Macmillan Readers Starter Level

Nada is no stranger to protest. She is five years old when her French mother takes her to visit her Egyptian father, a political activist with a passing resemblance to President Nasser, in prison. When he returns home five years later, a changed man, their little family begins to fracture and eventually Nada’s mother moves back to Paris. Through her teenage years Nada is surrounded by the language of protest — ‘anarchism’, ‘Trotskyism’, ‘communism’ — and, one summer in Paris, she discovers the ’68 movement and her first love. And how to slam doors in anger.The more things change, the more they stay the same. Through student sit-ins, imprisonments, passionate arguments, accidental alliances, fallen friends, joys and regrets, Nada’s story grows into the story of Egypt’s many celebrated activists such as Arwa and Siham. Moving, uplifting and deeply human, Radwa Ashour’s masterpiece is the story of Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century and a paean to all…

Александр Вяльцев — родился в 1962 году в Москве. Учился в Архитектурном институте. Печатался в “Знамени”, “Континенте”, “Независимой газете”, “Литературной газете”, “Юности”, “Огоньке” и других литературных изданиях. Живет в Москве.

In this autobiographical debut novel from one of America’s most acclaimed poets, a writer’s sentimental journey across the Atlantic becomes a crucible of heartbreak and mental anguish.William Demarest settles into his room, checks his pockets for his seasickness pills, and wanders onto the deck of the ship that will be his home for the next few days. The lights of New York City are still faintly visible, but Demarest’s mind is on London, where he hopes to be reunited with the woman he adores. He has spent countless nights pining for her and is finally ready to declare his love.In a state of feverish anticipation, Demarest steals onto the first-class section of the ship. There, to his surprise, he discovers the woman he is traveling thousands of miles to see, only for her to dismiss him with devastating coldness. For the rest of the voyage, Demarest must wrestle with golden memories turned to dust and long-cherished fantasies that will never come to pass.A brilliant novel of psychological insight and formal experimentation reminiscent of the stories of James Joyce, Blue Voyage is a bold work of art from a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Abel Jackson's boyhood belongs to a vanishing world. On an idyllic stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish, he lives a simple, tough existence. It's just him and his mother in the house at Longboat Bay, but Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets when diving. As the years pass, things change, but one thing seems to remain constant: the greed of humans. When the modern world comes to his patch of sea, Abel wonders what can stand in its way.Blueback is a deceptively simple allegory about a boy who matures through fortitude, and finds wisdom through living in harmony with all forms of life. It is a beautiful distillation of Winton's art and concerns.'In true fable style, this is a simple story, but one so beautiful, poignant and moving it is impossible to ignore.' Daily Telegraph'Winton. . convince[s] us of the preciousness of our oceans not through lectures but through his characters' steady wonder.' New York Times

Grande admiratrice du philosophe, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, dans ce roman qui multiplie les allusions a Lions, evoque surtout le penseur dans son cabinet de travail. On pourrait parler en l'occurrence de portrait moral d'un saint moderne qui, tel saint Jerome (la comparaison est explicite), a voue son existence a l'etude dans la solitude de sa retraite. Dans le roman, la metaphore devient realite, le lion de la legende de Jerome se concretise dans son bureau, devient donc present mais tout en restant, comme la realite, impossible a atteindre. Les 5 chapitres intitules Le lion (numerotes de I a V) constituent, avec les chapitres Coca-cola et Egypte, une biographie intellectuelle de Blumenberg et un bel hommage a un maitre venere. Parallelement a ce portrait, dans des chapitres qui en sont presque independants, l'auteur a voulu construire une sorte de conte philosophique et moral, a propos du rapport d'un individu avec un maitre (illustre par 5 exemples). Dans la petite ville de Munster, dans les annees 80, quatre etudiants suivent les cours brillants — decisifs pour le destin de chacun d'eux — du celebre philosophe. Le premier (et le seul des quatre a avoir un bref entretien avec le professeur), Gerhard (chap. Optatus, Dimanche, L'ange annonce et Heilbronn), studieux et brillant, deviendra lui-meme professeur de philosophie. Sa petite amie, Isa, inquiete et passablement exaltee, est tourmentee en secret par une passion morbide pour le maitre, ce qui la conduira au suicide (chap. Optatus, Dimanche et N 255431800). Leur ami, Richard, reve du maitre comme d'un sauveur et, decu, va poursuivre en Amazonie son reve infantile de salut (un recit d'une sombre beaute, en 3 chapitres consecutifs, Richard, etc.). Hansi, quant a lui, transforme en delire l'enseignement du maitre et s'enfonce lentement dans la folie (chap. Hansi et Addenda). Un cinquieme personnage au caractere bien trempe, la religieuse Mehliss (chap. Souci universel), reconnait aussi la superiorite de Blumenberg, mais intuitivement (elle est la seule a voir le lion), sans rien savoir du philosophe. Tout le roman tient dans le recit de l'existence de ces differents personnages (aux destins contrastes mais independants, obeissant uniquement a une logique interne a chaque personnage) depuis le jour de leur rencontre avec le philosophe jusqu'a leur mort… et meme encore plus loin, dans un au-dela explicitement inspire de Beckett ou le dernier chapitre les reunit tous, en compagnie de Blumenberg. Ne en avril 1954, Sibylle Lewitscharoff est l'auteur d'une oeuvre riche et reconnue en Allemagne. Ce titre, pour lequel il lui a ete decerne plusieurs prix est le son premier ouvrage a etre traduit en francais.

“Markus has a remarkable ability to strip life down to its basics, to the point where the metaphors we manufacture as the looking-glass for our existence end up standing in for existence itself. Fish, mud, night and river come to stand in place of family connections as fathers and sons, by giving themselves to fishing give themselves over to a lone search and to loss.”—Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain.Peter Markus has published three story collections and lives in Michigan.

Debiut powieściopisarski prozaika i poety, autora Powrotu do Breitenheide, opowiada o klęsce pokolenia, które schodzi ze sceny życia w obliczu nowego świata. Akcja tej pierwszej polskiej powieści o Erze Wodnika rozgrywa się w latach czterdziestych XXI wieku. U Kowalewskiego nie ma jednak futurystycznych wizji. Podobnie jak w swoich opowiadaniach, autor pozostaje pesymistycznym realistą. Bohater Bóg zapłacz! jest najzwyklejszym starym człowiekiem. Nieuleczalnie chory, trafia do szpitala, by zostać uśmierconym wedle przyjętej procedury. Bohaterowie Kowalewskiego z pasją rozprawiają o życiu. Dialogi są pełne egzystencjalnych sentencji i międzypokoleniowych sporów, a sceneria z przełomu lat 60. i 70. nabiera rangi symbolu minionego świata.Książka otrzymała nagrodę Poznańskiego Przeglądu Nowości Wydawniczych i była nominowana do Nagrody Literackiej NIKE 2000. Wkrótce ukaże się węgierski przekład powieści.

Named one of the best books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, Gordon's novel takes on the difficult subject of a young girl coming of age and falling in love with an older woman, her psychiatrist.

A collection of classic, yet shockingly contemporary, short stories set in the vibrant world of mid-century Bombay, from one of India’s greatest writers.Arriving in 1930s Bombay, Saadat Hasan Manto discovered a city like no other. A metropolis for all, and an exhilarating hub of license and liberty, bursting with both creative energy and helpless despondency. A journalist, screenwriter, and editor, Manto is best known as a master of the short story, and Bombay was his lifelong muse. Vividly bringing to life the city’s seedy underbelly — the prostitutes, pimps, and gangsters that filled its streets — as well as the aspiring writers and actors who arrived looking for fame, here are all of Manto’s Bombay-based stories, together in English for the very first time. By turns humorous and fantastical, Manto’s tales are the provocative and unflinching lives of those forgotten by humanity.

Siem Sigerius is a beloved, brilliant professor of mathematics with a promising future in politics. His family — including a loving wife, two gorgeous, intelligent stepdaughters and a successful future son-in-law — and carefully appointed home in the bucolic countryside complete the portrait of a comfortable, morally upright household. But there are elements of Siem's past that threaten to upend the peace and stability that he has achieved, and when he stumbles upon a deception that’s painfully close to home, things begin to fall apart. A cataclysmic explosion in a fireworks factory, the advent of internet pornography, and the reappearances of a discarded, dangerous son all play a terrible role in the spectacular fragmentation of the Sigerius clan.A riveting portrait of a family in crisis and the ways that even the smallest twists of fate can forever change our lives, Bonita Avenue is an incendiary, unpredictable debut of relationships torn asunder by lies, and minds destroyed by madness.

Bonjour Tristesseis Françoise Sagan's stylish, shimmering and amoral tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera, published when its author was just eighteen years old.It tells the story of Cécile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. InA Certain Smile, which is also included in this volume, Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways.Both novellas have been freshly translated by Heather Lloyd and include an introduction by Rachel Cusk.Françoise Sagan was born in France in 1935.Bonjour tristesse(1954), published when she was just eighteen, became asuccès de scandaleand even earned its author a papal denunciation. Sagan went on to write many other novels, plays and screenplays, and died in...

Once outside its flowerpot, the tree ceases to be a bonsai."Winner of Chile’s Literary Critics’ Award for Best Novel"Hailed as a great Latin American literary event, this stylistically innovative, elliptically told tale of a young man and his love who mysteriously disappears is, as the narrator tells us, “a simple story that becomes complicated.”Through both the distance and closeness of these young lovers, Alejandro Zambra brilliantly explores the relationship between art, love, and life. Bonsai is accessible yet profound — as one critic in Chile’s Capital newspaper put it, “Brief as a sigh and forceful as a blow.”The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.

Murder is committed for its own sake in the three fictional episodes of The Book of Destruction. In ‘The Gardener’, the narrator learns from the thug Seshadri that he has been selected for assassination for no reason but the pure purpose of killing. A discotheque is bombed out of existence in ‘The Hotelier and the Traveler’. In the third episode, leading the narrator to an elaborately staged orgy and sacrifice, stitched clothes escape from a tailor’s shop and soar down the streets to take over bodies.The cruelty of killers and the wretchedness of victims are shifted to the margins as the novel focuses on the act of murder. In his inimitable style, Anand takes the mesmerized reader on a journey of three stages — the practice of killing, the sacrifice of the victim and the sacrifice of the sacrificer — before bringing the story of destruction to its finale.

"One of the most beautiful love stories ever written." — Paris MatchShortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother's death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, moving, it is a tribute to all mothers.Albert Cohen (1895–1981) is the author of Solal (1930); Mangeclous (1938); Belle du Seigneur (1968), which was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman; and Les Valereux (1969).

The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world’s most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. This tech mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication.Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual.

In Bookends, four friends in their 30s cope with changes. Following a dream, Cath is leaving a stable job to open a bookstore with her friend Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy's husband, Josh, seems to be straying into the arms of an old college flame, and longtime friend Simon finds that his new beau is not winning favor among his dearest friends.

A masterpiece of unusual beauty by one of Europe's greatest living writers — a brilliant evocation of the Spanish Civil War.On August 19, 1936 Hercules the boxer stands on the quayside at Coruña and watches Fascist soldiers piling up books and setting them alight. With this moment a young, carefree group of friends are transformed into a broken generation. Out of this incident during the early months of Spain's tragic civil war, Manuel Rivas weaves a colorful tapestry of stories and unforgettable characters to create a panorama of 20th-century Spanish history — for it is not only the lives of Hercules the boxer and his friends that are tainted by the unending conflict, but also those of a young washerwoman who sees souls in the clouded river water and the stammering son of a judge who uncovers his father's hidden library. As the singed pages fly away on the breeze, their stories live on in the minds of their readers.

A Dance to the Music of Time — his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World.”

A Dance to the Music of Time — his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World.”