Showing titles in World Literature

In a small pocket of the city, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 on Eastbourne Road, there’s a neglected community garden. Once vibrant and welcoming, and a sanctuary for the people when they needed it most, the garden’s gate is firmly closed. But it only takes a small seed of an idea for big changes to happen. And as the neighbours’ need for connection grows, the twilight garden comes out of hibernation.

One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.

This is the most distinguished novel that has come out of South Africa in the 20th century, and it is one of the most important novels of the modern era. Cry, the Beloved Country is in some ways a sad book; it is an indictment of a social system that drives native races into resentment and crime; it is a story of Fate, as inevitable, as relentless, as anything of Thomas Hardy's. Beautifully wrought with high poetic compassion, Cry, the Beloved Country is more than just a story, it is a profound experience of the human spirit.

When Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor declares war on the pagans of Denmark, Pomerania and the Baltic lands, he is unaware of the true might of the storm he is about to unleash. Meanwhile, in a small fjord in the north of Norway, a young Norse warrior is about to embark on a journey that will take him far to the south, beyond the land of the Angles and the Franks.

Soon to be an original series on Prime Video! This “spectacular…absorbing and distinguished work…is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America” (The New York Times Book Review). The House of the Spirits, which...

Two worlds bound by a pomegranate gate. Toba Peres can speak but she can't shout; she can walk but she can't run; and she can write in five languages… with both hands at the same time. Naftaly Cresques dreams every night of an orange-eyed stranger; when awake, he sees things that aren't real; and he carries a book he can never lose and never read.

Stopping to use a cash machine one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground: dead. A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two teenage girls. Quickly apprehended they appal local policemen with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards, a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the malfunctioning power station, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sure that these events must be linked - somehow.

In a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Bremen, Tara Selter is starting to settle into a new kind of eighteenth of November. Her days with Henry, Ralf and Olga revolve around the daily routines of practical chores: gathering provisions, splitting firewood. But one morning, there are five new arrivals at their wrought-iron gate. As more people continue to arrive, their home fills with movement, voices fill the air; a flurry of people asking questions, sharing their eighteenths of November.

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

It's 1746, and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help - a kindly duke who taught him to write - is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new stepsister enters Molly's quiet life, the loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.

Situated in a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, Yeonnam-Dong's Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. Furnished with a coffee machine, a full bookshelf, and warm lighting, it is a haven from the world for many locals. And when a notebook is left behind there, it becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd. But there is a darker story behind the notebook...

When Beth Hale called 911 when she was in labor, the last person she thought would show up was her brother’s best friend. Now, he’s the only person she trusts. Former Navy SEAL Shane Hutchins has demons of his own. Reinventing himself as a small town paramedic was supposed to be his atonement for the things he had done. Falling in love with a single mom wasn’t in his plan, but now he’d do anything for her and the baby girl he calls “his.”

In seinem ersten Roman »Buddenbrooks« erzählt Thomas Mann nur wenig verschlüsselt die Geschichte seiner Familie und ihrer Stellung in der Vaterstadt Lübeck, soweit er sie nachvollziehen, in Einzelheiten überblicken konnte, ja sogar noch miterlebt hat. Verwandte, Honoratioren und markante Persönlichkeiten seiner Jugend werden integriert. Es ist die Geschichte des langsamen Niedergangs einer reichen Kaufmannsfamilie über vier Generationen hinweg. Gert Westphal liest diesen epochalen Roman in ganzer Länge.

Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+! Navajo Tribal cops Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, and their mentor, the legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, investigate two perplexing cases in this exciting Southwestern mystery from...

My family's roots run deep, and my responsibilities are clear. My family and Rhodes Hotels, my family business. As a father first, I've always put my daughter above everything, living in a carefully maintained world close to my ex-wife, ensuring peace. I never expected to fall in love again and find the kind of passion I had with Aurora. I thought it would be easy, but when I introduced her to my daughter, it shattered the delicate balance of my life, forcing me to make regrettable choices that hurt the only woman I ever loved.

Brought to you by Penguin. Some stories are universal. They play out across human history. And time is the river which will flow through them. It starts with a family, a family which will mutate. For now, it is a father, mother and two sons. One with his father’s violence in his blood. One who...

If he's in the right mood, divine Angus might grant you sight of your true love in a dream. You might even fall in love with him, but he'll never love you back. He's too busy making mischief, stealing the palace of the gods from his father, turning his enemies into pigs, and so forth - until he is trapped by his own romantic games, falls for an unattainable woman and is doomed to seek her forever. In 20th-century Scotland, Angus's troubled alter ego searches for his true family and identity.

A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered questions. Now in Tokyo, Michiko Oshitani is found dead many miles from home. Strangled to death, left in the bare apartment rented under a false name by a man who has disappeared without a trace. Oshitani lived far away in Sendai, with no known connection to Tokyo—and neither her family nor friends have any idea why she would have gone there.

'Compulsively readable' New York Times 'Utterly original' Alberto Manguel In the small and the insignificant - that's where life hides, that's where it builds its nest. Our unnamed narrator is not well. He suffers from attacks of 'pathological empathy', which cause him to wander unbidden into...