Literature

atalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away--loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it--that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all--death, sorrow, loss--is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.

In the late 1850s, Celina, aged fifteen, born into poverty, takes up work as a chambermaid for the Victor Hugo family living in exile in Guernsey. There she encounters the delicate balance between the professional and the personal, and the obligations placed upon her as her livelihood is at stake. Inspired by Hugo's cryptic diary notes and by letters from his wife, Catherine Axelrad restores to life the girl whose untimely death shook the Hugo family, capturing the changing time in which she lived as well as life in the Channel Islands.

In doing so, Axelrad sheds light on the complexity of Hugo's private persona and cuts le grand homme down to size. Intimately involved with him, Celina remains at the margins of the poet's creative life; she recounts her relationship both with the artist who is writing his Miserables by day and with the man who joins her at night. First published by Editions Gallimard in 1997, this novella offers a singular perspective on matters of sexual consent and class dynamics: one which makes us take stock of social progress, but also wonder how far we have really come today.

The major new novel from the international bestselling author Édouard Louis - about social class, transformation, and the perils of leaving the past behind. One question took centre stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything. Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination and violence in his working-class hometown - so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris. He sheds the provincial 'Eddy' for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike. Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else. At once harrowing and profound, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of 'the beautiful violence of being torn away', but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power and inequality.

On a dismally foggy night in Hampstead, London, a curious party has gathered in an artist's studio to weather the wartime blackout. A civil servant and a government scientist are matching wits in a game of chess, while an artist paints the portrait of his characterful sitter, bedecked in Cardinal's robes at the other end of the room. In the kitchen, the artist's sister is hosting the charlady of the miser next door.

When the brutal murder of said miser is discovered by his Canadian infantryman nephew, it's not long before Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard is at the scene, faced with perplexing alibis and with the fate of the young soldier in his hands.

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms their life into a work of art. Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young queer artist's life; with raw, flickering stories of awkward love, laughter, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of how one young writer managed to shrug off the imposition of a rigid cultural identity. Told in Myles's audacious and singular voice made vivid and immediate by their lyrical language, Chelsea Girls weaves together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, their volatile adolescence, their unabashed "lesbianity," and their riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s and 80s New York.

A vivid, believable love story between an older woman and a younger man. Lea de Lonval is a magnificent and aging courtesan facing the end of her career. She has devoted the last six years to the amorous education of the exquisitely handsome and spoilt Cheri - a playboy half her age. When an advantageous marriage is arranged for Cheri, Lea reluctantly decides their relationship must end. But neither lover can foresee how deeply they are connected, or how much they will have to give up. First published in 1920, it was instantly greeted by Marcel Proust and Andre Gide as a masterpiece. 'I devoured Cheri at a gulp. What a wonderful subject and with what intelligence, mastery and understanding of the least-admitted secrets of the flesh' Andre Gide

The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, disappeared into the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities -- making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of the House Atreides. Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia's rule is not absolute. The displaced house Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty. But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions -- and their destinies ... -- Provided by publisher.

Gonzalo is a frustrated would-be poet in a city full of poets; poets lurk in every bookshop, prop up every bar, ready to debate the merits of Teillier and Millan (but never Neruda - beyond the pale). Then, nine years after their bewildering breakup, Gonzalo reunites with his teen sweetheart, Carla, who is now, to his surprise, the mother of a young son, Vicente. Soon they form a happy sort-of family - a stepfamily, though no such word exists in their language. In time, fate and ambition pull the lovers apart, but when it comes to love and poetry, what will be Gonzalo's legacy to his not-quite-stepson Vicente? Zambra chronicles with tenderness and insight the everyday moments - absurd, painful, sexy, sweet, profound - that constitute family life in this bold and brilliant new novel.

The Greek peasants, who plan to enact the life of Christ in a mystery play, are overwhelmed by their task. They try to identify themselves with the parts they have been given; and when a group of refugees, fleeing from the ruins of their plundered homes, reaches the village hoping to find protection, the drama of the Passion becomes reality.

Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of marriage are accompanied by unwelcome and increasingly brutal sexual advances. And yet, Clarissa finds his charm alluring, her scrupulous sense of virtue tinged with unconfessed desire. Told through a complex series of interweaving letters, Clarissa is a richly ambiguous study of a fatally attracted couple and a work of astonishing power and immediacy. A huge success when it first appeared in 1747, and translated into French and German, it remains one of the greatest of all European novels.