From the internationally acclaimed Israeli author, a unique novel in verse that will take its place among the great books of our time.The Same Sea is Amos Oz's most adventurous and inventive novel, the book by which he would like to be remembered. This is Oz free of convention-literary and otherwise. Prose leads to poetry, poetry to prose. The cast of characters ranges from a prodigal son to a widowed father who has taken in his son's enticing young girlfriend, who in turn sleeps with her boyfriend's close friend. The author himself receives phone calls from his characters, criticizing the way he portrays them in his novel. In this human profusion there is chaos and order, love and eroticism, loyalty and betrayal, and ultimately an extraordinary energy.Reminiscent of Under Milk Wood for the range of its voices, its earthy humor, and its poignancy, The Same Sea is heartbreaking and sensuous, filled with classical echoes and Biblical allusions. Oz at his very best."I wrote this book with everything I have. Language music, structure everything that I have. . This is the closest book I've written. Close to me, close to what I always wanted. . I went as far as I could. -Amos Oz

With these two passionate, vividly realistic novels, The Pretenders and Mass, F. Sionil José concludes his epochal Rosales Saga. The five volumes span much of the turbulent modern history of the Philippines, a beautiful and embattled nation once occupied by the Spanish, overrun by the Japanese, and dominated by the United States. The portraits painted in The Samsons, and in the previously published Modern Library paperback editions of Dusk and Don Vicente (containing Tree and My Brother, My Executioner), are vivid renderings of one family from the village of Rosales who contend with the forces of oppression and human nature.Antonio Samson of The Pretenders is ambitious, educated, and torn by conflicting ideas of revolution. He marries well, which leads to his eventual downfall. In Mass, Pepe Samson, the bastard son of Antonio, is also ambitious, but in different ways. He comes to Manila mainly to satisfy his appetites, and after adventures erotic and economic, finds his life taking a surprising turn. Together, these novels form a portrait of a village and a nation, and conclude one of the masterpieces of Southeast Asian literature.

The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster.

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner.From Publishers WeeklyBanned in India before publication, this immense novel by Booker Prize-winner Rushdie ( Midnight's Children ) pits Good against Evil in a whimsical and fantastic tale. Two actors from India, "prancing" Gibreel Farishta and "buttony, pursed" Saladin Chamcha, are flying across the English Channel when the first of many implausible events occurs: the jet explodes. As the two men plummet to the earth, "like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar," they argue, sing and are transformed. When they are found on an English beach, the only survivors of the blast, Gibreel has sprouted a halo while Saladin has developed hooves, hairy legs and the beginnings of what seem like horns. What follows is a series of allegorical tales that challenges assumptions about both human and divine nature. Rushdie's fanciful language is as concentrated and overwhelming as a paisley pattern. Angels are demonic and demons are angelic as we are propelled through one illuminating episode after another. The narrative is somewhat burdened by self-consciousness that borders on preciosity, but for Rushdie fans this is a splendid feast.Review"A glittering novelist – one with startling imagination and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling." – V.S. Pritchett, The New Yorker"Abundant in enchanting narratives and amazingly peopled, The Satanic Verses is both a philosophy and an Arabian nights entertainment. What wit, what real warmth in Rushdie’s thousand-eyed perceptions of the inferno within us and the vainglory of our aspirations! His ambitions are huge, and his creativity triumphantly matches them...A staggering achievement, brilliantly enjoyable." – Nadine Gordimer"A masterpiece." – Bill Bruford, TheSunday Times"Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide, Sterne's Tristam Shandy.... Salman Rushdie, it seems to me, is very much a latter day member of their company." – New York Times Book Review"Further evidence of Rushdie’s stature as one of the most original, imaginative, perplexing, and important writers of our time." –Publishers Weekly"A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles jokes… Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb." – Victoria Glendinning, The Times"An exhilarating… populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary contemporary novel… a roller coaster ride over a vast majority of the imagination" – Angela Carter, The Guarduan"A truly original novel…sustained at headlong pace by the author whose powers of invention and construction, command of every variety of English and Anglo-Indian idiom, sense of desperate comedy, and within of intellectual reference have been well-exercised before, but neber on such a scale." – Hyam Maccoby, The Sunday Telegraph

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation, but his novel The Savage Detectives is a lot closer to Y Tu Mamá También than it is to One Hundred Years of Solitude . Hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, full of inside jokes about Latin Americanliterati that you don't have to understand to enjoy, The Savage Detectives is a companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It's the first of Bolaño's two giant masterpieces to be translated into English (the second, 2666, is due out next year), and you can see how he's influenced an era.

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation, but his novel The Savage Detectives is a lot closer to Y Tu Mamá También than it is to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, full of inside jokes about Latin American literati that you don't have to understand to enjoy, The Savage Detectives is a companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It's the first of Bolaño's two giant masterpieces to be translated into English (the second, 2666, is due out next year), and you can see how he's influenced an era.

Natalya Filippovna may be a middle-aged, single mother and member of the Russian minority in Estonia, but she is content with her simple life. She has a flat, a job at an electronics factory and, most importantly, she has her bright and ambitious teenaged daughter, Sofia. Money is tight, but they make do – that is, until Sofia requires a lengthy, expensive dental procedure and Natalya loses her job. With bills piling up and Sofia’s dental procedure only part finished, Natalya reluctantly accepts an undesirable mode of income. As she and Sofia adjust to their changing situations, Natalya falls for a mysterious, kind man, and her life takes yet another unexpected turn.

From a major new Greek writer, never before translated — a wide-ranging, muck-raking, beautifully written novel about the unsolved murder of an American journalist in Greece in the forties.In 1948, the body of an American journalist is found floating in the bay off Thessaloniki. A Greek journalist is tried and convicted for the murder. . but when he’s released twelve years later, he claims his confession was the result of torture.Flash forward to modern day Greece, where a young, disaffected high school student is given an assignment for a school project: find the truth.Based on the real story of famed CBS reporter George Polk — journalism’s prestigious Polk Awards were named after him — who was investigating embezzlement of U.S. aid by the right-wing Greek government, Nikolaidou’s novel is a sweeping saga that brings together the Greece of the post-war period with the current era, where the country finds itself facing turbulent political times once again.Told by key players in the story — the dashing journalist’s Greek widow; the mother and sisters of the convicted man; the brutal Thessaloniki Chief of Police; a U.S. Foreign Office investigator — it is the modern-day student who is most affecting of them all, as he questions truth, justice and sacrifice. . and how the past is always with us.

"The Scarecrow" is the final volume of Ibrahim al-Koni's Oasis trilogy, which chronicles the founding, flourishing, and decline of a Saharan oasis. Fittingly, this continuation of a tale of greed and corruption opens with a meeting of the conspirators who assassinated the community's leader at the end of the previous novel, "The Puppet." They punished him for opposing the use of gold in business transactions-a symptom of a critical break with their nomadic past-and now they must search for a leader who shares their fetishistic love of gold. A desert retreat inspires the group to select a leader at random, but their "choice," it appears, is not entirely human. This interloper from the spirit world proves a self-righteous despot, whose intolerance of humanity presages disaster for an oasis besieged by an international alliance. Though al-Koni has repeatedly stressed that he is not a political author, readers may see parallels not only to a former Libyan ruler but to other tyrants-past and present-who appear as hollow as a scarecrow.

The Last Manuscript of a MasterIt began with an accident, as if Fate had a plan for Vergil Magus…After his trials in the Very Rich City of Averno but before his crowning achievement of a certain magic mirror, the great sorcerer and alchemist finds himself on a journey nothing short of epic. Sure he is slated for death in Rome, Vergil seeks safety in the far reaches of the Empire — and finds a world teeming with wonders and magical oddities.The “unhistoric” sea adventure is a deft mix of fantastic fact and fable, showcasing the author’s keen attention to the often forgotten connections between them.

The Scent of Your Breath, the second instalment in the Melissa P.’s series of confessions, is a stirring tale of obsessive love and destructive passion. Melissa, desperate for love and willing to do anything to find it, is now a successful writer in Rome, living with her new lover, Thomas. But as soon as she meets Viola, a woman from Thomas’s past, sexual passion and insecurity mount in tandem, and Melissa is consumed with jealousy. Written as a confessional letter to her mother, the story that follows is one of dark obsession, violent lust, and soul-destroying talent. Driven by Melissa’s singular voice — that unique and compelling combination of impetuous naivety and poetic sophistication that has mesmerised readers in thirty-one countries — The Scent of Your Breath blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy and delves deep into the disturbing yet strangely familiar mind of a teenage girl terrorised by love.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016.When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins.Davíd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, Davíd is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of.In this mesmerising allegorical tale, Coetzee deftly grapples with the big questions of growing up, of what it means to be a parent, the constant battle between intellect and emotion, and how we choose to live our lives.

The Man Booker PrizeCharles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

The Seamstress and the Wind is a deliciously laugh-out-loud-funny novel. A seamstress who is sewing a wedding dress for the pregnant local art teacher fears that her son, while playing in a big semitruck, has been accidentally kidnapped and driven off to Patagonia.Completely unhinged, she calls a local taxi to follow the semi in hot pursuit. When her husband finds out what’s happened, he takes off after wife and child. They race not only to the end of the world, but to adventures in desire — where the wild Southern wind falls in love with the seamstress, and a monster child takes up with the truck driver. Interspersed are Aira’s musings about memory and childhood, and his hometown of Coronel Pringles, with a compelling view of the hard lot of this working-class town, situated not far from Buenos Aires.

Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later she turns up at his apartment. However it's not Walker she wants, but her husband Malory who has gone missing. She wants Walker to find him. So begins this strange, beautiful, road-movie of a novel that takes the hero across the vast landscape of middle America on the trail of a man he has never met. And as Walker's search grows in its weird intensity it seems that somebody else is following, searching for him too.

Percy’s stirring sequel to The Last Gentleman: the offbeat story of how a man’s midlife crisis finally leads him to happiness.Now in his late forties, Will Barrett lives a life other men only dream of. Wealthy from a successful career on Wall Street and from the inheritance of his deceased wife’s estate, Will is universally admired at the club where he spends his days golfing in the North Carolina sun. But everything begins to unravel when, without warning, Will’s golf shots begin landing in the rough, and he is struck with bouts of losing his balance and falling over. Just when Will appears doomed to share the fate of his father — whose suicide has haunted him his whole life — a mental hospital escapee named Allison might prove to be the only one who can save him.Original and profound, The Second Coming is a moving love story of two damaged souls who find peace with each other.

When Mavala Shikongo deserted them, the teachers at the boys' school in Goas weren't surprised. How could they be? She was too beautiful, too powerful, and too mysterious for their tiny, remote, and arid world. They knew only one essential fact about their departed colleague: she was a combat veteran of Namibia's brutal war for independence. When Mavala returns to Goas with a baby son, all are awed by her boldness. The teachers try hard, once again, not to fall in love with her. They fail, immediately and miserably, especially the American volunteer, Larry Kaplanski.

Suspenseful and atmospheric, this extraordinary novel portrays both the hardship and grace in the life of a man struggling to realize his destiny.When Samuel Tyne emigrated from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1955, he was determined to accomplish great things. He excelled at Oxford and then came to Canada with the uncle who raised him, leaving the traditions and hard life of his homeland behind. Here, in this nation of immigrants, Samuel would surely be free to follow his destined path to success.That new beginning didn’t live up to Samuel’s expectations. As the novel opens fifteen years later, he is working as an economic forecaster for the government in Calgary. It’s a stiflingly bureaucratic, dead-end job, where petty managerial types and lifeless co-workers make Samuel’s days almost unbearable.Everything changes for Samuel when he finds out that his Uncle Jacob has died. Samuel and his uncle had grown apart. They had not spoken for a number of years, though Jacob had raised Samuel and, in a way, sacrificed himself for Samuel’s future. Jacob’s death weighs heavily on Samuel, yet his reaction seems more about having “a singular chance to get all his sadness out” than about familial love. Samuel is jolted out of his sadness and his workaday world when he receives a call telling him he has inherited Jacob’s old mansion in the small town of Aster, Alberta. The town, originally settled by freed slaves from Oklahoma, sounds to Samuel like the perfect place to start a new life, one that would allow him to live up to his potential, and he decides to exchange the drudgery of the city for the simplicity of small-town existence. When Samuel leaves his office for good after yet another minor humiliation, we cheer his resolve and look forward to what the coming days will bring.Samuel believes that he is setting on a path to fulfill his personal expectations, but we begin to see the signs of what one reviewer has called Samuel’s “pathological temerity.” He doesn’t tell his family what has happened: not that he’s inherited the house, or that he plans to move there or even that he’s quit his job. Instead, he spends his days tinkering in the shed, emerging at just the right time to make it seem like he’s coming home from work. The truth comes out only when one of his daughters discovers his secret. His deception points to a paralyzing inability to communicate with others and suggests that this new beginning may be as fruitless as the last.Maud and the twins, Chloe and Yvette, resist the move to Aster, but are helpless in the face of Samuel’s conviction that this is the right thing to do. And when they arrive, their new home — a gloomy, worn-down remnant of days long past — doesn’t exactly fill them with hope. But the seeds of renewal have been sown, the move has been made and they hesitantly take up their new lives. At first, the Tynes seem to be settling in — they meet some of their neighbours, Samuel sets up his own electronics shop, Maud begins to fix up the house and the twins are curious enough to at least begin exploring their new home. However, the idealized Aster of Samuel’s imagination proves to be as false as his family’s veneer of acceptance, and a dark undercurrent of small-mindedness, racism and violence soon turns on the town’s newest residents. When mysterious fires begin to destroy local buildings, and the bizarre yet brilliant twins retreat into their own dark world, Samuel’s fabled second chance slips slowly out of his grasp.The Second Life of Samuel Tyne is a harrowing and beautifully written work of fiction, one that shows us how fragile our dreams can be in the face of the relentless march of time. Esi Edugyan’s evocative writing and pitch-perfect ability to get into the minds of her characters confirm that this book heralds the arrival of a major new novelist.

'The Secret History tells the story of a group of classics students at an elite American college, who are cerebral, obsessive and finally murderous… it is a haunting, compelling and brilliant piece of fiction' The Times Tartt's erudition sprinkles the text like sequins, but she's such an adept writer that she's able to make the occasional swerve into Greek legends and semantics seem absolutely crucial to the examination of contemporary society which this book undoubtedly and seriously is, for all the fun it provides on the way… Brilliant' Sunday Times 'A highly readable murder mystery; a romantic dream of doomed youth and a disquisition on ancient and modern mores… Tartt shows an impressive ability to pace and pattern her novel' Independent 'A huge, mesmerizing, galloping read, pleasurably devoured… gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite' Vanity Fair The skill with which Tartt manipulates our sympathies and anticipations is… remarkable… A marvellous debut' Spectator 'Implicates the reader in a conspiracy which begins in bucolic enchantment and ends exactly where it must… a mesmerizing and powerful novel' Jay Mclnerney 'A compelling read… this very young novelist has the arrogant boldness to tell us that it is in abstract, arcane scholarship and mandarin addictions that utter violence can flourish' George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement 'Mesmerizing and perverse' Elaine Showalter, The Times Literary Supplement 'Brilliant… a study of young arrogance, a thriller, a comedy of campus manners, and an oblique Greek primer. It is a well written and compulsive read' Evening Standard

A bold historical novel from "one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature" (Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature).In the early twentieth century, a struggling Joseph Conrad wrote his great novel Nostromo, about a South American republic he named Costaguana. It was inspired by the geography and history of Colombia, where Conrad spent only a few days. But in Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel The Secret History of Costaguana, we uncover the hidden source- and one of the great literary thefts.On the day of Joseph Conrad's death in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail-from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Conrad stole them all. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear- Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence. As the destinies of real empires collide with the murky realities of imagined ones, Vásquez takes us from a flourishing twentieth-century London to the lawless fury of a blooming Panama and back.Tragic and despairing, comic and insightful, The Secret History of Costaguana is a masterpiece of historical invention. It will secure Juan Gabriel Vásquez's place among the most original and exuberantly talented novelists working today.