Penguin Books strana 83 z 485

At the time of his death in 2015, award-winning and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet - his own. The creator of the phenomenally bestselling Discworld series, Terry Pratchett was known and loved around the world for his hugely popular books, his smart satirical humour and the humanity of his campaign work. But that's only part of the picture. Before his untimely death, Terry was writing a memoir: the story of a boy who aged six was told by his teacher that he would never amount to anything and spent the rest of his life proving him wrong. For Terry lived a life full of astonishing achievements: becoming one of the UK's bestselling and most beloved writers, winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood. Now, the book Terry sadly couldn't finish has been written by Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the Pratchett literary estate. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of the author's family, friends and colleagues, Rob unveils the full picture of Terry's life - from childhood to his astonishing writing career, and how he met and coped with what he called the 'Embuggerance' of Alzheimer's disease. A deeply moving and personal portrait of the extraordinary life of Sir Terry Pratchett, written with unparalleled insight and filled with funny anecdotes, this is the only official biography of one of our finest authors.

The final major work by one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century In the fourth and final volume of his far-reaching and influential study of human sexuality, Foucault turns his attention to early Christianity, exploring how ancient ideas of pleasure were modified into the notion of the 'flesh'. Ranging over marriage, procreation and the concept of virginity as a divine state, Foucault brilliantly shows how a fledgling religion altered and defined the Western history of desire. Confessions of the Flesh brings to a conclusion one of the twentieth century's seminal works.

The bond was meant to save her. It might destroy her instead. Fortuna Sworn is the last Nightmare—and now, a queen. But power in the fae realm always comes at a cost. Her marriage has bound her to a man she cannot trust, and her brother is no longer the boy she risked everything to save. As secrets twist through the Unseelie Court like smoke, Fortuna’s sanity begins to fray. Her dreams are haunted. Her body remembers pain no one can see. And the only thing more dangerous than her husband’s silence… is how much she still craves him. But desire is a weapon in the fae world. And Fortuna is about to learn just how sharp it can be. Court politics. Forbidden hunger. Brutal bargains. And a heroine who refuses to break. Restless Slumber is the second book in a completed dark fantasy romance series filled with steamy slow-burn tension, dangerous fae men, and a heroine with bite. Perfect for fans of ACOTAR, From Blood and Ash, and The Plated Prisoner.

What would it take for your body to be good enough? The pressure to change our bodies is overwhelming. We strive to defy ageing, build our biceps, cure our disabilities, conceal our quirks. Surrounded by filtered photos and surgically-enhanced features, we must contort our physical selves to prejudiced standards of beauty. Perfection is impossible, and even an acceptable body seems out of reach. In this mind-expanding book, Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers argues that the unmodified body is a key political principle. While defending our right to change our bodies, she argues that the social pressures to modify undermine equality. She shows how the connected ideas of the natural body, the normal body, and the whole body have been used both to disrupt and to maintain social hierarchies - sometimes oppressing, other times liberating. The body becomes a site of political importance: a place where hierarchies of sex, gender, race, disability, age, and class are reinforced. Through a thought-provoking analysis of the power dynamics that structure our society, and with examples ranging widely from bodybuilding to breast implants, deafness to male circumcision, Intact stresses that we must break away from the oppressive forces that demand we alter our bodies. Instead, it offers a bold, transformative vision of the human body that is equal without expectation.

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 'The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful'. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London's streets in search of a pencil. The account of her journey - the people, the places, the pleasure - soon becomes one of the great paeans to city life. This collection also includes other wonderful essays, such as 'How Should One Read a Book?' and 'The Sun and the Fish'. 'One of the great writers of the twentieth century' Guardian

'We were meant to be seductive. We were designed to lure humans in.' Fortuna Sworn is the last of her kind. Her brother has disappeared, leaving her alone. She hides among humans, spending her days working at a bar and her nights searching for him - until she catches the eye of a powerful faerie. Collith desires Fortuna. And if she will bind herself to him, he offers something irresistible. So Fortuna leaves her safe existence behind and descends into a world of glamorous creatures and deadly power. She soon realises it's not just her heart she has bargained with - but quite possibly her life. _______ The first book in the darkly addictive romantic fantasy series that's already a TikTok sensation! Perfect for fans of Holly Black and Sarah J. Maas.

The funny, moving and uplifting new novel from Ruth Jones, co-creator of Gavin & Stacey and author of the Sunday Times bestsellers Never Greener and Us Three. Grace is about to turn ninety. She doesn't want parties or presents or fuss. She just wants to heal the family rift that's been breaking her heart for decades. But to do that she must find her daughter Alys - the only person who can help to put things right. And when she finds her - if she does - she risks betraying granddaughter Elin. Who is far less forgiving of the past, with its hurts and secrets and lies. Meanwhile Grace's great-grand-daughter Beca is oblivious to all these worries, too busy navigating the highs and lows of teenage life and keeping secrets of her own. All families have their problems. And most of them get resolved. But Grace's problem is thirty years old. And she doesn't have time on her side. So is it too late for her to make peace? Or is reconciliation still within reach? Love Untold is about mothers and daughters and the complex bond between them. It's about the heartache that comes from leaving things unsaid and the power of true forgiveness. It is a joy-filled, life-affirming, sob-inducing novel - with characters you'll come to know and love - from no.1 bestselling author Ruth Jones.

In his early twenties, poor, depressed, stranded in the Coral Sea on the seemingly endless survey mission of HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age. The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves, as individuals and as a species, one among many. They worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and - perhaps above all - as public lecturers, educators and explainers. Their speciality was evolution in all its forms. But perhaps their greatest subject was themselves. Alison Bashford's engaging and original new book interweaves the Huxleys' momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies. The result is the history of a family, but also a history of humanity grappling with its place in nature. This book shows how much we owe - for better or worse - to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of a small, strange group of men and women.

Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction "Up there," she says, "I'm just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I'm myself." For the people who swim there each day, the local pool is a haven of unexpected kinship and private solace. For Alice, her daily laps have become the ritual that gives her life meaning, even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel. But one day, a crack appears deep beneath the surface of the water, and then another, and then another. The pool must close for repairs, and with that Alice is plunged into dislocation and chaos. Away from the steady routines of her swimming, she is engulfed by difficult memories of her own past. And as her sense of home, and of herself, slip further out of her grasp, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship. From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic comes a novel about memory and loss, mothers and daughters, the stories that make up a life, and what happens when they start to unravel.

Robert Burton's labyrinthine, beguiling, playful masterpiece is his attempt to 'anatomize and cut up' every aspect of the condition of melancholy, from which he had suffered throughout his life. Ranging over beauty, digestion, the planets, alcohol, goblins, kissing, poetry and the restorative power of books, among many other things, The Anatomy of Melancholy has fascinated figures from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges since the seventeenth century, and remains an incomparable examination of the human condition in all its flawed, endless variety. Edited with an introduction by Angus Gowland

Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the Sunday Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate. The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out - not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But that impossible dream has somehow come true for El and her classmates. And what's more, she didn't even have to become the monstrous dark witch she's prophesised to become to make it happen. Instead of killing enclavers, she saved them, and now the world is safe for all wizards. Peace and harmony have enveloped all the enclaves of the world. Just kidding. Instead, someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in El's stead, and everyone she saved is at risk again with a full-scale enclave war on the horizon. And so, the first thing El needs to do after miraculously escaping the Scholomance, is to turn straight around and find a way back in.

What are the mysterious numbers that unlock the secrets of the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics. These include Graham's number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3), whose finite value could never be reached before the universe reset itself; and 10^{-120}, which measures the desperately unlikely balance of energy the universe needs to exist... Leading us down the rabbit hole to the inner workings of reality, Padilla demonstrates how these unusual numbers are the key to unlocking such mind-bending phenomena as black holes, entropy and the problem of the cosmological constant, which shows that our two best ways of understanding the universe contradict one another. Combining cutting-edge science with an entertaining cosmic quest, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is an electrifying, head-twisting guide to the most fundamental truths of the universe.

A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desire Why do humans have such a remarkable capacity for conflict? From ancient foundational myths to the modern era, the visionary thinker Rene Girard identified the constant, competing desires at the heart of our existence - desires that we copy from others, igniting a contagious violence. This remarkable and accessible new selection of Girard's work shows him as a writer for our times, as he ranges over human imitation and rivalry, herd behaviour, scapegoating and how our violent longings play out in stories, from Shakespeare to religion. Edited with an Introduction by Cynthia L. Haven

The dazzling essays of the beloved, subversive Chinese writer Wang Xiaobo, a continual bestseller in China, now in English for the first time Wang Xiaobo made his name as a novelist but his essays, too, have become ongoing bestsellers in China since their publication in the 1990s. Bringing together his thoughts on reading and talking and silence in the Cultural Revolution, about the irrepressible spirit of one beloved pig he met while an 'educated youth', and about being operated on via a textbook, these essays give a rare glimpse into a world rarely seen and discussed with such honesty. Written with a light touch and with a wry sense of humour, these are also the essays of a great literary talent, grappling with sociology, sexuality and feminism, with the cultural clash of living in the USA, and with Chinese sci-fi, the internet, and beloved European writers like Bertrand Russell and Italo Calvino. Electrifying, containing a razor-sharp wit and intellect, this collection reveals the voice of a generation to English-speaking readers for the very first time.

If you can change your mind you can do anything. Why do we refresh our wardrobes every year, renovate our kitchens every decade, but never update our beliefs and our views? Why do we laugh at people using computers that are ten years old, but yet still cling to opinions we formed ten years ago? There's a new skill for the modern world that matters more than raw intelligence - the ability to change your mind. To have the edge we all need to develop the flexibility to unlearn old beliefs and adapt when the evidence and the world changes before us. Told through fascinating stories, informed by cutting-edge research and illustratedwith amazing insights from Adam Grant's conversations with people such as Elon Musk, Hilary Clinton's campaign team, top CEOs and leading scientists, this is the ultimate guide to keeping your thinking fresh, learning when to question your ideas and update your own opinions, and how to inspire those around you to do the same.

Knowledge is power. Which is why the rich and powerful don't want you to have it. The Playbook is an exposé of the extraordinary lengths that corporations will go to in order to spread disinformation and deny the scientific facts - around climate change, public health risks and worker safety - when they don't suit their agenda. Written in the form of a corporate handbook for tobacco, oil and pharmaceutical company executives, it is a litany of obfuscation techniques, denial, delays and outright lies, including: how to recruit an academic 'expert' who is willing to compromise their integrity (or is just short of cash), how to massage the statistics, how to use legal and even physical intimidation against reporters and activists, and how, just as in a casino, to keep your customers comfortable, unquestioning, unthinking and playing along for as long as possible. Part satire, part social history, part guide to resistance, The Playbook is a charge sheet against the powerful. It shows us how, by understanding the methods and motives of disinformation campaigns, we may be able to outwit them.