Dark Back of Time is a compelling story of the way in which reality blurs into fiction by Javier Mar?as, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. It is translated by Esther Allen in Penguin Modern Classics.
"We lose everything because everything remains except us", says the mysterious narrator of this extraordinary novel, which meditates on the transience, chance and fragility of life. As a man called Javier Mar?as recalls the strange events and people that shaped his past, including ghostly literary figures, a pilot, an adventurer, a brother who died as a child and the king of an island in the Caribbean, we begin to question the nature of time, memory and reality itself. Here the writer is both a keeper of memories and a purveyor of illusions, destined to be lost in the dark back of time.
Javier Marias was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne.
"I was enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies", says Marina Warner, Guardian.
"He uses language like an anatomist uses a scalpel to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being", says W.G.Sebald, author of Austerlitz.

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Dark Back of Time is a compelling story of the way in which reality blurs into fiction by Javier Mar?as, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013.… Развернуть 

Drawn from journals, this book is an account of a woman's sexual awakening, covering a single momentous year - 1931-32, in Paris, when June fell in love with Henry Miller, undermining her own idealized marriage. The question of the outcome of June Miller's return to Paris dominates her thoughts.

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Drawn from journals, this book is an account of a woman's sexual awakening, covering a single momentous year - 1931-32, in Paris, when June fell in love with Henry Miller,… Развернуть 

An Inspector Calls, first produced in 1946 when society was undergoing sweeping transformations, has recently enjoyed an enormously successful revival. While holding its audience with the gripping tension of a detective thriller, it is also a philosophical play about social conscience and the crumbling of middle class values. Time and the Conways and I Have Been Here Before belong to Priestley's 'time'plays, in which he explores the idea of precognition and pits fate against free will. The Linden Tree also challenges preconceived ideas of history when Professor Linden comes into conflict with his family about how life should be lived after the war.

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An Inspector Calls, first produced in 1946 when society was undergoing sweeping transformations, has recently enjoyed an enormously successful revival. While holding its audience… Развернуть 

A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her beloved novella "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose cafe serves as the town's gathering place. Among other fine works, the collection also includes "Wunderkind," McCullers' first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist.

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A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her beloved novella "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." A… Развернуть 

Steinbeck's first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory's Morte d'Arthur. In this highly successful attempt to render Malory into Modern English, Steinbeck recreated the rhythm and tone of the original Middle English.

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Steinbeck's first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory's Morte d'Arthur. In this highly successful… Развернуть 

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute is a moving tour of the underworld of society.
Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his "first contact with poverty": sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously hidden world to readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time. In doing so, he found his voice as a writer.

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George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute is a moving tour of the underworld of society.
Written when Orwell was a struggling… Развернуть 

Bataille's first novel, published under the pseudonym 'Lord Auch', is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, "Story of the Eye" is the fullest expression of Bataille's obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.

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Bataille's first novel, published under the pseudonym 'Lord Auch', is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers… Развернуть 

The Subterraneans haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco, surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine. Living amongst them is Leo, an aspiring writer, and Mardou, half-Indian, half-Negro, beautiful and neurotic. Their bitter-sweet and ill-starred love affair sees Kerouac at his most evocative. Many regard this as being Kerouac's most touching and tender book.

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The Subterraneans haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco, surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine. Living amongst them is Leo, an aspiring writer, and… Развернуть