In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind — literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities — the residue of a lifetime's reading which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth. Out of these unlikely yet incontestably fascinating materials — including innumerable details about the madness and calamity in many artists' and writers' lives, the eternal critical affronts, the startling bigotry, the countless suicides — David Markson has created a novel of extraordinary intellectual suggestiveness. But while shoring up Reader's ruins with such fragments, Markson has also managed to electrify his novel with an almost unbearable emotional impact. Where Reader ultimately leads us is shattering.

Ready to Burst follows the lives of two young men and their individual attempts to make sense of the deeply troubled society surrounding them. An informed critique of the “brain drain” prompted by the Duvalier dictatorship, Ready to Burst is, in Frankétienne’s words, a portrait of “the extreme bitterness of doom in the face of the blind machinery of power.” Widely recognized as Haiti’s most important literary figure and an outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. The New York Times has called Frankétienne “the Father of Haitian Letters.”

Amit Chaudhuri's stories range across the astonishing face of the modern Indian subcontinent. From divorcees about to enter into an arranged marriage to the teenaged poet who develops a relationship with a lonely widower, from singing teachers to housewives to white-collar businessmen, Chaudhuri deftly explores the juxtaposition of the new and old worlds in his native India. Here are stories as sweet and ironic as they are deft and revealing.

Berlin-Neukölln: Dass der kaufsüchtige Claas Jansen eine leerstehende Wohnung im eigenen Mietshaus beziehen muss, hat weit mehr Gründe als die Bankenkrise. Und nicht nur er sieht sein früheres Leben in einem rasanten Abwärtsstrudel verschwinden. Am Scheidepunkt zwischen Kiezwirklichkeit und hipper Großstadt geht es um nicht minder Existenzielles. Jeder hat hier eine Rechnung offen: die afrikanischen Dealer, die ihre Schlepperkosten abarbeiten, die alzheimerkranke Alte und der Hochstapler, die Kurzzeit-Domina, ihr achtjähriger Sohn und andere Gestalten – eine globalisierte Notgemeinschaft. Sensibel, radikal und mit ganz eigenem Ton entwirft Inger-Maria Mahlke weit mehr als ein diagnostisches Zeitbild – eine große Parabel über die Abgründe des Lebens am Rande unserer gentrifizierten Welt.

Revered Turkish novelist Hasan Ali Toptaş—“Turkey's Kafka”—weaves a mysterious and masterful tale of love and friendship, guilt and secrets in his first novel translated into English.Thirty years after completing his military service, Ziya flees the spiraling turmoil and perplexing chaos of the city where he lives to seek a peaceful existence in a remote village — of which he has heard dreamlike tales. Greeted by his old friend from the army, Kenan, who has built and furnished a vineyard house for him, Ziya grows accustomed to his new surroundings and is welcomed by Kenan’s family. However, the village does not provide the serenity Ziya yearns for, and old memories of his military service on the treacherous Syrian/Turkish border flood his thoughts. As he battles specters of the past, his rejection of village life provokes an undercurrent of ill feeling among the locals, not least towards Kenan, who has incurred heavy debts by his generosity to the man who may have saved his life.Toptaş masterfully blurs the borders between dreams and reality, truth and memory in this gripping tale. Like Turkey itself, the writer sits between the traditions of the East and the West, creating bold new literature. In his own country he sits comfortably on the shelf beside Orhan Pamuk, and his first novel in English is poised to enchant those same readers.

Masochism is out and feminism is in, Jews are out and Germans are in, race is out and gender is in, and everyone's fighting (and rewriting) for a piece of the pie. Jewish director Jim Minsk disappears during a trip to the South. Black playwright Ian Ball writes the all-female play Reckless Eyeballing in hopes of getting off the "sex-list." Preeminent playwright Jack Brashford, claiming the Jews stole all his black material, decides to write about Armenians. In the background, an unknown assailant dubbed the "Flower Phantom" runs loose through the city shaving heads of prominent black feminists (to the secret delight of black men).In this hilarious, devastating, but also deeply sympathetic novel, Ishmael Reed turns characters on the backs, sides, tops and bottoms to expose the multiple hypocrisies at the heart of American culture.

The Akutagawa Prize-winning stories from one of the most highly regarded and provocative contemporary Japanese writers: part of our Japanese novella series, showcasing the best contemporary Japanese writing.

In these three haunting and lyrical stories, three young women experience unsettling loss and romance.

In a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an accident with a snake leads a shop girl to discover the snake-families everyone else seems to be concealing.

Sensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, Record of a Night Too Brief is an atmospheric trio of unforgettable tales.Literary Awards

• Akutagawa Prize 芥川龍之介賞 (1996)

• Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Nominee for Longlist (2017)

A chilling, internationally acclaimed political thriller, Red April is a grand achievement in contemporary Latin American fiction, written by the youngest winner ever of the Alfaguara Prize — one of the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world — and translated from the Spanish by one of our most celebrated literary translators, Edith Grossman. It evokes Holy Week during a cruel, bloody, and terrifying time in Peru's history, shocking for its corrosive mix of assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance — a war between grim, ideologically-driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency.Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Until now he has lived a life in which nothing exceptionally good or bad has ever happened to him. But, inexplicably, he has been put in charge of a bizarre and horrible murder investigation. As it unfolds by propulsive twists and turns — full of paradoxes and surprises — Saldivar is compelled to confront what happens to a man and a society when death becomes the only certainty in life.Stunning for its self-assured and nimble clarity of style — reminiscent of classic noir fiction — the inexorable momentum of its plot, and the moral complexity of its concerns, Red April is at once riveting and profound, informed as it is by deft artistry in the shaping of conflict between competing venalities. As the New York Times declares, "Lima is once again one of Latin America’s brightest literary scenes."

In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; young people were rebelling. With his long hair, jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man. He could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in search of himself.His journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities. The result is a compelling and utterly unique insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.

Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain is an unforgettable reading experience, a contemporary Thousand and One Nights — with an eighteenth-century warrior-poet (now reincarnated as a typewriting monkey) and an Indian student home from college in America switching off as our Scheherazades. Ranging from bloody battles in colonial India to college anomie in California, from Hindu gods to MTV, Chandra's novel is engrossing, enthralling, impossible to put down — a remarkable meditation on quests and homecomings, good and evil, storytelling and redemption.

In 1959, Liverpool Football Club were in the Second Division. Liverpool Football Club had never won the FA Cup. Fifteen seasons later, Liverpool Football Club had won three League titles, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup. Liverpool Football Club had become the most consistently successful team in England. And the most passionately supported club. Their manager was revered as a god.Destined for immortality. Their manager was Bill Shankly. His job was his life. His life was football. His football a form of socialism. Bill Shankly inspired people. Bill Shankly transformed people. The players and the supporters.His legacy would reveberate through the ages.In 1974, Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly stood on the verge of even greater success. In England and in Europe. But in 1974, Bill Shankly shocked Liverpool and football. Bill Shankly resigned. Bill Shankly retired.Red or Dead is the story of the rise of Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly. And the story of the retirement of Bill Shankly. Of one man and his work. And of the man after that work. A man in two halves. Home and away. Red or dead.

Spanning three generations, Red Sorghum, a novel of family and myth, is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent war years of the 1930s.A legend in China, where it won major literary awards inspired the Oscar-nominated film, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new and unforgettable.

Karen Lord's debut novel, which won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.Paama's husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents' home in the village of Makendha, now he's disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones--the djombi--who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord's world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale, will feel instantly familiar--but Paama's adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.

Phil Klay’s Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos.In “Redeployment”, a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people “who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died.” In “After Action Report”, a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn’t commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System”, a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier’s daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier’s homecoming.Redeployment is poised to become a classic in the tradition of war writing.  Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss.  Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.

Una noche de 1987, alguien abandona a una niña recién nacida en el aeropuerto de Heathrow. Un año antes, tres chicas, Martha, Clio y Jocasta, se habían conocido por casualidad en un viaje y habían prometido volver a encontrarse, aunque pasará mucho tiempo antes de que cumplan la promesa. Para entonces, Kate, la niña abandonada, ya será una adolescente. Vive con una familia adoptiva que la quiere, aunque ahora Kate desea conocer a su madre biológica. Es decir, una de aquellas tres jóvenes, ahora mujeres acomodadas. Pero ¿qué la llevó a una situación tan desesperada?La trama que desgrana este libro se sitúa allí donde confluyen entre estas cuatro vidas. Y es que Kate verá cumplido su deseo aunque, como enseñan algunas fábulas, a veces sea mejor no desear ciertas cosas…

Ceci est l'histoire d'un faible qui décide de combattre sa faiblesse.Mais c'est contre les autres qu'il lutte, parce que ce sont les autres qui en portent le témoignage.Alors, pour tenter de s'affranchir, le faible s'enfonce lentement, presque voluptueusement, dans l'horreur jusqu'à ce qu'il comprenne qu'on ne devient pas plus beau parce qu'on brise les miroirs.

RECOPILACIÓN DE REFLEXIONES Y LECTURAS INSPIRADORAS PARA QUE TE ACOMPAÑEN A DIARIO, COSAS BÁSICAS PERO QUE A VECES NECESITAMOS QUE ALGUIEN NOS LAS RECUERDE.Es un proceso de aprender a desprenderse y humanamente se puede lograr porque, le repito, nada ni nadie nos es indispensable.Solo es costumbre, apego, necesidad. Pero… cierre, clausure, limpie, tire, oxigene, despréndase, sacuda, suelte.Hay tantas palabras para significar salud mental y cualquiera que sea la que escoja, le ayudara definitivamente a seguir para adelante con tranquilidad. PAULO COELHO

We think about it every day, sometimes every hour: Money. Who has it. Who doesn’t. How you get it. How you don’t.In Refund, Bender creates an award-winning collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters. The stories in Refund reflect our contemporary world — swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents — who try to answer the question: What is the real definition of worth?In “Theft,” an eighty-year-old swindler, accustomed to tricking people for their money, boards a cruise ship to see if she can find something of true value — a human connection. In “Anything for Money,” the creator of a reality show is thrown into the real world when his estranged granddaughter reenters his life in need of a new heart; and in the title story, young artist parents in downtown Manhattan escape the attack on 9/11 only to face a battle over their subletted apartment with a stranger who might have lost more than only her deposit.Set in contemporary America, these stories herald a work of singular literary merit by an important writer at the height of her power.

Premio Eugenio Nadal 1983Regocijo en el hombre es una documentada visión del mundo anglosajón y vikingo que nos ofrece tres relatos narrados en primera persona, cuyo resumen configura la historia en todos sus detalles. Un obispo, un rey y un príncipe. Tres protagonistas de un argumento común pero a la vez con una perspectiva propia. A lo largo del relato van surgiendo los conocimientos, las concepciones políticas, morales y religiosas de la mano de un escritor pródigo en recursos. El uso del lenguaje, los modos arcaicos de resonancias clásicas, mantiene su calidad a lo largo del libro, no desmayando su interés en ningún momento. Al final, es la solidaridad la que triunfa, la que enriquece a cada uno de nosotros, pues el hombre se regocija en el hombre, como canta el poema vikingo.

Karena RobārdsaRēgu ezera noslēpumsOlivija Morisone, kas pirms deviņiem gadiem necienīgā kārtā aizbēgusi no mājām, kopā ar astoņus gadus veco meitu Sāru atgriežas dzimtajā ligzdā, lai izlīdzinātu savas nesaska­ņas ar dižo Arčeru ģimeni. Tomēr lepnajā, bagātajā namā "pa­zudusī meita" nebūt netiek uzņemta ar atplestām rokām. Sets, kurš bērnības gados bijis Olivijas stiprais plecs, gluži vai ve­cākais brālis, tagad ir nobriedis, atsvešinājies, turklāt nesen saderinājies vīrietis.Plantācijas tuvumā plešas Rēgu ezers, kurā savulaik no­slēpumainos apstākļos noslīkusi Olivijas māte. Olivija ir ap­ņēmības pilna uzzināt patiesību par viņas bojāeju. Viņa atklāj sirdi stindzinošu noslēpumu, ko glabā pagātnes dzīles…Amerikāņu rakstnieces Kārenas Robārdsas spalvai pieder vairāk nekā divdesmit gan vēsturisku, gan mūsdienīgu romānu. "Rēgu ezera noslēpums" lieliski atklāj rakstnieces talanta daudzveidīgās šķautnes; tajā romantisks mīlas stāsts meistarīgi savīts ar spraigu, mīklainu sižetu - baisas noskaņas, atmiņu ēnas…Olivija Morisone pēc deviņiem prombūtnes gadiem atgriežas savā dzimtajā ligzdā - varenajā Ārčeru ģimenē, mājā pie ezera -, kurā viņa uzaugusi un zaudējusi māti. Jaunās sievietes zemapziņ a it kā brīdina no briesmām, un tālie trauksmes zvani, kas skan no viņas bērnības, liek viņai instinktīvi sargāt savu bērnu. Olivija pūlas ieskatīties acīs savām bailēm un uzvarēt tās. Bērnības mājās Olivija satiek savu īsto mīlestību - mīlestību, kura gan saifdzē, aizsargā un iedvesmo, gan plaiksnī spožos kaisles zibeņos.Kārenas Robārdsas aizraujošais stāstījums neliek lasītājam vilties. Romāns, kas ataino ģimenes nozīmi cilvēka dzīvē un brīdina no briesmām, kuras apdraud šīs vērtības, iepriecinās gan asu izjūtu cienītājus, gan stipras ģimenes godātājus.KONTINENTS RĪGAISBN 9984-740-61-7© Kārena Robārdsa, 2000 ©Tulkojums latviešu valodā, mākslinieciskais noformējums, "Apgāds "Kontinents"", 2002Noskannējis grāmatu un FB2 failu izveidojis Imants LočmelisKārenas Robārdsas romāna "Rēgu ezera noslēpums" publicēšanas tiesības pieder "Apgādam "Kontinents""No angļu valodas tulkojusi Biruta Vaivode Vāka autors Kristiāns ŠicsŠo grāmatu veltu savai vīramātei Frānsisai Hegenai Robārdsai Sīglerei viņas septiņdesmit piektajā dzimšanas dienā. Kā ikviens mans darbs, ari šis ar mīlestību tiek veltīts manam vīram Dagam un dēliem Pīteram, Kristoferam un Džekam.