By the celebrated Oulipo writer, this brilliant and witty novel set in Lisbon explores love, relationships, and the strange balance between literature and life.Journalist, writer, and translator Vincent Balmer moves to Lisbon to escape from a failing affair. During his first assignment there, he teams up with Antonio — a photographer who has just returned to the city after a ten-year absence — to report for a French newspaper on an infamous serial killer’s trial.While walking around the city together to take notes and photos for the article, they visit the places of Antonio’s childhood, swap stories from their pasts, and confide in each other. But the more they learn about each other, the more their lives become inextricably intertwined.With a structure that parallels Homer’s Odyssey, Eléctrico W recounts their nine days together and the adventures that proliferate to form a constellation of successive ephemeral connections and relationships.

El protagonista de esta intensa crónica sobre el paso del tiempo es alguien que descubre la terrible realidad de la muerte en las playas de su infancia, que triunfa en su carrera como publicitario, que fracasa estrepitosamente en sus tres matrimonios y que, en su vejez, reflexiona sobre el deterioro físico, el arrepentimiento y la necesidad de aceptar la inanidad de su porpia existencia.

June 28, 1389: six hundred years before Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic called for a new massacre in Kosovo, there took place, on the Field of the Blackbirds, a battle shrouded in legend. A coalition of Serbs, Albanian Catholics, Bosnians, and Rumanians confronted and were defeated by the Ottoman army of Sultan Murad. This battle became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Kosovars. In three stories resonant with mystery, Ismail Kadare explores the legend and the consequences of that defeat.— A heartfelt and yet clear-eyed lament for a land riven by hatreds as old as the Homeric epics and as young as the latest news broadcast.

"The stories in Elegy on Kinderklavier travel around the world and to the moon, and along the way they tell you everything they know. Arna Hemenway writes a fiction whose satisfactions are not merely narrative but musical, and it is a pleasure to listen to his stories as they rise into song."— Kevin BrockmeierBarnes & Noble Summer 2014 Discover Great New Writers SelectionThe stories in Elegy on Kinderklavier explore the profound loss and intricate effects of war on lives that have been suddenly misaligned. A diplomat navigates a hostile political climate and an arranged marriage in an Israeli settlement on a newly discovered planet; a small town in Kansas shuns the army recruiter who signed up its boys as troops are deployed to Iraq, falling in helicopters and on grenades; a family dissolves around mental illness and a child's body overtaken by cancer. The moment a soldier steps on an explosive device is painfully reproduced, nanosecond by nanosecond. Arna Bontemps Hemenway's stories feel pulled out of time and place, and the suffering of his characters seem at once otherworldly and stunningly familiar. Elegy on Kinderklavier is a disquieting exploration of what it is to lose and be lost.Arna Bontemps Hemenway's fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, A Public Space, the Seattle Review, and Ecotone. Originally from Kentucky, he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Truman Capote Literary Trust.

Lore arrives at the hospital alone — no husband, no partner, no friends. Her birth plan is explicit: she wants no fetal monitor, no IV, no epidural. Franckline, a nurse in the maternity ward — herself on the verge of showing — is patient with the young woman. She knows what it’s like to worry that something might go wrong, and she understands the pain when it does. She knows as well as anyone the severe challenge of childbirth, what it does to the mind and the body.Eleven Hours is the story of two soon-to-be mothers who, in the midst of a difficult labor, are forced to reckon with their pasts and re-create their futures. Lore must disentangle herself from a love triangle; Franckline must move beyond past traumas to accept the life that’s waiting for her. Pamela Erens moves seamlessly between their begrudging friendship and the memories evoked by so intense an experience. At turns urgent and lyrical, Erens’s novel is a visceral portrait of childbirth, and a vivid rendering of the way we approach motherhood — with fear and joy, anguish and awe.

Wie berührt man die Seele? Durch Liebe oder durch Lust? Kann man die Seele wie einen Körper berühren und umgekehrt? Ein provozierendes modernes Märchen über die Alchimie der Liebe.Paulo Coelho, geboren 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Studium der Rechtswissenschaften, danach Reisen nach Südamerika, Europa und Nordafrika. Zurück in Brasilien, Veröffentlichung von Theaterstücken und provokativer Rocksongs, die ihm über die Militarjunta der 70er Jahre dreimal ins Gefängnis einbrachten. Er ist Herausgeber einer Untergrundzeitschrift, eines Musikmagazins sowie Direktor von Polygram und CBS, Brasilien. Ab 1980 (Stellenverlust) 5 Jahre Studium in einem alten spanischen Orden und Zurücklegung des Pilgerwegs nach Santiago de Compostela. 2006 wurde Paulo Coelho mit dem mexikanischen Literaturpreis »Las Pergolas« ausgezeichnet.Maralde Meyer-Minnemann, geboren 1943 in Hamburg, lebt heute als Übersetzerin in Hamburg. 1997 erhielt sie den Hamburger Förderpreis für literarische Übersetzungen, 1997 den Preis Portugal-Frankfurt, 1998 den Helmut-M.-Braem-Preis.

From the “wickedly entertaining” (USA Today) Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Prep and American Wife, comes a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. A bold literary experiment, Eligible is a brilliant, playful, and delicious saga for the twenty-first century.This version of the Bennet family — and Mr. Darcy — is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help — and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master’s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won’t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane’s fortieth birthday fast approaches.Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. .And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.Wonderfully tender and hilariously funny, Eligible both honors and updates Austen’s beloved tale. Tackling gender, class, courtship, and family, Sittenfeld reaffirms herself as one of the most dazzling authors writing today.

Elizabeth Costello es una reconocida novelista australiana cuya dilatada vida se nos revela a través de una ingeniosa serie de ocho conferencias. Desde el discurso de aceptación de un premio en una facultad de letras de Nueva Inglaterra, una conferencia sobre el mal celebrada en Amsterdam hasta una lectura del poeta Robert Duncan plena de alusiones sexuales, Coetzee conduce al lector inexorablemente hacia un final que, como es habitual en este autor, nos impulsa a la reflexión más profunda. Fruto de una imaginación vívida y escrita en una prosa certera, Elizabeth Costello es, en apariencia, la historia de una mujer en su faceta de madre, hermana, amante y escritora. Pero es también una profunda y cautivadora meditación sobre la esencia de narrar historias, y una defensa de la necesidad de ponerse en lugar del otro para entender que la humanidad es una sola. Solo un escritor de la talla de Coetzee puede llevar a cabo dicha tarea.

Amazon.com ReviewFor South African writer J.M. Coetzee, winner of two Booker Prizes and the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, the world of receiving literary awards and giving speeches must be such a commonplace that he has put the circuit at the center of his book, Elizabeth Costello. As the work opens, in fact, the eponymous Elizabeth, a fictional novelist, is in Williamstown, Pennsylvania, to receive the Stowe Award. For her speech at the Williamstown's Altona College she chooses the tired topic, "What Is Realism?" and quickly loses her audience in her unfocused discussion of Kafka. From there, readers follow her to a cruise ship where she is virtually imprisoned as a celebrity lecturer to the ship's guests. Next, she is off to Appleton College where she delivers the annual Gates Lecture. Later, she will even attend a graduation speech.Coetzee has made this project difficult for himself. Occasional writing-writing that includes graduation speeches, acceptance speeches, or even academic lectures-is a less than auspicious form around which to build a long work of fiction. A powerful central character engaged in a challenging stage of life might sustain such a work. Yet, at the start, Coetzee declares that Elizabeth is "old and tired," and her best book, The House on Eccles Street is long in her past. Elizabeth Costello lacks a progressive plot and offers little development over the course of each new performance at the lectern. Readers are given Elizabeth fully formed with only brief glimpses of her past sexual dalliances and literary efforts.In the end, Elizabeth Costello seems undecided about its own direction. When Elizabeth is brought to a final reckoning at the gates of the afterlife, she begins to suspect that she is actually in hell, "or at least purgatory: a purgatory of clichés." Perhaps Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, which can be read as an extended critique of clichéd writing, is a portrait of this purgatory. While some readers may find Coetzee's philosophical prose sustenance enough on the journey, some will turn back at the gate. -Patrick O'KelleyFrom Publishers WeeklyEven more uncompromising than usual, this latest novel by Coetzee (his first since 1999's Booker Prize-winning Disgrace) blurs the bounds of fiction and nonfiction while furthering the author's exploration of urgent moral and aesthetic questions. Elizabeth Costello, a fictional aging Australian novelist who gained fame for a Ulysses-inspired novel in the 1960s, reveals the workings of her still-formidable mind in a series of formal addresses she either attends or delivers herself (an award acceptance speech, a lecture on a cruise ship, a graduation speech). This ingenious structure allows Coetzee to circle around his protagonist, revealing her preoccupations and contradictions her relationships with her son, John, an academic, and her sister, Blanche, a missionary in Africa; her deep, almost fanatical concern with animal rights; her conflicted views on reason and realism; her grapplings with the human problems of sex and spirituality. The specters of the Holocaust and colonialism, of Greek mythology and Christian morality, and of Franz Kafka and the absurd haunt the novel, as Coetzee deftly weaves the intense contemplation of abstractions with the everyday life of an all-too-human body and mind. The struggle for self-expression comes to a wrenching climax when Elizabeth faces a final reckoning and finds herself at a loss for words. This is a novel of weighty ideas, concerned with what it means to be human and with the difficult and seductive task of making meaning. It is a resounding achievement by Coetzee and one that will linger with the reader long after its reverberating conclusion.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

El alma suele ser ese aspecto de la vida que liga la actuación del hombre en ese espacio intermedio que hay entre nuestra conciencia y nuestra sentido. No sabemos si existe, no sabemos qué es, pero tenemos la intuición de que en algún lugar de nuestro ser se encuentra oculta.Esa alma, ese concepto que no sabemos si es o no es, si existe o no existe, es la protagonista de éste libro de Manuel Rivas titulado Ella, Maldita Alma. Un libro de relatos que nos acerca a situaciones cotidianas, vistas desde el punto de vista singular y único que el propio personaje nos transmite en sus vivencias.Desde el punto de vista del lector, puedo asegurar que es una obra dura y tierna a la vez, llena de recuerdos y vivencias de antaño que se rememoran en cada uno de los relatos poniendo de manifiesto un recuerdo, un pensamiento, una imagen o un lugar, en el que el alma, oculta tras alguno de los elementos de los que el autor se sirve para contarnos cada situación, siempre es la protagonista, o si cabe la responsable de según qué situaciones, o qué forma de actuar.Es curioso, pero los relatos intimistas que aquí se nos muestran no difieren en mucho de los que todos podemos llegar a vivir en nuestras vidas. Unas vidas en las que situaciones reflejadas en papel pueden parecer tan lejanas o cercanas como el propio lector quiera. Verse reflejado en cada una de las situaciones no es tan difícil, y sólo hay que saber relacionar. Esa es quizá una cuestión que debemos tener en cuenta tras leer o mientras se lee Ella, Maldita Alma.Creo sinceramente que este libro es un muy buen libro. Que a más de uno lo sorprenderá, como a mi me ha sorprendido, tanto por su contenido como por su forma de expresar lo que ahí aparece. Y sobre todo, reseñar que he descubierto, aunque tarde (nunca es tarde si la dicha en buena, como alega algún antiguo refrán), un escritor como es Manuel Rivas que visto su forma de narrar y contar, va a entrar a formar parte de ese grupo de escritores cuyos libros leeré de hoy en adelante. Recomendable a más no poder.

Con la sabiduría del meticuloso observador que es y gracias a la seductora ceremonia del bien contar, Vargas Llosa nos induce sin paliativos a dejarnos prender en la red sutil de perversidad que, poco a poco, va enredando y ensombreciendo las extraordinarias armonía y felicidad que unen en la plena satisfacción de sus deseos a la sensual doña Lucrecia, la madrastra, a don Rigoberto, el padre, solitario practicante de rituales higiénicos y fantaseador amante de su amada esposa, y a inquietante Fonchito, el hijo, cuya angelical presencia y anhelante mirada parecen corromperlo todo. La reflexión múltiple sobre la felicidad, sus oscuras motivaciones y los paradójicos entresijos del poder putrefactor de la inocencia, que subyace en cada una de sus páginas, sostiene una narración que cumple con las exigencias del género sin por ello deslucir la rica filigrana poética de la escritura.

A generous imagination at work. [Oz's] language, for all of its sensuous imagery, has a careful and wise simplicity." — "New York Times Book Review" Situated only two miles from a hostile border, Amos Oz's fictional community of Metsudat Ram is a microcosm of the Israeli frontier kibbutz. There, held together by necessity and menace, the kibbutzniks share love and sorrow under the guns of their enemies and the eyes of history."Immensely enjoyable." — "Chicago Tribune Book World

In a one-bedroom-hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, through the last decades of the twentieth century, lived four love-battered Mendeses: mother, father, son and daughter. Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital after her failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he could, they tried to be a family.

Empire, the fourth novel in Gore Vidal's monumental six-volume chronicle of the American past, is his prodigiously detailed portrait of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century as it begins to emerge as a world power.

In the Hispanic American classic Empire of Dreams, Giannina Braschi calls for a revolution in poetry — a revolution against the Latin American Boom. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal characters who seek to experience the center of power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, magicians, and madmen perform their fantasies in the city streets. In a climatic episode of a pastoral revolution, shepherds take over the top floor of the Empire State Building, where they dance and sing, “Now we do whatever we please! Whatever we please! Whatever we damn well please!” Newly translated by Tess O’Dwyer, this edition captures the euphoric spirit of the Spanish original and is an exquisite piece of artistry in its own right.“A masterpiece, brilliantly translated. Braschi writes as an accomplished cosmopolitan heir(ess) to the tradition of Lorca, Neruda, Mistral, and Marquez.” — Alicia Ostriker“Good poets write great poems. Great poets create a new language. Giannina Braschi is a brilliant artist who has invented a syntax that reveals how we think, suffer, and take delight in the twenty-first century. Though the tone can be playful, her work has deep roots in the subversive side of classical literature. The scale is epic.” — D.Nurkse“Braschi is a constantly brilliant writer — her writing is the lively moment time and time again. She’s a treasure, a midnight, a sharp sun. In her work everybody lives.” — Michael Burkard“Braschi writes with a strong poetic tradition behind her, and from her erudite standpoint she forges an odd mixture of poetry, prose, drama, and a little of what could be considered music. She imbues her text with jollity and a brilliant energy that stretches its audience from lovers of modernism to seekers of a broadened artistry of language.” — Carolyn Kuebler, Review of Contemporary Fiction“An ‘in-your-face assertion’ of the vitality of Latino culture in the U.S.” — New York Daily News“A striking collection of brief, evocative prose.” — Publishers Weekly

Юноше Роме представляется «реальный шанс войти в элиту», и он становится вампиром Рамой. Все его новые коллеги носят имена богов — потому что стоят выше человека в мировой иерархии. Как именно вампиры управляют людьми, Раме расскажут на специальных лекциях по гламуру и дискурсу, на первой дегустации и на праздновании Дня грехопадения. А освоив премудрости гламура и дискурса, вампир Рама Второй становится Кавалером Ночи, слугой богини Иштар-Геры. Обучаясь в замке Дракулы искусству ныряния в смерть, он знакомится с вампирессой Софи, чье имя обозначает «мудрость», и постепенно понимает, что вампиры — вовсе не вершина пищевой цепочки, что есть иной путь. Но желающих его постичь ждет Бэтман Аполло...

Содержание:

1. Виктор Пелевин: Empire V (2006)

2. Виктор Пелевин: Бэтман Аполло (2013)

An ATF raid, a moonshot gone wrong, a busload of female cancer victims determined to live life to the fullest — these are the compelling terrains Adam Johnson explores in his electrifying debut collection. A lovesick teenage Cajun girl, a gay Canadian astrophysicist, a teenage sniper on the LAPD payroll, a post-apocalyptic bulletproof-vest salesman — each seeks connection and meaning in landscapes made uncertain by the voids that parents and lovers should fill. With imaginative grace and verbal acuity, Johnson is satirical without being cold, clever without being cloying, and heartbreaking without being sentimental. He shreds the veneer of our media-saturated, self-help society, revealing the lonely isolation that binds us all together.

Sous le regard émerveillé de leur fils, ils dansent sur « Mr. Bojangles » de Nina Simone. Leur amour est magique, vertigineux, une fête perpétuelle. Chez eux, il n’y a de place que pour le plaisir, la fantaisie et les amis.Celle qui donne le ton, qui mène le bal, c’est la mère, feu follet imprévisible et extravagant. C’est elle qui a adopté le quatrième membre de la famille, Mademoiselle Superfétatoire, un grand oiseau exotique qui déambule dans l’appartement. C’est elle qui n’a de cesse de les entraîner dans un tourbillon de poésie et de chimères.Un jour, pourtant, elle va trop loin. Et père et fils feront tout pour éviter l’inéluctable, pour que la fête continue, coûte que coûte.L’amour fou n’a jamais si bien porté son nom.L’optimisme des comédies de Capra, allié à la fantaisie de L’Écume des jours.