Literature

THE DEBUT NOVEL FROM THE COSTA SHORT STORY AWARD WINNER A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK 'A sharp, funny, wonderful writer' Diana Evans, bestselling author of Ordinary People 'Compelling...finely crafted, compassionate' Guardian 'A warm, confident writer with the lightest of touches' Observer 'Pacey and powerful' Mail on Sunday 'The type of story that will stay with you long after you've read the last page' Closer 'Brilliant...touches on race, mental health and community in a fresh way' Good Housekeeping 'Flawlessly portrayed...A riveting read' Candis 'Costa prize-winning author Goldie compassionately explores the ways her characters' lives are changed, and how they live with the aftermath' The Daily Mail * * * * * On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries. Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight. Elvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things. Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there's no way out. It's a day like any other, until something extraordinary happens. When the sun sets, Nightingale Point is irrevocably changed and somehow, through the darkness, the residents must find a way back to lightness, and back to each other. * * * * *Readers love Nightingale Point: 'A beautiful and heartbreaking story about working-class people and their lives both before and after tragedy' 'I couldn't put it down...a beautiful story of staying strong when it matters most' 'A triumphant debut...This book pops, fizzes and sparkles to life' 'A must read masterpiece'

"A resilient Greek woman recounts her and her family's remarkable story at the end of her life, marked by the great historical events of the twentieth century. Born in 1938, Niki, the daughter of the deputy secretary general of the Greek Communist Party, is swept up in turmoil before her first birthday: her parents are arrested, and she joins her mother in exile on an island near Santorini. Growing up, she experiences the Italian and German invasion, the Nazi occupation, and the civil war that came after, often caught between her socialist values and those of the right-wing establishment, to which half her relatives belong. Through her memories and the stories of her family, with roots on both coasts of the Aegean Sea, Niki also tells the history of Greece and Asia Minor from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Her extraordinary tales, full of humor and verve in spite of hardship, are populated by working-class heroes, privileged elites, daring revolutionaries, and free-spirited bohemians"--

Η δίγλωσση αυτή έκδοση περιλαμβάνει τριάντα οχτώ επιλεγμένα ποιήματα του ποιητή Νικηφόρου Βρεττάκου σε μετάφραση του πολυβραβευμένου David Connolly, ο οποίος υπογράφει και μία κατατοπιστική εισαγωγή για τον οικουμενικό ποιητή της αγάπης. O Σπαρτιάτης Νικηφόρος Βρεττάκος (1912-1991) υπήρξε ένας από τους πιο aναγνωρισμένους Έλληνες ποιητές. Μία από τις πλέον χαρισματικές λυρικές φωνές της γενιάς του, θεωρείται ο ποιητής του φωτός και της αλήθειας, ο ποιητής που ύμνησε την ομορφιά της φύσης με απαράμιλλο τρόπο. Πολλαπλοί οι αποδέκτες μιας τέτοιας έκδοσης, καθώς το βιβλίο δεν απευθύνεται μόνο στους ξένους που επισκέπτονται τη χώρα μας και θέλουν να γνωρίσουν μια ακόμα φωνή του ελληνικού πνεύματος. Το βιβλίο αφορά τους μελετητές της νεοελληνικής γραμματείας, Έλληνες και ξένους, τους Έλληνες δεύτερης γενιάς που μεγαλώνουν μακριά από άμεσα ερεθίσματα, καθώς και όλους όσους διδάσκουν ή μαθαίνουν αγγλικά, αλλά και τους αγγλόφωνους που μαθαίνουν ελληνικά. Επίσης αποτελεί ένα πολύ καλό δώρο για αγγλόφωνους φίλους. Το έργο του εξωφύλλου φιλοτέχνησε ειδικά για την έκδοση ο ζωγράφος Παναγιώτης Σταυρόπουλος.

DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period, Teddy, and A Perfect Day for Bananafish are among the nine works in a collection of Salinger's perceptive and realistic short stories.

Translated by Lee M. Hollander, with an Introduction by Thorsteinn Gylfason. Njal's Saga is the finest of the Icelandic sagas, and one of the world's greatest prose works. Written c.1280, about events a couple of centuries earlier, it is divided into three parts: the first recounts the touching friendship between noble Gunnar and the statesman Njal, together with the fatal enmity between their wives. The second part works out the central tragedy of the saga, while the third describes the retribution wrought by Flosi and Kari. The saga is remarkable not only for the details of everyday life - the farming, the feasting and the charcoal-burning - but also for the social structure of the society in which that life took place - the Althing or Parliament, the lawmaking and the lawgiving. The grandeur of the narrative and the beauty and distinction of the characters mark Njal's Saga as an essential text for all who love adventure and great literature.

Μετά την αναγκαστική προσγείωση του αεροπλάνου τους, δύο επιβάτες βρίσκονται σε μια αχαρτογράφητη χώρα και εκεί τους ρουφάει, σχεδόν τους καταπίνει, μια αλλόκοτη, λαβυρινθώδης, φασματική πόλη, όπου συναντούν πρόσωπα άγνωστα αλλά και ταυτόχρονα οικεία. Μία νουβέλα που διασταυρώνει παραμιλητό με στιχομυθία, φάρσα με ζόφο, ασθματικό με μακροπερίοδο λόγο καθώς η αγωνίας της πλοκής διολισθαίνει στην αγωνία της ύπαρξης.

Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl - to the disapproval of his parents - he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape.

Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories provides a comprehensive overview of conspiracy theories as an important social, cultural and political phenomenon in contemporary life. This handbook provides the most complete analysis of the phenomenon to date. It analyses conspiracy theories from a variety of perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It maps out the key debates, and includes chapters on the historical origins of conspiracy theories, as well as their political significance in a broad range of countries and regions. Other chapters consider the psychology and the sociology of conspiracy beliefs, in addition to their changing cultural forms, functions and modes of transmission. This handbook examines where conspiracy theories come from, who believes in them and what their consequences are. This book presents an important resource for students and scholars from a range of disciplines interested in the societal and political impact of conspiracy theories, including Area Studies, Anthropology, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology.

The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life'Simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNNIn this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him. With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems. ‘What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson’s true subject: the nature of storytelling itself’ Times Literary Supplement‘Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages’ Red‘Sublime’ Good Housekeeping‘Dazzling’ Reader's Digest____________Praise for Kate Atkinson:'Inexhaustibly ingenious' HILARY MANTEL'A brilliant and profoundly original writer' RACHEL CUSK'Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill' FINANCIAL TIMES'One of the country's most innovative, exciting and intelligent authors.' SCOTSMAN