Literature

'Terrific... Very funny' GuardianWhat if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display?THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWe all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions:Who do you think you are?Are clothes important?Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. This is not a life story. It's a loft story. 'Brilliant...lurid, entertaining' Daily Telegraph'It's real gold... its storytelling first class' Sunday Times* A Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Daily Mail and Uncut *

Winter is closing in and Ireland is in the grip of famine. Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep, brutally cuts her hair and tells her: ‘You are the strong one now.’ Her mother fits her up in men's clothes and casts her out, as she is no longer safe at home. With her younger brother Colly in tow, she sets off on a remarkable journey against the looming shadow of her country's darkest hour.

Classe de 3ème Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, 'Great Expectations' traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expectations' in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

Greek folk tales descend from Aesop and Greek antiquity, as well as medieval storytelling in the pivotal south-east Mediterranean world that linked Christianity, Islam and Byzantium. These tales, told by folk narrators throughout Greek-speaking regions up to our times, are wondrous, whimsical stories about doughty youths and frightful monsters, resourceful maidens and animals gifted with human speech. The tales weave substantive motifs, characters, and forms into a rich tapestry capturing the temperament and ethos of the Greek folk psyche.

This book suggests that poetry offers a way to remain in the world – not only by declarations of intent or the promotion of remembrance, but also through the durable physicality of its practice. Whether carved in stone or wood, printed onto a page, beat out by a mimetic or rhythmic body, or humming in the mind, poems are meant to engrave and adhere. Ancient Greek poetry exhibits a particularly acute awareness of change, decay, and the ephemerality inherent in mortality. Yet it couples its presentation of this awareness with an offering of meaningful embodiment in shifting forms that are aligned with, yet subtly manipulative of, mortal time. Sarah Nooter's argument ranges widely across authors and genres, from Homer and the Homeric Hymns through Sappho and Archilochus to Pindar and Aeschylus. The book will be compelling reading for all those interested in Greek literature and in poetry more broadly.

This book was begun in 2007 as a short handbook on Greek terrorism based on official accounts. It turned into a multi-year research project, an attempt to disentangle the lies and wishful thinking of Greek urban guerrillas and the people pursuing them. Fluent in ancient and modern Greek, Kiesling watched the 17N appeals trial, interviewed key participants, waded through masses of archival material, and used computer software and painstaking deduction to reconstruct the secret history of the Greek armed revolutionary movement. Kiesling is the author of Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower (Potomac 2006) and numerous articles. He lives in Athens, where he writes on history, archaeology, ancient religion, and politics.

Bernie Gunther returns in the thirteenth book in the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling series, perfect for fans of John le Carre and Robert Harris. 'One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' LEE CHILD'Kerr leads us through the facts of history and the vagaries of human nature' TOM HANKS'One of the greatest master story-tellers in English' ALAN FURST1957, Munich. Bernie Gunther's latest move in a string of varied careers sees him working for an insurance company. It makes a kind of sense: both cops and insurance companies have a vested interest in figuring out when people are lying to them, and Bernie has a lifetime of experience to call on. Sent to Athens to investigate a claim from a fellow German for a sunken ship, Bernie takes an instant dislike to the claimant. When he discovers the ship in question once belonged to a Greek Jew deported to Auschwitz, he is convinced the sinking was no accident but an act of vengeance. And so Bernie is once again drawn inexorably back to the dark history of the Second World War, and the deportation of the Jews of Salonika - now Thessaloniki. As Europe prepares to move on to a more united future with Germany as a partner rather than an enemy, at least one person in Greece is ready neither to forgive nor forget. And, deep down, Bernie thinks they may have a point.

A darkly glinting novel set on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, The Green Road is a story of fracture and family, selfishness and compassion – a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we learn to fill them. The children of Rosaleen Madigan leave the west of Ireland for lives they never could have imagined in Dublin, New York and various third-world towns. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. Anne Enright is addicted to the truth of things. Sentence by sentence, there are few writers alive who can invest the language with such torque and gleam, such wit and longing – who can write dialogue that speaks itself aloud, who can show us the million splinters of her characters’ lives then pull them back up together again, into a perfect glass.