and magical realism, The Silver Bone takes inspiration from the real life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail.Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEWhat if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can t live without them?This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma s deceptively simple What I d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024The 100,000 copy Italian bestseller for fans of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy'Deliciously enjoyable' Katherine Heiny'I adored it' Naoise Dolan'Hilarious' Roddy Doyle'Thrillingly original' Monica AliVero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety; a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions; and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero's need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations, and a complicated relationship with truth and storytelling ...
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024"e;Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface."e; Jhumpa Lahiri"e;One of Italy's most accomplished novelists."e; The Guardian "e;Masterly."e; Times Literary Supplement The modest apartment on Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federi, a railway clerk, is convinced that, if he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Talented, ambitious, and frustrated, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. Years later, his first-born son will tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.
Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2024'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"e;Say something!"e; she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.'Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
'An intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent' Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive'Powerful and searing' Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever DreamA provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman's family ties to both colonised and coloniserIn an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder. As she peers through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own - but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. In the wake of her father's death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft that Charles left behind to revelations of her father's infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, in turn reframing her own struggles with desire, love and race. Seeking relief from these personal and historical wounds, Gabriela turns to the body and desire as sources of both constraint and potential freedom. Blending personal, historical and fictional writing, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Subversive, intimate and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonization.
