Alice Munro0.0 The world's finest living short story writer turns to her family for inspiration; and what follows is a fictionalised, brilliantly imagined version of the past. From her ancestors' view from Edinburgh's Catle Rock in the eighteenth century to her parents' thwarted ambitions in Ontario, and her own awakening in 1950s Canada, Munro effortlessly weaves fact and myth to create an epic story of past and present, proving that fiction has much to tell us about life.
Джеймс Лэздан0.0 "Superb .Every page of this narration bears examples of Lasdun's own poetic mastery .Shockingly vivid."? Time Out Part political thriller, part meditation on the nature of desire and betrayal, Seven Lies
Сара Уотерс3.9 «Ночной дозор» Сары Уотерс — один из сильнейших романов прославленного автора «Тонкой работы» и «Бархатных коготков», также вошедший в шортлист Букеровской премии. На этот раз викторианской Англии писательница предпочла Англию военную и послевоенную. Несколько историй беззаветной любви и невольного предательства сложно переплетенными нитями пронизывают всю романную ткань, а прихотливая хронология повествования заставляет, перелистнув последнюю страницу, тут же вернуться к первой.
Чимаманда Нгози Адичи4.3 In 1960s Nigeria, Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, goes to work for Odenigbo, a radical university professor. Soon they are joined by Olanna, a young woman who has abandoned a life of privilege to live with her charismatic lover. Into their world comes Richard, an English writer who has fallen for Olanna's sharp-tongued twin sister Kainene. But when the shocking horror of civil war engulfs the nation, their loves and loyalties are severely tested, while their lives pull apart and collide once again in ways none of them could have imagined...
Рэй Робинсон0.0 Lily's epilepsy means she's used to seeing the world in terms of angles -- you look at every surface, you weigh up every corner, and you think of your head slamming into it -- but what would she be like without her sharp edges? Prickly, spiky, up-front honest and down-to-earth practical, Lily is thirty, and life's not easy but she gets by. Gets on with it. Has to -- what choice is there? So she's learned to make do, to make the most of things, to look after -- and out for -- herself. Coping, managing, surviving. Needing no-one and asking for nothing. Just her and her epilepsy: her constant companion.
But then her mother -- who Lily's not seen for years -- dies, and Lily is drawn back into a world she thought she'd long since left behind. At the same time, however, it's also somewhere disturbingly unfamiliar: newly reunited with one of her brothers, and hoping to track down the other, Lily is no longer alone. Forced to renegotiate the boundaries of her life, she realises she has alot to learn -- about relationships, about the past, and about herself -- and some difficult decisions ahead of her.
"Electricity" is Lily's story; told in fits and starts, it's an edgy, compelling novel and a distinctive debut.
Байрон Роджерс4.5 Presenting the life of one of 20th century English literature's greatest poets, this is a hilarious story of a singular man. Here the author unearths the story of R.S. Thomas's life, and that of his household - one both comic, absurd and touching.
Кормак Маккарти4.1 После катастрофы Отец и Сын идут через выжженные земли, пересекая континент. Всю книгу пронизывают глубокие, ранящие в самое сердце вопросы. Есть ли смысл жить, если будущего — нет? Вообще нет. Есть ли смысл жить ради детей? Это роман о том, что все в жизни относительно, что такие понятия, как добро и зло, в определенных условиях перестают работать и теряют смысл. Это роман о том, что действительно важно в жизни, и о том, как это ценить. И это также роман о смерти, о том, что все когда-нибудь кончается, и поэтому нужно каждый день принимать таким, какой есть. Нужно просто... жить.
Дэвид Кеннедайн0.0 A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each.
Following a boyhood in nineteenth-century Pittsburgh, during which he learned from his Scotch-Irish immigrant father the lessons of self-sufficiency and accumulation of wealth, Andrew Mellon overcame painful shyness to become one of America’s greatest financiers. Across an unusually diverse range of enterprises, from banking to oil to aluminum manufacture, he would build a legendary personal fortune, tracking America’s course to global economic supremacy. Personal happiness, however, eluded him: his loveless marriage at forty-five to a British girl less than half his age ended in a scandalous divorce, and for all his best efforts, he would remain a stranger to his children. He had been bred to do one thing, and that he did with brilliant and innovative entrepreneurship. The Mellon way was to hold companies closely, including such iconic enterprises as Alcoa and Gulf Oil. Collecting art, a pursuit inspired by his close friend Henry Clay Frick, would become his only nonprofessional gratification. And by the end of his life, Mellon’s “pictures” would constitute one of the world’s foremost private collections.
Mellon’s wealth and name allowed him to dominate Pennsylvania politics, and late in life he was invited to Washington. As treasury secretary under presidents Harding, Coolidge, and finally Hoover, he made the federal government run like a business—prefiguring the public official as CEO. But this man of straightforward conservative politics was no politician. He would be hailed as the architect of the Roaring Twenties, but, staying too long, would be blamed for the Great Depression, eventually to find himself a broken idol. The New Deal overthrew Andrew Mellon’s every fiscal assumption, starting with the imperative of balanced budgets. Indeed, he would become the emblem—and the scapegoat—for the Republican conviction and policy that the role of government is to help business create national wealth and jobs. At the age of seventy-nine, the former treasury secretary suffered the ultimate humiliation: prosecution by FDR’s government on charges of tax evasion. In the end Mellon would be exonerated, as he always trusted he would be, and throughout the trial, which lasted more than a year, he never abandoned what had become his last dream: to make a great gift to the American people. The National Gallery of Art remains his most tangible legacy, although he did not live to see its completion.
The issues Andrew W. Mellon confronted—concerning government, business, influence, the individual and the public good—remain at the center of our national discourse to this day. Indeed, the positions he steadfastly held reemerged relatively intact with the Reagan revolution, having lain dormant since the New Deal. David Cannadine’s magisterial biography brings to life a towering, controversial figure, casting new light on our history and the evolution of our public values.
Джиллиан Дарли0.0 This new biography of John Evelyn, diarist, scholar, and intellectual virtuoso (1620-1706), is the first account to make full use of his huge unpublished archive, deposited at the British Library in 1995. This crucial material permits a broader and richer picture of Evelyn, his life, and his friendships than permitted by his own celebrated diaries.
Gillian Darley provides a rounded portrait of Evelyn’s eighty-five years--his family life, his exile in Paris, his interests, and his preoccupations. Evelyn lived through some of England’s most tumultuous history, through five reigns, the Civil War, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1688. He was author or translator of countless publications, tackling an enormous variety of contemporary issues. Both a religious man and a key figure in the Royal Society, he viewed Christianity and the new science as wholly compatible. Evelyn remained endlessly curious and engaged into very old age, and this absorbing biography demonstrates the liveliness of his hugely busy mind.
Кейт Тельчер0.0 A virtuoso work of narrative history about two societies whose relationship is of urgent interest today
"The High Road to China "traces two extraordinary journeys across some of the harshest and highest terrain in the world: the first British mission to Tibet, and the Panchen Lama's state visit to China to mark the emperor's seventieth birthday.
In the late eighteenth century, with its empire expanding, the British sought a commercial opening to China, which was closed to outsiders; and they saw a possible advocate with Peking in the Panchen Lama, the spiritual leader of the Buddhist people of Tibet. The British envoy, a young Scot named George Bogle, sought an opening to China through negotiations with the Panchen Lama's envoy, a Hindu monk and trader, and then through the incarnate deity himself. All the while, he kept a journal, in prose that is by turns playful, self-deprecating, grandiose, and shrewd, and through his words Kate Teltscher makes this meeting of two worlds palpably real to the reader. "The High Road to China "brings the pleasures of narrative history to bear on a crucial turning point in history, one whose effects are still being felt.
Мэгги Фергюссон0.0 George Mackay Brown was one of Scotland’s most prolific and acclaimed writers, but he was also a handful of paradoxes. He holds a wide international reputation despite rarely leaving his native Orkney. He never married, but some of his most poignant letters and poems were written to Stella Cartwright, “the Muse of Rose Street.” Maggie Fergusson is the only biographer to whom the reluctant Brown gave his blessing, and her brilliant account reveals that this artist’s life was not only fascinating but vivid, courageous, and surprising
Кармен Каллил0.0 "Bad Faith "tells the story of one of history's most despicable villains and con men--Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Nazi collaborator and "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs," who managed the Vichy government's dirty work, "controlling" its Jewish population.
Though he is one of the less remembered figures of the Vichy government, Darquier (the aristocratic "de Pellepoix" was appropriated) was one of its most hideously effective officials. Already a notorious Nazi-supported rabble-rouser when he was appointed commissioner, he set about to eliminate the Jews with particularly brutal efficiency. Darquier was in charge of the Vel' d'Hiv' round-up in Paris in which nearly 13,000 Jews were dispatched to death camps. Most of the French who died in Auschwitz were sent there during his tenure. Almost all of the 11,400 French children sent to Auschwitz--the majority of whom did not survive--were deported in his time. In all, he delivered 75,000 French to the Nazis and, at the same time, accelerated the confiscation of Jewish property, which he then used for his own financial gain. Never brought to justice, he lived out his life comfortably in Spain, denying his involvement in the Holocaust until his last days.
Where did Louis Darquier come from? How did this man--a chronic fantasist and hypocrite, gambler and cheat--come to control the fates of thousands? What made him what he was? These are the questions at the center of this extraordinary book. In answering them, Carmen Callil gives us a superlatively detailed and revealing tapestry of individuals and ideologies, of small lives and great events, the forces of government and of personalities--in France and across the European continent--that made Vichy possible, and turned Darquier into its "dark essence."
A tour de force of memory, accountability, and acknowledgment, "Bad Faith" is a brilliant meld of grand inquisitive sweep and delicate psychological insight, a story of how past choices and actions echo down to the present day, and an invaluable addition to the literature and history of the Holocaust.
