Picador strana 17 z 22

Crushed by a devastating scandal, university professor Oscar Amalfitano flees Barcelona for Santa Teresa - a Mexican city close to the US border. In this sprawling town, where women are being killed in staggering numbers, Amalfitano begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings, while his daughter, Rosa, reeling from the weight of his secrets, seeks solace in a romance of her own. Featuring characters and stories from The Savage Detectives and 2666, Woes of the True Policeman explores the power of art, memory, and desire - and marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.

"Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness". ("Guardian"). In his most extraordinary book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. These are case studies of people who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people or common objects; whose limbs have become alien; and, who are afflicted and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr Sacks' splendid and sympathetic telling, each tale is a unique and deeply human study of life struggling against incredible adversity. "Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction ...Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be". ("Sunday Times"). "This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it". ("The Times"). "A gripping journey into the recesses of the human mind". ("Daily Mail").

Jim Crace's biggest novel since "Being Dead" draws once more on his genius with landscape and myth, to create a lost and bewitching English world. As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. A trio of outsiders - two men and a dangerously magnetic woman - arrives on the woodland borders and puts up a make-shift camp. That same night, the local manor house is set on fire. Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the harvest blackened by smoke and fear, the new arrivals cruelly punished, and his neighbours held captive on suspicion of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it...Told in Jim Crace's hypnotic prose, "Harvest" evokes the tragedy of land pillaged and communities scattered, as England's fields are irrevocably enclosed. Timeless yet singular, mythical yet deeply personal, this beautiful novel of one man and his unnamed village speaks for a way of life lost for ever.

In early 2012 it was announced that Cormac McCarthy had written his first original screenplay -- news which provoked huge excitement, a swift deal and the appointment of Ridley Scott to direct. But this is no ordinary screenplay. This is a work of extraordinary imagination which draws on many of the themes of McCarthy's work as well as taking it to new dark places. It is also written with great descriptive passages counteracting the dialogue, so the reader is given the full experience of the McCarthy prose. It is the story of a lawyer, the Counselor, a man who is so seduced by the desire to get rich, to impress his fiancee Laura, that he becomes involved in a drug-smuggling venture that quickly takes him way out of his depth. His contacts in this are the mysterious and probably corrupt Reiner and the seductive Malkina, so exotic her pets of choice are two cheetahs. As the action crosses the Mexican border, things become darker, more violent and more sexually disturbing than the Counselor has ever imagined. The film starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will go on release in autumn 2013.

Like Germania but better. This is the brilliant and entertaining companion to the Sunday Times top ten bestseller Germania. For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off - through luck, guile and sheer mulishness - any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere - indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them. Simon Winder's extremely funny new book plunges the reader into a maelstrom of alchemy, skeletons, jewels, bear-moats, unfortunate marriages and a guinea-pig village. Danubia is full of music, piracy, religion and fighting. It is the history of a dynasty, but it is at least as much about the people they ruled, who spoke many different languages, lived in a vast range of landscapes, believed in many rival gods and often showed a marked ingratitude towards their oddball ruler in Vienna. Readers who discovered Simon Winder's genius for telling wonderful stories of middle Europe with Germania will be delighted by the eccentric and fascinating stories of the Habsburgs and their world.

In early 2012 it was announced that Cormac McCarthy had written his first original screenplay -- news which provoked huge excitement, a swift deal and the appointment of Ridley Scott to direct. But this is no ordinary screenplay. This is a work of extraordinary imagination which draws on many of the themes of McCarthy's work as well as taking it to new dark places. It is also written with great descriptive passages counteracting the dialogue, so the reader is given the full experience of the McCarthy prose. It is the story of a lawyer, the Counselor, a man who is so seduced by the desire to get rich, to impress his fiancee Laura, that he becomes involved in a drug-smuggling venture that quickly takes him way out of his depth. His contacts in this are the mysterious and probably corrupt Reiner and the seductive Malkina, so exotic her pets of choice are two cheetahs. As the action crosses the Mexican border, things become darker, more violent and more sexually disturbing than the Counselor has ever imagined. The film starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will go on release in autumn 2013.

Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one's own body. Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. In this book, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.

When Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. Mr and Mrs Grace and their twin children Myles and Chloe appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Max grew to know them intricately, even intimately, and what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years, shaping everything that was to follow.

Twenty years after leaving her, the great love of Esther's life sends a telegram. Tomorrow, he tells her, he is coming back. Esther has not forgotten that her dazzling lover is a fantasist and a liar, nor that he caused her unimaginable hurt. But she also remembers how he made her feel, how he woke a part of her that has ever since been sleeping. A special meal is planned, a car arrives at the house, and -- in a heightened visit for which Esther is not remotely prepared -- their two lives converge for a second, dizzying time. 'Like Embers, the novella recounts a dramatically charged meeting after a gap of decades, and it has a similarly intricate symbolism' Guardian 'In times of recession, they say, gold never loses its value. Neither do literary gems ...There are some great writers I find it hard to talk about without gushing, and Marai is on that list' Sunday Herald 'Rediscovering Marai is like finding an Old Master painting in the attic' Sunday Telegraph

A dazzling urban satire of modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something? Two diaries, two enduring best-sellers, one unforgettable character. This is Bridget Jones: The Singleton Years. V.g.

Original, haunting and utterly gripping, Kiss Me First is The Talented Mr Ripley for the online age and the literary thriller that everyone will be talking about. Leila has never met Tess, but she now knows more about Tess than anyone in the world. She's read all of her emails, researched her past and asked Tess for every detail about her friends and family. Tess has never met Leila. But if she wants to slip away from the world unnoticed, she needs to trust Leila with her life. At first, Leila finds it easy to assume Tess's identity, and no one has any reason to distrust her. But as Leila is soon to discover, there is much more to a person than the facts and there are things about life you can learn only by living it...For fans of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson and Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, Lottie Moggach's Kiss Me First is an electrifying and unputdownable debut from a phenomenally gifted storyteller.

Official Film Edition including an interview with Baz Luhrmann Jay Gatsby's parties are legendary. Night and day, the rich and beautiful descend upon his mansion to drink and to dance. For Nick Carraway, newly arrived on Long Island, the handsome, wealthy Gatsby seems to lead the perfect life. But beneath that shimmering facade Gatsby harbours an obsessive desire for the only thing he truly wants, but can never have. The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece; a tragic love story played out in a world of dangerous illusion amidst the famous decadence of the roaring twenties. The perfect companion to the DVD, Blu-ray and soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire.

Buildings are driven by human emotions and desires; hope, power, money, sex, the idea of home. In Why We Build Rowan Moore explores the making of buildings from conception to inhabitation and reveals the paradoxical power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing in response to the lives around it. Moving across the globe and through history, through works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic view of what makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating. You will never look at a building in the same way again.

Pat Peoples knows that life doesn't always go according to plan, but he's determined to get his back on track. After a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Pat is staying with his parents and trying to live according to his new philosophy: get fit, be nice and always look for the silver lining. Most importantly, Pat is determined to be reconciled with his wife Nikki. Pat's parents just want to protect him so he can get back on his feet, but when Pat befriends the mysterious Tiffany, the secrets they've been keeping from him threaten to come out ...

Forty-year-old university professor Stuart Treece is rather set in his ways, and in the midst of the changing attitudes of the ’50s, his encounters with the younger generation are making him feel decidedly alien. When he falls disastrously in love with one of his students all his efforts to acclimatize are hilariously undermined. Timeless and brilliant, Eating People is Wrong is Malcolm Bradbury’s first novel, and established him as a master of satire.

War-games champion Udo Berger and his girlfriend Ingeborg are on holiday. There they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals. They have fun, see the sights, relax. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace. Desperate to solve the mystery, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home. Increasingly frightened, the situation slips beyond his grasp and he suddenly realizes that the consequences of this 'game' are much more serious than he ever imagined.