Lassé d’un monde dans lequel il ne trouve plus sa place, privé de ceux qu’il aime et qui disparaissent un à un, Andrew Blake décide de quitter la direction de sa petite entreprise pour se faire engager comme majordome en France, le pays où il avait rencontré sa femme.En débarquant au domaine de Beauvillier, là où personne ne sait qui il est réellement, il espère marcher sur les traces de son passé. Pourtant, rencontres et situations hors de contrôle vont en décider autrement… Entre Nathalie, sa patronne veuve aux étranges emplois du temps, Odile, la cuisinière et ses problèmes explosifs, Manon, jeune femme de ménage perdue et Philippe, le régisseur bien frappé qui vit au fond du parc, Andrew ne va plus avoir le choix. Lui qui cherchait un moyen d’en finir va être obligé de tout recommencer…Après une première comédie qui a surpris, touché et enthousiasmé lecteurs et libraires, Gilles Legardinier revient avec cette aventure humaine pleine de folie, d’émotion et d’humour qui parlera à beaucoup de monde, quel que soit l’âge… Né à Paris en 1965, Gilles Legardinier s'est toujours passionné pour la transmission de l'émotion. Dès l'âge de 15 ans, il travaille sur les plateaux de cinéma anglais et américains comme pyrotechnicien. Il s'oriente ensuite vers la production et réalise des films publicitaires ainsi que des bandes-annonces et quelques documentaires sur les coulisses de grands films. Il se consacre aujourd'hui à la communication écrite pour le cinéma et la réécriture de scénarii. Parallèlement, il a publié plusieurs romans dont des adaptations, mais aussi des livres pour la jeunesse tels que Le Sceau des Maîtres et Le Dernier Géant, récompensés à maintes reprises. L'Exil des Anges, son premier roman publié au Fleuve Noir en 2009, a reçu le prix SNCF du polar 2009. Il est aussi auteur de Nous étions les hommes et de Demain j'arrête !, sa première comédie.

In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, the four novellas of Compulsory Happiness create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of the ordinary, and the painful search for an ideal."Norman Manea's four novellas, written during the later Ceausescu years, offer a comparable contrast to other Eastern European dissident writing. Instead of the energetic irony, the ebullient absurdism, the sharp-eyed wit, we find a dreamy disconnection, a voice that shock has lowered, an air of sweetness driven mad." — Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times"Mr. Manea's voice is radically new, and we are blessedly awakened and alerted by the demand his fiction makes on our understanding." — Lore Segal, New York Times Book Review

В последнее время редко можно встретить в журналах такие тексты. Между тем, на мой взгляд, они достойны публикации и читательского внимания. Детство — неисчерпаемый источник тем для любого писателя, первые проблемы и сомнения спустя многие годы кажутся смешными, наивными. Но остается ностальгия по тому времени, когда человек только осваивал жизнь. Как можно писать иначе о детстве? Только с любовью… Или Con amore…Желаю всем приятного чтения.Редактор литературного журнала «Точка Зрения»,Анна Болкисева

Un suspense haletant qui nous ouvre les portes de l'élection la plus secrète du monde.Le pape est mort.Derrière les portes closes de la chapelle Sixtine, cent dix-huit cardinaux venus des quatre continents vont participer à l'élection la plus secrète qui soit.Ce sont tous des hommes de foi. Mais ils ont des ambitions. Et ils ont des rivaux.En secret, les alliances se préparent.Ce n'est plus qu'une question d'heures… L'un de ces cardinaux va devenir la figure spirituelle la plus puissante au monde. Sur la place Saint-Pierre, deux cent cinquante mille chrétiens attendent de voir la fumée blanche apparaître…Biographie de l'auteurRobert Harris est né à Nottingham en 1957. Il a été journaliste à la BBC, puis à l'Observer et au Sunday Times, activité pour laquelle il a reçu, en 1992, le titre d' « éditorialiste de l'année ». Il a publié cinq essais dont deux biographies politiques, puis s'est tourné vers la fiction. Il est l'auteur des déjà célèbres Imperium, Pompéi, Archange, Enigma et Dictator. Ses romans se sont vendus à plus de dix millions d'exemplaires et ont été traduits en trente-trois langues.

On an ordinary day at a girl's school, two students are reported missing. The subsequent search involves the neighboring widower Old Mr. Rock and his granddaughter and her fiance, and uncovers the hidden lusts, ambitions, suspicions and jealousies that lie beneath the school's placid surface.Admired in his lifetime by W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Eudora Welty, Anthony Burgess, and Rebecca West, among others, Henry Green wrote nine novels, including Loving, Caught, and Blindness. He is also the author of a memoir, Pack My Bags, and Surviving, a book of uncollected writings.Green considered Concluding to be his finest work.First published in the U.S. by Viking (1948), most recent paperback by University of Chicago (1985).

Instead of the book he’s meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this dark and grotesquely funny account of small woes writ large, of profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction. We learn of Rudolph’s sister, whose help he invites, then reviles as malevolent meddling; his ‘really marvelous’ house, which he hates; the suspicious illness he carefully nurses; his ten-year-long attempt to write the perfect opening sentence; and, finally, his escape to the island of Majorca, which turns out to be the site of someone else’s very real horror story.A brilliant and haunting tale of procrastination, failure, and despair, Concrete is a perfect example of why Thomas Bernhard is remembered as “one of the masters of contemporary European fiction” (George Steiner).

A 35-year-old architect is driving home from his London office when his car swerves and crashes onto a traffic island lying below three converging motorways. Uninjured, he climbs the embankment to seek help, but no one will stop for him and he is trapped on the island, where he remains."Visionary of both style and substance… the literary equivalent of Salvador Dalí or Max Ernst."-The Washington Post Book World"Ballard's novels are complex, obsessive, frequently poetic, and always disquieting chronicles of nature rebelling against humans, of the survival of barbarism in a world of mechanical efficiency, of ethropy, anomie, breakdown, ruin… The blasted landscapes that his characters inhabit are both external settings and states of mind."-Luc Sante

Autodidacta de poderosa imaginación. Juan José Arreola ha ejercido los más disímiles oficios: vendedor ambulante, periodista, maestro y sobre todo charlista de palabra deslumbrante y ademanes categóricos. Inquietador profesional de vidas y sensibilidades, buena parte de la |oven narrativa mexicana le debe enseñanzas definitivas. Su primer libro. Varia invención, lo situó como uno de los mejores cuentistas actuales. Confabularlo le da sitio aparte en nuestras letras. Su evolución literaria podría resumirse así: la ingenuidad que deviene sapiencia; la alusión que se convierte en elusión, el plano vertical que se trueca plano oblicuo. El tema del amor es capital en su obra: va del idealismo adolescente a una visión aterradora y caricaturesca de la mujer, cifra y símbolo de la enajenación, del dolor y de la muerte. Autor de textos redondos por lo que toca a los personajes, la estructura y el estilo, me parece el más perfecto, porque los lastres que venía padeciendo la literatura mexicana desaparecen en él sin dejar huella,Emanuel CarballoLos cuentos que componen Confabularlo rebasan cualquier intento de descripción: fábulas, poemas en prosa, crónicas, simples y llanas narraciones y divertimentos que trascienden, amén de por su profundidad y poesía, por su enorme maestría en el manejo del lenguaje. Clásico ya por la contundencia de su obra, Juan José Arreola nos da en Confabularlo una pequeña muestra de su gran talento literario.

Émigré à Paris, Kim s'adresse à son ami d'enfance, Arkadi. Avant d'être séparés à l'âge de quatorze ans, les deux garçons ont grandi ensemble dans un hameau communautaire, non loin de Leningrad. Kim et Arkadi vivent des années heureuses. Tous deux pionniers dans un mouvement de jeunesse, ils marchent fièrement vers l'horizon radieux que leur promettent les films de propagande, au rythme des chants qui célèbrent les héros de la guerre et la figure mythique du Travailleur. Mais certains silences des parents sont lourds de sous-entendus. Peu à peu émerge en eux le sentiment qu'on les dupe. Et pour l'adulte aux yeux depuis longtemps dessillés, la nostalgie est double: à celle des scènes de l'enfance que la mémoire baigne d'une lumière neigeuse, vient s'ajouter celle, plus inattendue, de l'époque du mensonge et de l'aveuglement.

A dark, poetic mystery about the women of the remote village of Kulumani and the lionesses that hunt them.Told through two haunting, interwoven diaries, Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness reveals the mysterious world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting the women who live there.Mariamar, a woman whose sister was killed in a lioness attack, finds her life thrown into chaos when the outsider Archangel Bullseye, the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, arrives at the request of the village elders. Mariamar’s father imprisons her in her home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel tracks the lionesses in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to them than meets the eye, he starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more dangerous, until it’s no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their traditional culture, and the danger of their animal predators closing in, it becomes clear the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women’s oppression, Confession of the Lioness explores the confrontation between the modern world and ancient traditions to produce an atmospheric, gripping novel.

During the violence and chaos of the Lebanese Civil War, a car pulls up to a roadblock on a narrow side street in Beirut. After a brief and confused exchange, several rounds of bullets are fired into the car, killing everyone inside except for a small boy of four or five. The boy is taken to the hospital, adopted by one of the assassins, and raised in a new family. “My father used to kidnap and kill people …” begins this haunting tale of a child who was raised by the murderer of his real family. The narrator of Confessions doesn’t shy away from the horrible truth of his murderous father — instead he confronts his troubled upbringing and seeks to understand the distortions and complexities of his memories, his war-torn country, and the quiet war that rages inside of him.

Drawing comparisons with Shadow of the Wind, The Name of the Rose and The Reader, and an instant bestseller in more than 20 languages, Confessions is an astonishing story of one man s life, interwoven with a narrative that stretches across centuries to create an addictive and unforgettable literary symphony. I confess. At 60 and with a diagnosis of early Alzheimer s, Adrià Ardèvol re-examines his life before his memory is systematically deleted. He recalls a loveless childhood where the family antique business and his father s study become the centre of his world; where a treasured Storioni violin retains the shadows of a crime committed many years earlier. His mother, a cold, distant and pragmatic woman leaves him to his solitary games, full of unwanted questions. An accident ends the life of his enigmatic father, filling Adrià s world with guilt, secrets and deeply troubling mysteries that take him years to uncover and driving him deep into the past where atrocities are methodically exposed and examined. Gliding effortlessly between centuries, and at the same time providing a powerful narrative that is at once shocking, compelling, mysterious, tragic, humorous and gloriously readable, Confessions reaches a crescendo that is not only unexpected but provides one of the most startling denouements in contemporary literature. Confessions is a consummate masterpiece in any language, with an ending that will not just leave you thinking, but quite possibly change the way you think forever.

A surprised Southern matriarch is confronted by her family at an intervention… A life-altering break-in triggers insomniac introspection in a desperate actor… Streetwise New York City neighbors let down their guard for a naïve puppeteer and must suffer the consequences…In this stunning collection of short stories – five of which are being published for the very first time – bestselling, award-winning author Debra Dean displays the depth and magnitude of her extraordinary literary talent. Replete with the seamless storytelling and captivating lyrical voice that made her debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, a national bestseller, Dean's Confessions of a Falling Woman is a haunting, satisfying, and unforgettable reading experience.

Mary Elizabeth, a.k.a. Lola, is accustomed to playing the starring role in the fascinating production that is her life. Her pottery-making single mom and bratty twin sisters are merely bit players in Lola's dramatic existence. But all this changes when she is forced to move from her beloved Manhattan to the boring suburbs of New Jersey. According to Lola, "living in the suburbs is like being dead, only with cable TV and pizza delivery." The worst part is that someone has already snagged the coveted Drama Queen of Suburbia title--and that someone is Carla Santini. Carla, who is "sophisticated, beautiful, and radiates confidence the way a towering inferno radiates heat," isn't about to let anyone take away her hard-earned crown. Undaunted, Lola tries out for and wins the lead in the school play, a role much desired by Carla. In retaliation, Carla makes the entire student body give Lola the silent treatment (and in addition scores tickets to a sold-out concert of Lola's favorite rock band). Can Lola crash the concert, crush Carla, and still have enough energy to wow everyone in the school production of Pygmalion? It's all in a day's work for Lola, Teenage Drama Queen.

Three months after George Saunders gave a graduation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders’s words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, Congratulations, by the way is an inspiring message from one of today’s most influential and original writers.

When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong: Silvio's literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman. Antonio, the local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, sparks off this dangerously combustible situation when Leda accuses him of trying to molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple's love to the test.Alberto Moravia earned his international reputation with frank, finely-observed stories of love and sex at all levels of society. In this new English translation of Conjugal Love, he explores an imperiled relationship with his customary unadorned style, psychological penetration, and narrative art.

El único indicio del vasto incendio que asolaba los bosques milenarios lo ofrecía el sangriento resplandor que flotaba detrás de las montañas, coronándolas con una singular claridad. El reflejo, vivo y radiante sobre el cielo inmediato, se amortiguaba luego diluyéndose de nube en nube. Sobre las pampas centrales semejaba todavía un prolongado crepúsculo bermejo. Más allá el fuego se denunciaba apenas en un leve centelleo, igual al indeciso crecer del día. Desde las costas del golfo Grande, podía vislumbrarse el horizonte cortado por los cerros desiguales, en el que resplandecía un aura pálidamente rosada diluida por el gris violento del humo que ascendía pesadamente al cielo. Pero pasando las mesetas del Senguerr las señales del desastre se multiplicaban; lenguas de fuego sobrepasaban las alturas que guardaban el gran lago Escondido y el humo formaba un techo sombrío sobre la región de las pampas, donde el sol, perdido en un cielo de cenizas, fatigaba su curso. Grandes bandadas de avutardas huían al sur y al este, aumentando con sus gritos discordantes el desconcierto del éxodo. Gallardas bandurrias volando sumamente bajo, casi rozando las anchas hojas de la nalca1, las seguían, y en un plano más elevado los solitarios cisnes se unían en el vuelo. Garzas rosadas en inseparables parejas batían con ritmo sus alas incansables. Igual a un guerrero altivo y desdeñoso que desafiara la hecatombe, un águila blanca, deidad sagrada de los indios, planeaba en ceñidos círculos sobre el dilatado incendio, manteniéndose a una gran altura como una atalaya del cielo.

Renowned as a novelist of unsurpassed invention, Carlos Fuentes here presents his second collection of stories to appear in English. Where his first, Burnt Water, published in 1980, had as its underlying theme Mexico City itself, Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins extends its imaginative boundaries out to Savannah, to Cadiz, to Glasgow, to Seville and Madrid, both past and present. This new collection is more mysterious, more magical, too, than its predecessor, and in its five related stories Fuentes comes closer to the registers of language and feeling that he explored so memorably in Aura. It reveals Fuentes at the height of his powers-bold, erudite, enthralling.In the title story, a man discovers his wife's secret complicity with the Russian actor who is their neighbor-a complicity that includes not just a previous life but possibly a previous death as well. He finds himself "a mediator. . a point between one sorrow and the next, between one hope and the next, between two languages, two memories, two ages, and two deaths." In "La Desdichada," two students steal-and fall in love with-a store-window mannequin. In "The Prisoner of Las Lomas," a wealthy lawyer in possession of a powerful secret is held hostage by the past he has attempted to subvert and keep at bay. The celebrated bullfighter whose fame is the theme of "Viva Mi Fama" steps from the present into a past immortalized by Goya's portrait of the matador Pedro Romero; and the architects who are the "Reasonable People" of that story find themselves drawn into the irrational mysteries not only of religious fervor but of their famous mentor's identity-they discover "there are no empty houses," only a present fraught with the past.Though each of these novella-length stories offers compelling evidence of Fuentes's talent for narrative free rein as well as for containment and closure, they are also brilliantly interwoven. Readers of his earlier work, especially of his acclaimed ribald epic, Christopher Unborn, will recognize with pleasure Fuentes's undiminished mastery of recurrent images and themes, and all readers will delight in the witty and evocative changes he rings on them. For those few readers who do not yet know the work of Mexico's foremost man of letters, these stories offer them the full gift of his imaginative resourcefulness.

This best-selling debut novel from one of France’s most exciting young writers is based on the true story of the 1949 disappearance of Air France’s Lockheed Constellation and its famous passengers.On October 27, 1949, Air France’s new plane, the Constellation, launched by the extravagant Howard Hughes, welcomed thirty-eight passengers aboard. On October 28, no longer responding to air traffic controllers, the plane disappeared while trying to land on the island of Santa Maria, in the Azores. No one survived.The question Adrien Bosc’s novel asks is not so much how, but why? What were the series of tiny incidents that, in sequence, propelled the plane toward Redondo Mountain? And who were the passengers? As we recognize Marcel Cerdan, the famous boxer and lover of Edith Piaf, and we remember the musical prodigy Ginette Neveu, whose tattered violin would be found years later, the author ties together their destinies: “Hear the dead, write their small legend, and offer to these thirty-eight men and women, like so many constellations, a life and a story.”

Jim Crace's acclaimed debut novel explores an imaginary seventh continent, subtly different from any in the world we know. Its landscapes, wildlife, customs and communities are alien, even frightening — but the continent's inhabitants are nonetheless disarmingly familiar, known to us through their loves, their hopes, and their struggles to make sense of life.On its first publication over twenty years ago, this captivating novel marked the arrival of one of the most imaginative minds at work: a writer capable of transporting his readers to a strange and wonderful landscape while revealing the humanity within the mirage.'"Continent" invites — and sustains — comparison with Borges' David Lodge'A remarkable first novel' John Fowles