Vintage Books

A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn - and becomes a fight for survival. A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival. This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.

This is a book about languages, what languages can and what they cannot do. In this dialogue between a Nobel Laureate and a leading translator, provocative ideas emerge about the evolution of language and the challenge of translation. Language, historically speaking, has always been slippery. Two dictionaries provide two different maps of the universe: which one is true, or are both false? Speaking in Tongues - taking the form of a dialogue between Nobel-Laureate novelist J. M. Coetzee and eminent translator Mariana Dimópulos - explores questions that have constantly plagued writers and translators, now more than ever. Among them: How can a translator liberate meanings imprisoned in the language of a text? Why is the masculine form dominant in gendered languages while the feminine is treated as a deviation? How should we counter the spread of monolingualism? Should a translator censor racist or misogynistic language? Does mathematics tell the truth about everything? In the tradition of Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay 'The Task of the Translator', Speaking in Tongues emerges as an engaging and accessible work of philosophy, shining a light on some of the most important linguistic and philological issues of our time.

Is AI going to take over the world? Have scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to replace all our jobs? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answers to these questions, as the expert authors of The AI Con make clear, are 'no', 'they wish', 'LOL', and 'definitely not'. In fact, these fears are all symptoms of the hype being used by tech corporations to justify data theft, motivate surveillance capitalism, and devalue human creativity. Packed with real-world examples, pithy arguments and expert insights, The AI Con arms you to spot AI hype in all its guises, expose the exploitation and power-grabs it aims to hide, and push back against it at work and in your daily life.

Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant. This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry. Cherry has always been a creative force to be reckoned with. She spent some of her childhood at the iconic Chelsea Hotel; performed with all-girl punk band the Slits as a teenager; was among the pioneers of nineties pop music; and has inspired wave after wave of musicians and artists. In this joyous and electric memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy.

The Roma is a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today. It is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive. Full of fascinating stories and extraordinary individuals, The Roma is a powerful corrective to the stereotyping and prejudices still faced by Romani communities. We meet the Romani artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany’s light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century Romani woman in London who was accused of kidnapping a girl and sentenced to death only to be exonerated thanks to some detective work by an unconvinced judge. Throughout, Madeline Potter weaves in her travels though contemporary Romani Europe as well as strands of her own journey as a Romani woman in Romania and now in Britain. Deftly blending explorative history and portraits of a unique and vibrant culture with intimate accounts of racism, The Roma is a celebration of survival – of resilience and resistance in the face of prejudice and persecution.

Got endometriosis? You should have a baby! Painful post-birth prolapse? Well, you had a baby. Let down by doctors? Try our wellness candle! Episiotomy scar? Why not trim your labia too? It’s a stitch-up. And we demand better. As Emma was being sewn up following the birth of her second child, the midwife paused, looked up, and said the worst thing anyone has ever said to her: ‘Your vagina’s fallen out.’ After receiving a vague diagnosis of ‘prolapse’, she spent the next two years being shunted between specialists. The solutions on offer ranged from kegels to hysterectomy and even labia trimming. Some doctors simply shrugged and said there was nothing they could do. Women around her spoke of similar experiences: mothers told that pain was the price of parenthood; trans women blamed for ‘wanting a vagina in the first place’; Black women disbelieved and dismissed; intersex men and women lied to by their doctors. The mesh scandal that injured thousands. The ‘love doctor’ who performed nonconsensual vaginal surgeries. Over and over again, Emma heard stories of women in pain, bleeding, dying, failed by the professionals who were supposed to help them. Medical misogyny kills, and leaves many more in agony, unable to live full lives. The Stitch-Up tells their stories, and calls for better research, healthcare options, language and treatment, arguing that being female should never be a death sentence.

Literacy. Numeracy. Oracy? For generations our education system has been built on the twin pillars of literacy and numeracy. But what if a third – and equally vital – pillar has been ignored? Enter oracy: communicating effectively, articulating ideas and engaging with others through spoken language. In this persuasive and powerful manifesto, Neil Mercer calls for oracy, as a subject and a set of skills, to have equal footing alongside literacy and numeracy. Oracy can and must be taught, so that students leave school not only as readers and writers, but as accomplished speakers and listeners. Mercer incisively shows how oracy education has nothing to do with speaking ‘proper’, or eliminating style, slang and regional accents, but instead about empowering people to find and express their own voice. In fact, oracy is a key driver of cognitive development, academic attainment and social mobility – helping every young person to achieve their potential and challenge the inequalities of language and power. Oracy: The Transformative Power of Finding Your Voice is the first book to bring this important step change in educational and social thinking to a wider audience. But it is also practical: a guide to how to use talk to teach critical thinking and find creative solutions to life’s burning issues. After all, the impact of oracy doesn’t stop at the school gates: we all need oracy skills for our personal relationships, professional networks and social lives.

Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are Benji's patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine's most mysterious and controversial speciality. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people's messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? This is an eye-opening medical memoir - from both sides of the doctor's desk. The perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

College dropout Hai doesn't know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chances One summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond. The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unexpected of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn't expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other's survival. This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

Our lives can feel defined by the struggle with overwhelm, endless decisions and striving to be productive. Wouldn't it be good to stop doing all that? What if we could find freedom - and get more of the important things done - by embracing our limitations, and by letting things happen instead of forcing them? Meditations for Mortals begins with the reality in which we actually find ourselves, not with fantasies of an ideal existence. Reflecting on ideas from philosophy, religion, psychology and self-help, it offers us a powerful and practical new way to do what counts: a guiding outlook Oliver Burkeman calls 'imperfectionism'. This book is a profound and liberating crash course in living more fully. It overturns much familiar advice and opens a gateway to a saner, freer and more enchantment-filled life.

Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their religion and their desire to explore the world. But their friendship is ruptured by the arrival of love. Over the course of twenty years, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as a devastating story of passion and scientific adventure unfolds and Aldleigh’s unique mysteries are revealed.

Celebrate a vital work of feminism with this special edition featuring the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, and the original text first published by The Hogarth Press. Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. Witty, urbane and vital to this day, A Room of One's Own is a persuasive argument against the intellectual subjection of women, particularly women writers. It weaves together memoir, imaginative speculation and political vision to create one of the most important works of feminism of the twentieth century. The book sprang from two lectures that Woolf delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1928. The first printing of the book the following year was as a limited edition, a joint publication between The Fountain Press of New York and the Hogarth Press. Two months later it was released to the general trade and has been an essential work ever since. The text of this edition of A Room of One's Own is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf in October 1929. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover 'cinnamon' boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition.

By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima, this chain of events culminates in a young man finding himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die…

She’s living a perfect life – so why does Laurence feel so torn? Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – Laurence’s life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office. All her life she has strived to meet the expectations of others. But when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world, Laurence must finally grapple with a life that prizes image over truth. Slim but powerful, this is a classic story of womanhood and its oppressors, parents and their children, and the quest for personal truth – by the iconic feminist Simone de Beauvoir. TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN

Celebrate the 100th birthday of a groundbreaking novel with this very special hardback based on the first edition published by the Hogarth Press. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Clarissa Dalloway is preparing to give a party. Over the course of one day, as she readies her house, Clarissa is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life. Virginia Woolf started writing Mrs Dalloway in 1922 as a short story. Its publication in 1925 was met with modest commercial success but the novel went on to become one of the most vital works of literature of the last century. The text of this centenary edition of Mrs Dalloway is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf on 14 May 1925. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf ’s sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover ‘deep rust’ boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition.

The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches – from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet. POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE In her thrilling fourth collection, Midden Witch, Fiona Benson enters the world of familiars, fables and hedge-magic and focuses on the persistent superstition – the fear and false knowledge – that was witchcraft. Telling tales of imagined transformations and spell-casting, these poems present a litany of artists, dreamers and outcasts and a study of their ostracisation. The poet looks at how gifted, sometimes troubled, individuals – generally healers, artists, prodigies and almost always women – became scapegoats, victims of societal paranoia and persecution, and were hounded for centuries, often to a gratuitously violent public execution. In Midden Witch, these women speak back to us with dark humour, insight and real herbal knowledge. Reckoning with middle age, marginalisation, perimenopause and a steady, unstoppable vanishing, this troubled codex of remedies, spells and stories speaks to human fear in the face of the unknown, and a drive to protect our loved ones that transcends all rational thought. At play in the language of archival accounts of witchcraft, this is a dark, eclectic spell-book that witnesses the end-days of magic.