Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, this novel tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory they try to craft a childhood for themselves amidst what constitutes their family.
In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 26, fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at her bedside, and became a personal memoir and a testament to the ties that bind families - a brave, enlightening, inspiring true story.
From the bestselling author of Generation X and Microserfs, comes the absurd and tender story of a hardliving movie producer and a former child beauty pageant contender who only find each other by losing themselves.Waking up in an L.A. hospital, John Johnson is amazed that it was the flu and not an overdose of five different drugs mixed with cognac that nearly killed him. As a producer of highadrenaline action flicks, he's led a decadent and dangerous life, purchasing his way through every conceivable variant of sex. But each variation seems to take him one notch away from a capacity for love, and while moviemaking was once a way for him to create worlds of sensation, it now bores him. After his neardeath experience, John decides to walk away from his life.Susan Colgate is an unbankable former tv star and child beauty pageant contender. Forced to marry a heavy metal singer in need of a Green Card after her parents squander her sitcom earnings, she becomes the alpha road rat. But when the band's popularity dwindles, the marriage dissolves. Flying back to Los Angeles in Economy, Susan's plane crashesyes'>#160;yes'>#160; and only she survives. As she walks away from the disaster virtually unscathed, Susan, too, decides to disappear.John and Susan are two souls searching for love across the bizarre, celebrityobsessed landscape of LA, and are driven, almost fatefully, toward each other. Hilarious, fastpaced and ultimately heartwrenching, iss Wyoming is about people who, after throwing off their selfmade identities, begin the fearful search for a love that exposes all vulnerabilities.From the Trade Paperback edition.
A collection of essays which resulted from the author's travels around India. The subjects range from the guerrilla fighters, and vegetarian terrorists that he met, to his encounters with celebrities such as Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto, and through to the anecdotes, myths and legends that characterize the continent.
A sequence of stories about the Vietnam War, this book also has the unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme. It aims to summarize America's involvement in Vietnam, and her coming to terms with that experience in the years that followed.
Enceinte et secrètement mariée, Cheryl Anway griffonne sur un cahier d'écolier ce qui deviendra ses dernières volontés, juste avant que trois élèves, désaxés et déchaînés, mitraillent la cafétéria de son lycée. Quatre personnages dramatiquement touchés racontent alors leur histoire : Cheryl narre calmement sa propre mort ; Jason, le garçon dont tout le monde ignorait qu'il était son mari, encore dévasté par sa mort dix ans après ; Heather, la femme qui essaie d'aimer cet homme anéanti ; et enfin Reg, son père, que la rigidité religieuse a séparé de tous ceux qu'il aimait. Défiant les lois du temps, ce journal intime à quatre voix nous dévoile leurs vies brisées par l'excès de puritanisme et la violence extrême...
Eleanor Rigby is the story of Liz, a self-described drab, overweight, crabby, and friendless middle-aged woman, and her unlikely reunion with the charming and strange son she gave up for adoption. His arrival changes everything, and sets in motion a rapid-fire plot with all the twists and turns we expect of Coupland. By turns funny and heartbreaking, Eleanor Rigby is a fast-paced read and a haunting exploration of the ways in which loneliness affects us all.
Larry is a successful farmer in Zebulon County, Iowa. Widowed, he has three daughters, Ginny and Rose who work on the farm, and Caroline, who is a lawyer. When Larry decides to give the ownership of the farm to his daughters, Caroline's reservations mean she is cut out of the ownership.
In the course of 12 months in Delhi, Dalrymple peels back the successive layers of history, using material and human remains of each of the eight cities of Delhi, interlacing stories with the present and ending with the Delhi creation myth contained in the great Indian epic "The Mahabharata".
A New York Times Bestseller, ''Tracks'' is a masterpiece from Louise Erdrich, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction 2012 - a story for our times, narrated by a uniquely twentieth century figure.
By turns reticent, garrulous, spiritual and profane, Nanapush, like the Native American culture he belongs to, is a living contradiction - alien, beguiling, strong and dying...
Set in North Dakota, at a time in the early twentieth century when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands, ''Tracks'' is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance - yet their pride and humour prohibit surrender.
The reader will experience shock and pleasure in encountering a group of characters that are compelling and rich in their vigour, clarity, and indomitable vitality.
The best, the fastest, the hippest and the most unorthodox account ever published of the US presidential electoral process in all its madness and corruption.
Otto and Sophie Bentwood live childless in a renovated Brooklyn brownstone. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a neighbourhood cat, a series of small, ominous disasters begin to plague their lives, revealing the fractures in a marriage wrenching itself apart.
Janet Drummond does a tally of her three children: Wade spent the night in jail again; suicidal Bryan; and Sarah - the star of the next shuttle mission. But even an astronaut has personal problems, and with Janet's ex-husband coming to town, Janet contemplates where it all went wrong. Or did it?
The second in Doris Lessing's visionary novel cycle "Canopus in Argos: Archives". It is a mix of fable, futuristic fantasy and pseudo-documentary accounts of 20th-century history.
This is a collection of stories about Africa which evoke the people and continent, drawn from the author's experiences as a child in Southern Rhodesia.
The human survivors of the "nature cruise of the century", are quietly evolving into sleek, furry creatures with flippers and small brains. All other forms of humankind have ceased to exist, made redundant by their prized big brains. From the author of "Slaughterhouse 5".
"To read is to fly; it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience, and the fruits of many inquiries. A life thus equipped might not be happier - might sometimes be less so, indeed, for to know more can be to feel more, and the ground note of history is a long cry of pain - but it is vastly richer . . .As is inevitable with so self-reflexive an enterprise, much has been written about books and reading. Little of it has been better than this wonderful account, ''A History of Reading'', by Alberto Manguel, a judicious magpie of a literatus who has collected a trove of fascinations on the subject, and arranged them brilliantly . . . .almost every page bristles with interest" A C GRAYLING ''Financial Times'' "Wonderful stuff . . . A rich and savoury casserole of learning, Manguel''s ''A History of Reading'' at first refreshes and soothes the jaded palate and ends with delicious titbits from the lives and works of great authors. " VICTORIA NEUMARK '' Times Educational Supplement'' "What Alberto Manguel has given us is his personal response to books and reading in the form of an anthology comprising mythology, anecdote, theology, history and autobiography . . . in lucid and elegant prose . . . highly enjoyable. I finished ''A History of Reading'' with a sense of gratitude to have shared this journey through time in the company of a mind so lively, knowledgeable and sympathetic. " P D JAMES''Sunday Times'' "A charming, old-fashioned, up-to-date, belletristic tribute to the art of reading." KARL MILLER ''Observer'' "Delightful, written in a lively and lucid prose. " ROGER SCRUTON ''The Times'' "A passionate book . . . .highly entertaining. " MICHIKO KAKUTANI ''New York Times'' Manguel''s erudition is awe-inspiring" D J ENRIGHT ''Times Literary Supplement'' "A delightfully wide-ranging, beguiling study of a small daily miracle. " PAUL BAILEY '' Daily Telegraph''
From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the first instalment in the visionary novel cycle ''Canopus in Argos: Archives''. The story of the final days of our planet is told through the reports of Johor, an emissary sent from Canopus. Earth, now named Shikasta (the Stricken) by the kindly, paternalistic Canopeans who colonised it many centuries ago, is under the influence of the evil empire of Puttiora. War, famine, disease and environmental disasters ravage the planet. To Johor, mankind is a ''totally crazed species'', racing towards annihilation: his orders to save humanity set him what seems to be an impossible task. Blending myth, fable and allegory, Doris Lessing''s astonishing visionary creation both reflects and redefines the history of our own world from its earliest beginnings to an inevitable, tragic self-destruction.
Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime''s achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.
Modern fictionDebut novel from Meera Syal, who wrote the screenplays to Bhaji on the Beach and My Sister Wife. This is the story of nine-year- old Meena, an Indian girl growing up in the sixties, daughter of the only Punjabi family in the Midlands' mining village of Tollington. "Anita and Me is full of pleasure. The book is expertly structured and engagingly written, illuminated throughout by Meena's ironical reverence and robustness of spirit. I can give it no higher recommendation" Laura Tennant, Guardian.
