A tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City from a master of contemporary fiction, and a sublime precursor to The Savage Detectives. Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world - or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams. But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction, and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs head-first into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafes, and murky bathhouses. The Spirit of Science Fiction is a kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty, and a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction. It is an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
'The best and weirdest kind of literary game' - Financial TimesFeaturing several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinary imaginations in world literature.Written with sharp wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaedic group of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humorous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolaño famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lies in hospital, hiccupping himself to death. When the doctors struggle to offer a diagnosis, his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud, the mesmerist and reclusive bachelor Pierre Pain. Pain, in love and eager to impress, agrees to help. But on a night that 'smells of something strange', things soon go awry... A wonderfully oneiric novella that blends the finest of Edgar Allan Poe with Jorge Luis Borges and Bolano's truly astonishing alchemical gifts, Monsieur Pain is a gripping noir conspiracy as rich as it is strange. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'A surrealist nightmare, with overtones of Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler' The TimesThis marvellous little yarn is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises... If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Roberto Bolano's imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience' Irish Times
Three fiercely original tales. An unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless gift for shaping the chaos of reality into fiction is unmistakable across these three novellas. In 'Cowboy Graves,' Arturo Belano - Bolaño's alter ego - returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. 'French Comedy of Horrors' finds a seventeen-year-old recruited into a secret society of artists in the sewers of Paris. And in 'Fatherland,' a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'His work is as vital, thrilling and life-enhancing as anything in modern fiction' Sunday Times'Fascinating... A rare opportunity for the reader to witness the creation of a seemingly inexhaustible body of work' El Pais
Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of her university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry. A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novella, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists 'choked by the brilliance of youth', Auxilio's passionate narration - both heartbreaking and lyrical - is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolaño's art. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history' The Times'Roberto Bolaño redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become' New Statesman
'Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime'So begins Bianca's tale of growing up the hard way. Orphaned overnight as a teenager, she drops out of school and drifts into the bad company of two criminals her brother brings home. As the four of them plot a fantastical crime, Bianca learns she can drift even lower... Electric and tense with foreboding, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novellas Roberto Bolaño published - delivers a fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Bolaño has proven that literature can do everything' The New York Times'The man was a flat-out genius, one of the greatest writers of our time' Paul Auster
THIS IS NOT ANOTHER ODE TO NEW YORKA blend of cultural meditation and self-care manifesto with a sprinkling of recipe, this is the memoir of a woman as complex as the city itselfOn her first night in New York, Kay Sohini sits on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy Airport making an inventory of all she left behind in India. She realises two things: that she is no longer a girl craving the America imported in cheesy sitcoms and fast foods, and that trauma has left gaping holes her memory.Here, at last, exploring the haunts and hideouts of her literary heroes - Kerouac, Plath, Bechdel - and rediscovering her love of cooking, Kay has room to begin the work of piecing herself together. But as her story becomes a window onto a mystifying city growing increasingly inhospitable to millions, Kay embarks on an electric exploration of what it means to forge a life of one's own now.This is not another ode to New York. A blend of cultural meditation and self-care manifesto with a sprinkling of recipe, this is the memoir of a woman as complex as the city itself - an artist, a foodie, an immigrant. This Beautiful, Ridiculous City is about how easy it is to fall beautifully, ridiculously in love, how the places and people we love do not always love us back but somehow still save us in weird, unexpected ways.
I was standing outside an apartment block that had been split apart by a missile. The words of a poem came to me when I could no longer find my own.In nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflict from Palestine to Kosovo to Rwanda, Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry. It helps her make sense of the senseless, salve her soul as the world around her rages, and remember those she has met in the darkest of times.In Ukraine, she tweeted a poem a day, and people began to read, to share, to ask for more. Here, Lindsey collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern, translated from different languages and by writers from all around the world. Alongside each, she recalls a memory from her own work, whether interviewing the warlords of Bosnia and Sudan, meeting child soldiers in Uganda or giving testimony about the genocide in Rwanda. Her prose reveals comic absurdity and astonishing courage, meaning and its absence, unexpected moments of love and the untold consequences that come long after most cameras disperse. She explores the pity of war - and its fatal attraction.Vital, authentic, a read like no other, this is the first account Lindsey has written of her experience, accompanied by the voices of poets through the ages who have fought, witnessed terror or fled their homes, yet found the words to capture their humanity.
How do we love, trust and create in the aftermath of trauma? How do we name and speak that love?In this powerful new collection from acclaimed poet and novelist Elaine Feeney, images andmemory circle and recur, and the journey from pain towards a place of greater safety is far from linear. All the Good Things You Deserve juxtaposes violence, hurt and the tyranny of shame with love, beauty and the transformative possibilities of art.
A remarkable new collection exploring ageing, mortality and environmental destruction - from our finest Scottish lyric poet**WINNER OF THE DAVID COHEN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023**'By far the best British poet alive' SPECTATOR'A master of language' HILARY MANTELIn this powerful, moving new book, John Burnside takes his cue from Schiller, who recognised that, as one thing fades, so another flourishes: everywhere and always, in matters great and small, new life blossoms amongst the ruins. Here, in poems that explore ageing, mortality, environmental destruction and mental illness, Burnside not only mourns what is lost in passing, but also celebrates the new, and sometimes unexpected, forms that emerge from such losses. An elegy for a dead lover ends with a quiet recognition of everyday beauty - first sun streaming through the trees ... a skylark in the near field, flush with song - as the speaker emerges from lockdown after a long illness. Throughout, the poet attends to the quality of grace - numinous, exquisite, fleeting as an angel's wing - and the broken tryst between humankind and its spiritual and animal elements, even with itself: the gaunt deer on the roads/like refugees. He acknowledges the inevitability of the fading towards death, but still finds chimes of light in the darkness - insisting that, here and now, even in decline, the world, when given its due attention, is all Annunciation.
Do you love to have good wine, but feel unsure of how to tell a Pinot from a Merlot? Do you every find yourself wondering which option will suit your meal best? The Wine Flavour Guide will teach you how to pick the best bottle for every occasion.Internationally recognised wine expert Sam Caporn is here to demystify wine once and for all.- Discover how different wine-making processes create flavour- Find out how where a grows wine shapes its taste- Decode labels to identify how a wine will taste before you try it- Learn how to taste wine like a pro- Easily pair and food using intuitive adviceFrom Proseccos to Sauvignons, orange wines to rosés, there''s an endlessly fascinating world of wines for you to explore, and The Wine Flavour Guide is your chic and simple map to understanding your palate and discovering delightful new favourites. Whether you''re new to wine or a devoted connoisseur, this book will help you elevate your wine knowledge and think about flavour in a brand new way with helpful infographics and tips for picking an excellent bottle for every occasion at any price point.
From Rachel Kushner, Booker Prize finalist and two-time National Book Award finalist, comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France'The most exciting writer of her generation' BRET EASTON ELLIS'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' HERNAN DIAZ'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carré' OBSERVERSadie Smith - a thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions - is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation, lives in a Neanderthal cave, and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and finds Bruno's idealism laughable, but just as she is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Beneath this taut, dazzling story about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past andthe future lies a profound treatise on human history. Creation Lake is Rachel Kushner's finest novel yet - a work of high art, high comedy and irresistible pleasure.
When Oscar Amalfitano begins an affair with one of his students, he has no idea where it will lead. More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee Barcelona with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling, mythical town on the Mexico-US border, populated by mysterious characters and haunted by dark tales of murdered women. Returning to the the world and characters of 2666, Bolaño's masterpiece, Woes of the True Policeman explores the the power of art, memory and desire - and marks a kaleidoscopic, lyrical and darkly humorous last act in one of the great oeuvres of world literature. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Hallucinatory, manic, fearful, comic... Bolaño must be read by anyone who loves the novel' Herald'We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius' Patti Smith
War-games champion Udo Berger is finally on holiday. Travelling to the Costa Brava with his long-ignored girlfriend, Ingeborg, there they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals. They have fun, see the sights, relax. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace. Desperate to solve the mystery, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home. Increasingly frightened, the situation slips beyond his grasp and Udo suddenly realizes that the consequences of this 'game' are much more serious than he ever imagined. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Capering, weird, rascally and short... The Third Reich is giddily funny, but it is also prickly and bizarre enough to count among Bolaño's first-rate efforts' The Economist'A mesmerizing tale: sleek, linear, easily digested, beautifully translated... Classic Bolaño' Washington Post
Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí's fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy - and revenge. Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn't tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene. Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'A work of intense and unrealized longing' The New York Times'Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' Guardian
'In this neighbourhood, only the dead go out for a walk'... A young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor, only to watch his soul departing his body. Two embittered police detectives debate their favourite weapons. A violent man looks back on his childhood and seeks out the now-aged male porn actor his mother shot movies with. Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolaño. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: The Return is a trove of strangely arresting short master works. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'Dark, intimate and sneakily touching... There is gold to be found in this collection' New York Review of Books'Each tale turns the reader into a voyeur, grasping at snapshots of troubled lives and ghosts' Observer 'A compelling encapsulation of Bolaño's work... You won't be bored' Los Angeles Times
'If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear...'A rat policeman comes to the startling realisation that each rat is out for themselves. An elderly judge gives up his job in the city for an improbable return to the family farm in the Pampas. An elusive film-maker and the little-known Argentinian novelist whose work he's plagiarized for years, finally fall into confrontation. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled and yet somehow haywire, the five short stories included in The Insufferable Gaucho are some of Roberto Bolaño's best. In addition, two essays are included: provocative and often scathing, they too are alive with Bolaño's trademark humour, violence and utter faith in the power of the written word. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'An exemplary literary rebel' New York Review of Books'A master of the short form' Independent'Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own' New York Times
'A fascinating, even compulsory addition to the Bolaño fan's bookshelf' - Daily TelegraphAntwerp was Roberto Bolaño's first novel, though he chose not to publish it until 2002, more than twenty years after he'd written it. Set amidst the seedy hotels and deserted campsites on the Costa Brava, and filled with hapless girls, failed poets, and shifty policemen, Antwerp is a short and cinematic experimental crime novel spliced together with voices from a dream, from a nightmare, from passers-by, from an omniscient narrator, from 'Roberto Bolaño'. Intense and irrepressible, the novel is a personal declaration of the power of literature; reading it is to be present at the birth of Bolaño's enterprise in prose, to see the beginning, to witness the moment when his talent explodes.
Enter the secret lives of Britain's ordinary garden birds and the brilliant, unconventional woman who opened her doors to them. In the late 1930s, Len Howard packed up her life in London, bought a plot of land in Sussex and built herself a little house there. This was to be Bird Cottage, a place where the doors of the house were open to the birds of the garden - great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, willow warblers and many others. Len lived the rest of her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. This is the book she wrote about the birds - a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len. Enchanting, life-enriching, revelatory and completely original, this is a gorgeous evocation of a life lived in intimate contact with nature and a book about birds unlike any other. 'A lovely book replete with knowledge and much beauty' Daily Mail
One girl missing. Another found dead. Only one detective can solve this case.'One of the greats of modern crime fiction' Sunday TimesWhen a young woman known for drug smuggling goes missing, her elderly grandparents have no choice but to call the retired Detective Konrád.Still looking for his own father's murderer, Konrád agrees to investigate the case.But digging into the past reveals more than he set out to discover, and a strange connection to a little girl who drowned in the Reykjavík city pond decades ago recaptures everyone's attention.A brilliant, chilling tale of broken dreams and children who have nowhere to turn.'The undisputed king of the Icelandic thriller' Guardian'An international literary phenomenon - and it's easy to see why. His novels are gripping, authentic, haunting and lyrical' Harlan Coben
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