Vintage Books strana 14 z 69

A dazzling exploration of the global intersections of beauty and power A Sunday Times Style Barometer and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For centuries, humans have been drawn to lining our eyes. The aesthetic trademark of icons from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools: ancient royals and Gen Z influencers alike have harnessed its power. Through Zahra Hankir’s kohl-lined eyes, this ubiquitous product becomes proof of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space. By way of intimate conversations – with Chadian nomads, Japanese geisha, Indian dancers, New York’s drag queens and more – Eyeliner embraces the profound significance of its namesake, especially among communities of colour. Eyeliner is a delightful and unexpectedly moving journey through streets and stages around the world, and a stirring reclamation of a key piece of our collective history.

The inspirational story of the ordinary people who forged the documents that saved thousands of Jewish lives in World War Two. Between 1940 and 1943, a small group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and until now, almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they undertook a systematic programme of forging identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. The Lados operation was one of the largest rescue missions of the entire war, and The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these life-saving documents, and their painful uncertainty over whether they will be granted protection from the Nazis' murderous fury. And we witness the quiet heroism of those who decided to act in an attempt to save thousands of lives.

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. FIGHT FOR LOVE. WELCOME TO THE KILLING GROUND. Enter a world where, livestreamed to millions, prisoners fight like gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan-favourite female stars Loretta Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. But as protestors clash with the baying crowds and the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?

An awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth, from the author of international bestseller The Eight Mountains Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make: to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of The Snow Leopard. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer. Without Ever Reaching the Summit combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage and sublime mountain writing in a short book for readers of Macfarlane, Rebanks and Cognetti's own bestseller, The Eight Mountains. An investigation into the author's physical limits, an ancient mountain culture, and the magnificence of nature, it is an awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth.

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

Jeanette Winterson's explosive first novel, a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance, a modern classic. Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle. This is the story of Jeanette, born to be one of God's elect: adopted by a fanatical Pentecostal family and ablaze with her own zeal for the scriptures, she seems perfectly suited for the life of a missionary. But then she converts Melanie, and realises she loves this woman almost as much as she loves the Lord. How on Earth could her Church called that passion Unnatural? Both a groundbreaking coming-of-age novel and a pioneering work of autofiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit goes beyond facts into the deepest truths. Searing and tender, playful and provocative, it is a portrait of the artist as a young evangelist, re-writing her own Bible.

New Year’s Eve, 1975. Two hunted men leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the mythical, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. But, twenty years later, they are still on the run. The Savage Detectives is their remarkable journey through our darkening universe. Told, shared and mythologised by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, their testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of all time.

This is a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon. It is queer coming-of-age love story, a Greek myth retold, and a modern classic. Tormented as a boy by his brother, Geryon escapes to a parallel world of photography. He falls deeply in love with Herakles, a golden young man, who deserts him at the peak of infatuation. So Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, fascinated by his wings, his redness and the fantastic accident of who he is. But all is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles’ return. Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative filled with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it’s like to be red. An extraordinary, modern epic poem - moving, disturbing and delightful.

After years teaching Romantic poetry in Cape Town, David Lurie has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy’s isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter’s influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.

The brilliant graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution. Marjane Satrapi lived through the Iranian Revolution as a little girl. This is her classic memoir-in-comic-strips, the story of a child entangled in the history and politics of her country. It paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up in revolutionary and war-torn Iran, in a family that was both outrageous and ordinary, beset by tragedy and yet buffered by love. Funny, wise, ultimately heartbreaking and told with unforgettable pictures.

The ultimate feminist dystopian novel. Discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, these women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollections of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. But soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

All that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin. Viktor is an aspiring writer in Ukraine with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although Viktor would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when Viktor opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. Viktor and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape.

Four Chinese women, four America daughters - can they learn to understand each other? In 1949 a group of Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve inherited of their mothers’ pasts.

'What an amazing piece of work this is. Ground-breaking, thought-provoking and highly accessible. Everyone should read it. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. 100 out of 100' IRVINE WELSH Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism. In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords - replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power. But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison. 'An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power' Observer 'An urgent demand to seize the means of computation' CORY DOCTOROW A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A mind-expanding, revolutionary journey across time that shows how our biology has determined human history for the first time. This book will change how you see the world. We’re a wonder of evolution, capable of incredible feats. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our bodies and minds often break, fail, and hinder us. To be human is to live with this extraordinary contradiction. So, to understand the course humanity has taken – from prehistoric times through the age of empire and into the modern era – we must understand who, and what, we are. Being Human is history made flesh. From the epidemic that brought Europe’s peasants freedom, to the health deficiency which gave rise to the world’s largest criminal organisation, to the cognitive biases that led to military catastrophes in Crimea and Iraq, we see how our unique nature shaped our relationships, economies and societies – and, importantly, how it continues to impact human progress today.

Will we ever truly understand our cosmic home? This is the story of the technologies that allow us to look up, to learn and to discover our place in the cosmos. We are part of an incredible chain of events stretching 13.8 billion years into the past and even further into the future. But what does that future hold? And how do scientists study the entire universe? The Universe in a Box is Andrew Pontzen's tribute to simulations - the remarkable computer codes that, over the last century, have allowed us to grasp the distant past and far future of the universe. It reveals the stories of pioneering scientists who unlocked the mysteries of the cosmos, and reframes our understanding of galaxies, black holes and space itself.