'Introducing this release of The Awakening has given me an opportunity to re-experience one of my life's important books . . . I still marvel at Chopin's realism, her impatience with conventional trappings, her arresting honesty' BARBARA KINGSOLVER
'Incisive, brilliant and haunting' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
Over one long, languid summer Edna Pontellier, fettered by marriage and motherhood, becomes acquainted with Robert Lebrun. As the days shorten and the temperature drops Edna succumbs to Robert's devotion. But as her desire grows so too does her discontentment -...
'Introducing this release of The Awakening has given me an opportunity to re-experience one of my life's important books . . . I still marve...
'Probably the greatest novel of the century' Observer
'Remarkable . . . A work of loving and vivid imagination, yielding copious riches' WILLIAM BOYD
Lanark, a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.
First...
'Probably the greatest novel of the century' Observer
'Remarkable . . . A work of loving and vivid imagination...
His face made a fist at the world. The twined remnant of umbilicus projected vulnerably. Hands, feet and prick. He had come equipped for the job.
Newborn Conn Docherty, raw as a fresh wound, lies between his parents in their tenement room, with no birthright but a life's labour in the pits of his small town. But the world is changing, and, lying next to him, Conn's father Tam has decided that his son's life will be different from his own.
Gritty, dark and tender, McIlvanney's Docherty is a modern classic.
His face made a fist at the world. The twined remnant of umbilicus projected vulnerably. Hands, feet and prick. He had come equipped for the job...
'Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last ... He's a real writer, a word man, and [The Last Holiday] is as wriggling and vital in its way as Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One' New York Times
'Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last ... He's a real writer, a word man, and [The Last Holiday] is as wriggling and vital in its...
An odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse, from source to sea; a profound and haunting reflection on history and landscape by one of the most important writers of modern non-fiction
An odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse, from source to sea; a profound and haunting reflection on history and landscape by one of the most impor...
Orlando is destined to live for four hundred years . . . During the Elizabethan era, the young courtier Orlando becomes a lover to the aging Queen and embarks on an intense affair with the beautiful Russian Princess Sasha. Yet while Orlando can fulfill most of his desires, he never quite seems to fit in. Then one night, Orlando falls into a deep sleep and awakes transformed, emerging as a woman in eighteenth-century London. Orlando must now inhabit a very different life, dealing with matters of dress, sex and marriage. But will she arrive in the twentieth century as an individual who has, at...
Orlando is destined to live for four hundred years . . . During the Elizabethan era, the young courtier Orlando becomes a lover to the aging Queen and...
'They say she is something different from every creature . . . I've known men that wouldn't go near her to kill her, and men that would cross themselves looking at the dead body of her. But myself and my father were close to them all our lives. And I myself have handled them alive and dead.' A magical world emerges, in which men are rescued by seals in stormy seas, take seal-women for their wives and have their children suckled by seal-mothers. Mysterious and fascinating, timeless and haunting, Thomson's beautiful prose is rich in rewards and surprises. The People of the Sea is...
'They say she is something different from every creature . . . I've known men that wouldn't go near her to kill her, and men that would cross themselv...
