Vintage Books strana 47 z 49

Buon Natale — A Merry Christmas — made all the more joyful with these literary treats filled with ancient churches, trains whistling through the countryside, steaming tureens, plates piled high with pasta, High Mass, dashed hopes, golden crucifixes, flowing wine, shimmering gifts and plenty of style. In this collection, classic works by Boccaccio to Pirandello intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Anna Maria Ortese, Natalia Ginzburg and Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda to bring together the greatest festive tales from the land of enchantment: Italy. Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, An Italian Christmas showcases stories that put the passionate, fiery side of the festive period back into Christmas.

This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music. It's also the story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in L.A. to become Prince's chief engineer for Purple Rain and one of the most successful female record producers of all time. Now an award-winning professor of cognitive neuroscience, Rogers takes readers behind the scenes of record-making and leads us to musical self-awareness. She explains that everyone possesses a unique 'listener profile', shows how being musical can mean actively listening, and encourages us to think about the records that define us. Lively and inclusive, this revelatory book will refresh your playlists, deepen your connection to artists, and change the way you listen to music.

When a young woman known for drug smuggling goes missing, her elderly grandparents have no choice but to call the retired Detective Konrád. Still looking for his own father's murderer, Konrád agrees to investigate the case. But digging into the past reveals more than he set out to discover, and a strange connection to a little girl who drowned in the Reykjavík city pond decades ago recaptures everyone's attention. A brilliant, chilling tale of broken dreams and children who have nowhere to turn.

A major new retelling of the Greek myths for a new generation, with original drawings by world-renowned artist Chris Ofili. Charlotte Higgins' spellbinding new collection will include all the most famous Greek myths, as well as many less well-known but equally intriguing ones. Here are stories of the creation, of Heracles and Theseus and Perseus, the Trojan war and its origins and aftermaths, tales of Thebes and Argos and Athens. There are stories of love and desire, adventure and magic, destructive gods, helpless humans, gender-shifting characters, resourceful witches, and the origins of birds and animals. Taking her cue from Ovid, Charlotte Higgins has an intriguing structural device to thread her stories together. Inspired by the many moments in Greek myths in which women are seen to weave stories onto textiles (such as Helen of Troy in Homer, and Arachne and Minerva in Ovid), the tales will be told as if they are scenes in the act of being woven on to textiles by women. And, while not operating as an explicitly feminist retelling, this will add a new dimension to her myths, bringing women narrators and characters into the foreground. Above all, Charlotte Higgins' Greek Myths will be an original work of literature and scholarship by an exceptionally talented writer. It will be a book to be enjoyed as a work of art, a source to be consulted, a present to be given, and an object to keep and treasure.

A beautifully packaged edition of one of García Márquez’s most beloved novels, with never-before-seen color illustrations by the Chilean artist Luisa Rivera and an interior design created by the author’s son, Gonzalo García Barcha. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

A revolutionary new account of our universe’s creation—and a breathtaking exploration of the landscape from which we sprang—from one of the world’s most celebrated cosmologists What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of space-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. And what we are finding is upending everything we thought we knew about the cosmos and our place in it. Mersini-Houghton is no stranger to boundaries—or to pushing through them. As a child growing up in Communist Albania, she discovered a universe beyond her walled-off world through the study of math and science, and through music. As a female cosmologist in a male-dominated field, she transcended the limits that society and her profession tried to place on her. And as a trailblazing researcher, she helped to revolutionize the study of our universe by revealing that, far from living in a cosmic Albania, with a world that ends at its borders, we are part of a larger family of universes—a multiverse—that holds wonders we are only beginning to unlock. Mersini-Houghton’s groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and even hold the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of such sibling universes in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton’s theoretical work and offering humbling evidence that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family. The incredible scientific saga of one woman’s mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Before the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity’s place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.

In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, 'victory city'. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception.