Vintage Books strana 18 z 75

Award-winning author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Lecture at Columbia University nine days before 7 October 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword written in the early weeks of 2024 together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what feels like a turning point in the narrative of human history. Moving and erudite, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Recognising the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis by one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and a foremost writer of fiction in the world today.

Mass-murdering authors. Writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring. A pilot who crafts his poetry in the sky. A tour de force of black humour and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of pan-American writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Terrifyingly witty and remarkably inventive, this is the virtuosic, one-of-a-kind masterpiece which brought Bolano fame throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí’s fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy – and revenge. Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn’t tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene. Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an affair with one of his students, he has no idea where it will lead. More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee Barcelona with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling, mythical town on the Mexico-US border, populated by mysterious characters and haunted by dark tales of murdered women. Returning to the the world and characters of 2666, Bolano's masterpiece, Woes of the True Policeman explores the the power of art, memory and desire - and marks a kaleidoscopic, lyrical and darkly humorous last act in one of the great oeuvres of world literature.

A rat policeman comes to the startling realisation that each rat is out for themselves. An elderly judge gives up his job in the city for an improbable return to the family farm in the Pampas. An elusive film-maker and the little-known Argentinian novelist whose work he's plagiarized for years, finally fall into confrontation. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled and yet somehow haywire, the five short stories included in The Insufferable Gaucho are some of Roberto Bolano's best. In addition, two essays are included: provocative and often scathing, they too are alive with Bolano's trademark humour, violence and utter faith in the power of the written word.

Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world. But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction. Meanwhile, Remo runs head-first into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafes, and murky bathhouses. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER

'This is where the story should end, but life is not as kind as literature...' A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé in the subterfuges of entering work for provincial literary prizes. A litany unfolds, offering sixty-nine reasons why not to dance with Pablo Neruda. 'The melancholy folklore of exile,' as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades the fourteen haunting stories of Last Evenings on Earth. Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved 'failed generation,' this collection was the first to introduce the English-speaking world to Bolano's immeasurable gifts as a short-story writer. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS

Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border: an urban sprawl that draws lost souls to it like a vortex. Convicts and academics find themselves here, as does an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' author. But, there is a darker side to the town. Girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate. As a sense of conspiracy grows and an apocalyptic shadow draws closer, the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth-century history reveals itself in a novel of an astonishing scale and burning intensity.

A young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor, only to watch his soul departing his body. Two embittered police detectives debate their favourite weapons. A violent man looks back on his childhood and seeks out the now-aged male porn actor his mother shot movies with. Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolano. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: The Return is a trove of strangely arresting short master works.

War-games champion Udo Berger is finally on holiday. Travelling to the Costa Brava with his long-ignored girlfriend, Ingeborg, 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 Udo suddenly realizes that the consequences of this 'game' are much more serious than he ever imagined.

Feeling anxious, powerless, or confused about the future of our planet? This book will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems – and how we can solve them. We are bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won't be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, that we should reconsider having children. But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. The data shows we've made so much progress on these problems, and so fast, that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in history. Packed with the latest research, practical guidance and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you've been told about the environment, from the virtues of eating locally and living in the countryside, to the evils of overpopulation, plastic straws and palm oil. It will give you the tools to understand what works, what doesn't and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations. These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let's turn that opportunity into reality.

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?

Three of Murakami’s best-known and best-loved novels, brought together in one beautiful boxset. For nearly half a century Murakami has been delighting readers with his deceptively simple writing. His work is both fantastic and realistic, as gripping as it is beguiling. This boxset contains three of the best novels from Japan’s greatest living novelist. You might start with Norwegian Wood, a story of young love and the book that shot Murakami to literary stardom. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle displays many of Murakami’s distinctive storytelling tropes – mysterious women and missing cats among them. And Kafka on the Shore, the great masterpiece, is the genre-bending tale of a fifteen-year-old runaway.

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.