Granta Books strana 8 z 16

'Beautiful, horrible... the most exciting discovery I've made in fiction for some time' Kazuo Ishiguro 'Smoky, carnal, dazzling' Lauren Groff Welcome to Buenos Aires, a place of nightmares and twisted imaginings, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses. Thrumming with murderous intentions, family betrayals and morbid desires, these stories shine a light on a violent city gripped by urban madness; giving voice to the lost, the oppressed and the forgotten. Lucid and darkly poetic, unsettling and otherworldly, these tales of revenge, witchcraft and fetishes are a masterpiece of contemporary Gothic and a bewitching exploration of the dark inclinations that threaten to lead us over the edge. 'There is some serious power in this writing' Daisy Johnson

Winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2021 An Ostarbeiter was an 'Eastern Worker', rounded up by Nazi Germany from the captured territories in Central and Eastern Europe. By the end of the war, it is estimated that approximately 3 million to 5.5. million Ostarbeiter were forced to work in guarded work camps, many of them younger than 16 years old - at which age they would be conscripted for military service. Ostarbeiter worked 12 hours a day on starvation on rations; as ethnic Slavs, they were treated with extraordinary brutality by Nazi guards who considered them 'sub-human' by the standards of the Aryan master race. They were distinguished by the label 'OST' sewn onto their uniforms. OST is based on over two hundred personal accounts, hundreds of hours of interviews, and over 350,000 letters. This important publication will ensure that the voices of the brutalised and displaced Ostarbeiter will not be forgotten.

Which nations have North Korean embassies? Which region has the highest number of death metal bands per capita? How many countries have bigger economies than California? Who drives on the 'wrong' side of the road? And where can you find lions in the wild? Revelatory, thought-provoking and fun, Brilliant Maps is a unique atlas of culture, history, politics and miscellanea, compiled by the editor of the iconic Brilliant Maps website. As visually arresting as Information is Beautiful and as full of surprising facts and figures as any encyclopaedia, Brilliant Maps is a stunning piece of cartography that maps our curious and varied planet. For graphic design enthusiasts, compulsive Wikipedia readers and those looking for the sort of gift they buy for someone else and wind up keeping for themselves, this book will change the way you see the world and your place in it.

Rudolf Maier, a young microbiologist working on a plague vaccine, is summoned to Moscow to deliver a progress report to his superiors. Inadvertently, he carries the virus with him from the lab. When his illness is discovered, the state machinery turns with terrifying efficiency, rounding up dozens of people. But for many, the distinction between this enforced, life-sparing isolation and the constant churn of political surveillance and arrests is barely detectable, and personal tragedy is not completely averted. Based on real events in the Stalinist Russia of the 1930s, this gripping novel, written in the late 1980s and rediscovered by the author during lockdown - and never before translated into English - surfaces uncomfortable truths about the current Russian regime and the pandemic crisis. Includes a new afterord by the author.

Rudolf Maier, a young microbiologist working on a plague vaccine, is summoned to Moscow to deliver a progress report to his superiors. Inadvertently, he carries the virus with him from the lab. When his illness is discovered, the state machinery turns with terrifying efficiency, rounding up dozens of people. But for many, the distinction between this enforced, life-sparing isolation and the constant churn of political surveillance and arrests is barely detectable, and personal tragedy is not completely averted. Based on real events in the Stalinist Russia of the 1930s, this gripping novel, written in the late 1980s and rediscovered by the author during lockdown - and never before translated into English - surfaces uncomfortable truths about the current Russian regime and the pandemic crisis. Includes a new afterord by the author.

Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us of the great composer? In exhilarating, transformative prose, Patrick Mackie mixes biographical storytelling with deep dives into the experience of listening to Mozart''s music to reveal a musician in dialogue with culture at its most sweepingly progressive, when Europe was caught between two historical worlds. We follow Mozart from his adolescence in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard. Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer''s life and brings alive the teeming, swivelling, modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent which threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing him to extraordinary feats of musicianship. Returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century, we hear Mozart''s music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.

Trees keep our planet cool and breathable. They make the rain and sustain biodiversity. They are essential for nature and for us. And yet, we are cutting and burning them at such a rate that many forests are fast approaching tipping points beyond which they will simply shrivel and die. But there is still time, and there is still hope. If we had a trillion more trees, the damage could be undone. So should we get planting? Not so fast. Fred Pearce argues in this inspiring new book that we can have our forests back, but mass planting should be a last resort. Instead, we should mostly stand back, make room and let nature -- and those who dwell in the forests -- do the rest. Taking us from the barren sites of illegal logging and monocrop farming to the smouldering rainforests of the Amazon, Fred Pearce tells a revelatory new history of the relationship between humans and trees - and shows us how we can change it for the better. Here we meet the pilot who discovered flying rivers, the village elders who are farming amid the trees, and the scientists challenging received wisdom. And we visit some of the world's most wondrous treescapes, from the orchid-rich moutaintops of Ecuador to the gnarled and ancient glades of the South Downs. Combining vivid travel writing with cutting edge science, A Trillion Trees is both an environmental call to arms and a celebration of our planet's vast arboreal riches.

Take a story and shrink it. Make it tiny, so small it can fit in the palm of your hand. Carry the story with you everywhere, let it sit with you while you eat, let it watch you while you sleep. Keep it safe, you never know when you might need it. In Kawakami's super short 'palm of the hand' stories the world is never quite as it should be: a small child lives under a sheet near his neighbour's house for thirty years; an apartment block leaves its visitors with strange afflictions, from fast-growing beards to an ability to channel the voices of the dead; an old man has two shadows, one docile, the other rebellious; two girls named Yoko are locked in a bitter rivalry to the death. Small but great, you'll find great delight spending time with the people in this neighbourhood.

In this classic work, Funder brings us the extraordinary stories of those who lived in East Germany. She meets Miriam, condemned as an enemy of the state at sixteen, hears the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her young baby by the Berlin Wall, and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, once declared by the authorities - to his face - to 'no longer to exist'. And she meets the Stasi themselves - men who spied on their families and friends - who are still loyal to the vanished regime and longing for the return of Communism. Stasiland is a gripping portrait of the horror and the absurdities of state oppression. In a world of total surveillance, its celebration of resilience and resistance is as potent as ever.

In this classic work, Funder brings us the extraordinary stories of those who lived in East Germany. She meets Miriam, condemned as an enemy of the state at sixteen, hears the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her young baby by the Berlin Wall, and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, once declared by the authorities - to his face - to 'no longer to exist'. And she meets the Stasi themselves - men who spied on their families and friends - who are still loyal to the vanished regime and longing for the return of Communism. Stasiland is a gripping portrait of the horror and the absurdities of state oppression. In a world of total surveillance, its celebration of resilience and resistance is as potent as ever.

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

Welcome to Iceland, a very small nation with a very large number (two hundred and sixty five) of (mostly) very small museums. Founded in the backyards of houses, begun as jokes or bets or memorials to lost friends, these museums tell the story of an enchanted island where bridges arrived only at the beginning of the 20th century, and waterproof shoes only with the second world war. A nation formerly dirt poor, then staggeringly rich, and now building its way to affluence once again. A nation where, in the remote and wild places, you might encounter still a shore laddie, a sorcerer or a ghost. From Reykjavik's renowned Phallological Museum to a house of stones on the eastern coast; from the curious monsters which roam the remote shores of Bildudalur to a museum of whales which proves impossible to find, here is an enchanted story of obsession, curation, and the peculiar magic of this isolated island.

One day, the children begin to show up in the subtropical town of San Cristobal. Aged between nine and thirteen, the children are covered in dirt and hungry. They beg food, commit small acts of vandalism, play games that don't seem to have any rules, and communicate with each other in a strange language. No one knows where they come from or where they disappear to each night. And then, they rob a supermarket and stab two adults, bringing fear to the town. Thus begins a fearsome and thrilling modern morality tale that retraces the lines between good and evil, the civilised and the wild, and drags our assumptions about childhood and innocence out into the light.

Over the course of his life, Mr Nishino falls hopelessly in love again and again. One woman is a colleague, another a chance encounter; one is the girlfriend of a classmate, another the best friend of Nishino's latest conquest. Some are entranced by Nishino, others care more for their freedom, their children (or their cats). As we come to learn of the torments, desires and delights of each woman, a portrait emerges of a complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the cause of his downfall.

Kevin Maxwell was a dream candidate for the police force - he had a long-held desire to serve his community, a strong moral compass and a clear aptitude for both the strategic and practical aspects of policing. And, as a gay black man from a working class family, he could easily have been a poster boy for the force's stated commitment to equal opportunities. Joining just after the 9/11 attacks, Kevin entered policing determined to keep communities safe in the face of a changing world. But instead he came up against entrenched prejudice, open racism and homophobia. For more than ten years, Kevin strove against the odds, until he took the force to an employment tribunal - with devastating results. Forced Out is a revelatory expose combining deeply affecting memoir with sharp analysis and a fascinating insider perspective on day-to-day life in the force. It is a touchstone for the silent many who have either tried to ignore abuse for the sake of their career or who have been bullied out of their jobs. It paints a sobering portrait of an institution that has not yet learned the lessons of the past and whose prejudice is informing the cases it chooses to investigate and the way it investigates them. And it asks the important question: what needs to change?

Howard Hinton and his family are living in Japan, escaping from a scandal. Hinton's obsession is his work, his voyages into mathematical pure space, into the fourth dimension, but also his wife and sons, each of whom are entangled in the strange and unknown landscapes of Hinton's science fictions. In a bravura and startling meeting of real and philosophical elements, Mark Blacklock has created a ravishing period piece of late-Victorian social, scientific and domestic life. Hinton is about extraordinary discoveries, and terrible choices. It is about people who discover and map other realms, and what the implications might be for those of us left behind.