Showing results by author "Joe Dunthorne" in All Categories

Brought to you by Penguin. Off-beat, irreverent and subversive – a Jewish family memoir about convenient delusions and unsayable truths, from the acclaimed author of the cult classic novel, Submarine Joe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried: an eccentric...

Hello. I'm Oliver Tate, the protagonist. I am likely to use words like protagonist and, moments later, words like twonk. My ambitions are as follows: to find out why my father sometimes stays in bed for days at a time; to find out why my mother's getting surfing lessons - and probably more - from a hippy-looking twonk; and to lose my virginity before it becomes legal - in just over a year.

Diverse and moving, these six outstanding stories are meditations on grief and loss, love, communication and loneliness. Each one will take the reader on a brief yet unforgettable journey into private worlds and unexpected corners of the human heart.

Ray is not a bad guy. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. And though his career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal and he spends his afternoons churning out third-rate listicles in his boxer briefs, he dreams of making a difference. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse.

One for the Trouble: Book Slam, Volume One is the first release from the UK’s premier literary event. Eighteen Book Slam alumni, from household names like Irvine Welsh and William Boyd to newcomers like Kate Tempest and Sophie Woolley, were approached to take a song title for inspiration for a new short story or poem. Some took this literally (Jon McGregor’s moving reimagining of A House’s 'Endless Art', for example); others suggestively....

Adopting a sunny, genial tone, Dunthorne lures the listener to darker places, exploring death and dread, failure and regret - the 'lounge of our suffering'. Often, he catches us off-guard: a 'whiplash' effect where poems shift from laughter to slaughter in a moment. Impertinent owls, an immersive theatre troupe, ancient men from the Great War and idiot balloonists - such characters dramatise our human fancies and foibles, joining the protagonist in scenarios both humorously bizarre and all too familiar.

Kate and Albert, sister and brother, have grown up on a secluded communal farm. Now their home is disintegrating, taking their parents' marriage with it. Ignoring their attempts to escape, Don - father of the family, leader and maker of elaborate speeches- sets to work on reunifying the commune. To bring it into the modern age he’ll need self-sufficiency, charisma and a rave with a 10k soundsystem....

At a once vibrant communal-living property in the British countryside, back-to-basics fervor has given way to a vague discontent. A place that once buzzed with activity, from the polytunnels to the pottery shed, now functions with a skeleton crew. Founder Don Riley surveys his domain with the...

Quando Joe Dunthorne si sposa, la madre gli regala un anello: un eliotropio nero screziato di rosso che, a detta della donna, era «scampato ai nazisti» nel 1935 - o forse no? A poco a poco, Dunthorne comincia a sospettare che le cose non siano andate esattamente come ha sempre pensato, e che la storia della sua famiglia ebreo-tedesca in realtà sia una narrazione creata ad arte per nascondere qualche segreto particolarmente scomodo.

At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver Tate is stealthily nosing his way forward through the murky and uniquely perilous waters of adolescence. His objectives? Uncovering the secrets behind his...

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker In the tradition of The Hare with Amber Eyes, this “profound…comic…[and] unconventional” (The New York Times) family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author’s great-grandfather, a...

Als der britische Autor Joe Dunthorne gebeten wird, einen Vortrag über seine Familie im »Dritten Reich« zu halten, macht er bei seinen Recherchen dazu eine schier unglaubliche Entdeckung: Sein jüdischer Urgroßvater Siegfried Merzbacher, der in den 1920er-Jahren in Oranienburg lebte und dort als Chemiker Haushaltsartikel herstellte, darunter eine radioaktive Zahnpasta, war später maßgeblich an der Entwicklung chemischer Waffen für die Nazis beteiligt. Erst Mitte der Dreißigerjahre emigrierte die Familie in die USA. Bis an sein Lebensende haderte Merzbacher mit seiner Vergangenheit.