Fourth Estate strana 6 z 11

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

Annie Proulx's highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. While weathering the storm that is his marriage of one-way love to his no-good wife Petal, disaster strikes and Petal is killed in a spectacular road accident. Set adrift on an aimless quest, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers - to the remote corners of far-flung Newfoundland. With his delinquent daughters Bunny and Sunshine in tow, Quoyle takes up the post of shipping news reporter, and finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

One of the most critically acclaimed memoirs ever written. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Lorna sage's outstanding childhood and adolescence brings to life her eccentric family and bizarre upbringing in rural Wales. The period is evoked through a wickedly funny and deeply intelligent account: from the 1940s, dominated for Lorna by her dissolute but charismatic vicar grandfather, through the 1950s, where the invention of fish fingers revolutionised the lives of housewives like Lorna's mother, to the brink of the 1960s, where Lorna's pregnancy at 16 outraged those around her, an event her grandmother blamed on `the fiendish invention of sex'. Bad Blood vividly and wittily explores a vanished time and place, and illuminate the lives of three generations of women.

Penelope Fitzgerald's final masterpiece. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his father's permission to announce his engagement to his `heart's heart', his `true Philosophy': twelve-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking? Tracing the dramatic early years of the young German who was to become the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis, The Blue Flower is a masterpiece of invention, evoking the past with a reality that we can almost feel. Her final book, it confirmed Fitzgerald's reputation as one of the finest novelists of the 20th century.

A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel, that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband Alfred is losing his sanity, and their children have long since fled for the catastrophes of their own lives. As Alfred's condition worsens and the Lamberts are forced to face their secrets and failures, Enid sets her heart on one last family Christmas. Bringing the old world of civic virtue and sexual inhibition into violent collision with the era of hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare and globalised greed, The Corrections established Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of the American soul.

One of the most remarkable memoirs ever written. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless. But his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been. Using his only functioning muscle - his left eyelid - he was determined to tell his remarkable story, painstakingly spelling it out letter by letter. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly records Bauby's lonely existence but also the ability to invent a life for oneself in the most appalling of circumstances. It one of the most extraordinary books about the triumph of the human spirit ever written.

The heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai – a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author’s own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.

A heartbreaking, exquisitely written masterpiece. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. In 1960s Nigeria, three lives intersect. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy Englishman, is in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Nigerian Civil War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's masterpiece is a novel about the end of colonialism, class and race - and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning. In the twenty-first century, we like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific racism, that most people accept race as a social construct, not a biological one. But race science is experiencing a revival, fuelled by the misuse of science by certain political groups. Even well-intentioned scientists, through their use of racial categories in genetics and medicine, betray their suspicion that race has some basis in biology. In truth, it is no more real than it was hundreds of years ago, when our racial hierarchies were devised by those in power. In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini explores the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science.

Collected here in a stunning box set, these ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a beautifully redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. In the mid-twentieth century, the matchbox industry was booming. Companies had to stand out, so they began commissioning designers and illustrators to create works of graphic art for their labels. Despite its limitations, the tiny canvas did not inhibit artists’ imaginations: foxes skipping through Polish forests, celebrations of Russia’s space race successes and orchards coming into blossom. These micro-masterpieces serve as the inspiration for the 4th Estate Matchbook Classics series. The ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – are some of the best loved and most admired that 4th Estate has published. Revolutions, mental illness, a vicarage upbringing, families caught in civil war, soldiers in Vietnam and a man who can only communicate by blinking his left eyelid: these books display a full range of the human experience and thrillingly bring it to life. Each can be considered one of the great books of our time, as unique as the matchbox that inspired its cover. Contains: Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Bad Blood by Lorna Sage

The winner of the Guardian First Book Award that reinvented the biographic form. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Stuart: A Life Backwards expanded the possibilities of what a biography could be: the stories it could tell, and how it could tell them. It is about a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (`a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander'), and Stuart Shorter, a thief, hostage-taker, psycho and street raconteur. Told backwards - Stuart's idea - it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old stepping out in front of the 11.15 train from London to King's Lynn, and ends with a `happy-go-lucky little boy' of twelve. Compelling, humane and funny, it is as extraordinary and unexpected as the life it describes.

The million copy bestseller that redefined the way the world saw war. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. The Things They Carried is the definitive account of what it was like being on the ground in Vietnam. But while that devastating conflict is central to the book, it is not simply about war. It is a book about memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. It is also about the human heart - about the terrible weight of those things we carry through our lives. The men of Alpha Company - Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins and Kiowa - slog through the emptiness and dangers of their Vietnam tour in this haunting and acclaimed collection, which has the cumulative power and unity of a novel.

A biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling grammar rules Cecelia Watson used to be obsessive about grammar rules. But then she began teaching. And that was when she realized that strict rules aren't always the best way of teaching people how to make words say what they want them to; that they are even, sometimes, best ignored. One punctuation mark encapsulates this thorny issue more clearly than any other. The semicolon. Hated by Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut and Orwell, and loved by Herman Melville, Henry James and Rebecca Solnit, it is the most divisive punctuation mark in the English language, and many are too scared to go near it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care? In this warm, funny, enlightening and thoroughly original book, Cecelia Watson takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the surprising history of the semicolon and explores the remarkable power it can wield, if only we would stop being afraid of it. Forget the rules; you're in charge. It's time to make language do what you want it to.

`It couldn't happen here' Ece Temelkuran heard reasonable people in Britain say it the night of the Brexit vote. She heard reasonable people in America say it the night Trump's election was soundtracked by chants of `Build that wall.' She heard reasonable people in Turkey say it as Erdogan rigged elections, rebuilt the economy around cronyism, and labelled his opposition as terrorists. How to Lose a Country is an impassioned plea, a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don't march fully-formed into government; they creep. Award winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran, identifies the early-warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to define a global pattern, and arm the reader with the tools to root it out. Proposing alternative, global answers to the pressing - and too often paralysing - poltical questions of our time, Temelkuran explores the insidious idea of `real people', the infantilisation of language and debate, the way laughter can prove a false friend, and the dangers of underestimating one's opponent. She weaves memoir, history and clear-sighted argument into an urgent and eloquent defence of democracy. No longer can the reasonable comfort themselves with `it couldn't happen here.' It is happening. And soon it may be too late.

Famed American actress Demi Moore at last tells her own story in a surprisingly intimate and emotionally charged memoir. For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight - or the headlines. Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Throughout her rise to fame and during some of the most pivotal moments of her life, Demi battled addiction, body image issues, and childhood trauma that would follow her for years - all while juggling a skyrocketing career and at times negative public perception. As her success grew, Demi found herself questioning if she belonged in Hollywood, if she was a good mother, a good actress - and, always, if she was simply good enough. As much as her story is about adversity, it is also about tremendous resilience. In this deeply candid and reflective memoir, Demi pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life - laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward open heartedness. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender - a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman's at once ordinary and iconic life.

From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve -the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion's `attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself'. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.