Showing 33–48 of 49 resultsSorted by popularity
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€12.50
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, explores the loneliness of power in Autumn of the Patriarch.
‘Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside.’
As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, manically violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?
Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
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€9.95
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity.
Ernest and Hadley’s marriage begins to founder, and the birth of a beloved son serves only to drive them further apart. Then, at last, Ernest’s ferocious literary endeavours begin to bring him recognition – not least from a woman intent on making him her own.
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€12.50
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother’s sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow – antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.
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€12.50
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind.
Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
‘Very, very clever. Mature. Entertaining. Eminently readable and re-readable. Absolutely delightful‘ IRISH TIMES
‘Loved this. A funny, moving examination of love, grief, and the uniqueness of dogs‘ GRAHAM NORTON
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€12.50
ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS BOOKS AND WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice’
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendia can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny.
Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy and comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century.
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€12.50
A CLASSIC STORY OF ENDURING LOVE FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR
‘It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.’
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza’s impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. When Fermina’s husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love.
But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?
‘An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate and extremely funny‘ Sunday Telegraph
‘An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women‘ The Times
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€10.95
It’s the sweltering summer of 1944, and Newark is in the grip of a terrifying epidemic. Decent, athletic twenty-three year old playground director Bucky Cantor is devoted to his charges and ashamed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As polio begins to ravage Bucky’s playground – child by helpless child – Roth leads us through every emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering and the pain.
‘The genius of Philip Roth…back at his imperious best in this heartbreaking tale… The eloquence of Roth’s storytelling makes Nemesis one of his most haunting works‘ Daily Mail
‘Cantor is one of Roth’s best creations and the atmosphere of terror is masterfully fashioned‘ Sunday Telegraph
‘Very fine, very unsettling‘ Douglas Kennedy, The Times
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€10.50
It is high summer in rural Northumberland.
Seventeen-year-old Silvie and her parents have joined an encampment run by an archaeology professor with an interest in the region’s dark history of ritual sacrifice. As Silvie finds a glimpse of new freedoms with the professor’s students, her relationship with her overbearing father begins to deteriorate, until the haunting rites of the past begin to bleed into the present.
‘I have never read a novel this slender that holds inside it quite so much. Wild, calm, dark yet hopeful… This book ratcheted the breath out of me so skilfully that as soon as I’d finished, the only thing I wanted was to read it again‘ Jessie Burton
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€12.50
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel’s strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller’s classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him.
His real problem is not the enemy – it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn’t have to; but if he doesn’t want to he must be sane and has to. That’s some catch…
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€12.50
ADICHIE, CHIMAMANDA NGOZI
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€12.50
The chilling true crime ‘non-fiction novel’ that made Truman Capote’s name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics. Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote’s comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved.
At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human.
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€12.50
Read the haunting love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar.
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
‘This book is undeniably hip, full of student uprisings, free love, booze and 1960s pop, it’s also genuinely emotionally engaging, and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows‘ Independent on Sunday
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€12.50
A complex, intense American novel of family from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with an introduction by Richard Hughes. Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, The Sound and the Fury has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, the novel explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart, this is a novel about lovelessness – ‘Only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?’
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€8.95
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016
Timothy Buchannan buys an abandoned house on the edge of an isolated village on the coast, sight unseen. When he sees the state of it he questions the wisdom of his move, but starts to renovate the house for his wife, Lauren to join him there. When the villagers see smoke rising from the chimney of the neglected house they are disturbed and intrigued by the presence of the incomer, intrigue that begins to verge on obsession.
And the longer Timothy stays, the more deeply he becomes entangled in the unsettling experience of life in the small village. Ethan, a fisherman, is particularly perturbed by Timothy’s arrival, but accedes to Timothy’s request to take him out to sea. They set out along the polluted coastline, hauling in weird fish from the contaminated sea, catches that are bought in whole and removed from the village.
Timothy starts to ask questions about the previous resident of his house, Perran, questions to which he receives only oblique answers and increasing hostility. As Timothy forges on despite the villagers’ animosity and the code of silence around Perran, he starts to question what has brought him to this place and is forced to confront a painful truth. The Many is an unsettling tale that explores the impact of loss and the devastation that hits when the foundations on which we rely are swept away.
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€10.95
ADICHIE, CHIMAMANDA NGOZI
