Smith Deborah

A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The VegetarianIn a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages. Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish - the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to one another. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity - their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression. Greek Lessons is a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection, a novel to awaken the senses, vividly conjuring the essence of what it means to be alive. PRAISE FOR THE VEGETARIAN:'Sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience' Guardian'A startling new novel... It is written in cool, still, poetic but matter-of-fact short sentences, translated luminously by Deborah Smith, who is obviously a genius' Deborah Levy'Enthralling... It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it' Independent

From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The VegetarianFrom the author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts comes a book like no other. The White Book is a meditation on colour, beginning with a list of white things. It is a book about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life.Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith.

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung's totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window on this most secretive of countries. Bandi's profound, deeply moving, vividly characterised stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the absurd theatre of their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare. The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances - and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those seek to suppress it

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung's totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window on this most secretive of countries. Bandi's profound, deeply moving, vividly characterised stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the absurd theatre of their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare. The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances - and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those seek to suppress it

Příběh jižanské rodiny, usilující o záchranu starobylého rodinného sídla v odlehlém horském údolí státu Tennessee. Devětadvacetiletá Venuše Arinelliová a její mladší sestra Ella, vystupující jako hudebnice v restauracích i barech hotelů, již deset let neustále mění místa pobytu, aby unikly pozornosti vládních úředníků. Matku ztratily již v dětství a otec zemřel ve vězení, když byl obviněn z účasti na vraždě federálního soudce. Nikdy se nevzdal své levicové orientace a nemohl zapomenout, že jeho japonská matka zahynula během druhé světové války v internačním táboře. V Chicagu roku 1998 sestry vyhledá bývalý agent tajné služby Gib Cameron, aby jim předal pozvání k návštěvě rodinného sídla v horách východního Tennessee, kde se před třiceti lety jejich rodiče stali prvními hosty právě otevřeného hostince a kde také v kapli uzavřeli sňatek. Cameronovi se právě nacházejí ve velmi tíživé situaci. Při tragické nehodě na pile zemřel starší Gibův bratr a on sám má zmrzačenou ruku. I přes svůj handicap a nedostatek zkušeností nechce hostinec prodat, ale snaží se s pomocí téměř celé rodiny, jejíž součástí se stávají i obě sestry, obnovit jeho provoz. Autorka ve svém dalším románu z amerického Jihu opět rozvíjí své osvědčené téma postupného sbližování traumatizovaných jedinců, překonávajících vzájemnou nedůvěru a obtížně hledajících lásku a domov.