FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER '[ Mr Loverman is] Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people' Dawn French WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2014 and FERRO GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBT FICTION 2015 Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris. His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain's older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves. Praise for Bernardine Evaristo: 'One of Britain's most innovative authors . . . Bernardine Evaristo always dares to be different' New Nation 'Evaristo remains an undeniably bold and energetic writer, whose world view is anything but one-dimensional' Sunday Times 'Audacious genre-bending, in-yer-face wit and masterly retellings of underwritten corners of history are the hallmarks of Evaristo's work' New Statesman
The powerful, urgent manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine Evaristobr>br>Bernardine Evaristo''s 2019 Booker win - the first by a Black woman - was a revolutionary moment both for British culture and for her. After three decades as a trailblazing writer, teacher and activist, she moved from the margins to centre stage, taking her place in the spotlight at last. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history. br>br>MANIFESTO is Bernardine Evaristo''s intimate and inspirational, no-holds-barred account of how she did it, refusing to let any barriers stand in her way. She charts her creative rebellion against the mainstream and her life-long commitment to the imaginative exploration of ''untold'' stories. And drawing deeply on her own experiences, she offers a vital contribution to current conversations around social issues such as race, class, feminism, sexuality and aging. br>br>This is a unique book about staying true to yourself and to your vision. It''s about how to be unstoppable - in your craft, your work, your life. It is Bernardine Evaristo''s manifesto for never giving up.br>br>''Bernardine Evaristo is one of those writers who should be read by everyone, everywhere.'' Elif Shafakbr>br>''Bernardine Evaristo is one of Britain''s best writers, an iconic and unique voice, filled with warmth, subtlety and humanity. Exceptional'' Nikesh Shuklabr>br>''Bernardine Evaristo is the most daring, imaginative and innovative of writers'' Inua Ellams>
*Over 50 Best of 2018 listings worldwide* br>br>''Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly; its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream - with recognition and with pure hilarity'' - Richard Fordbr>br>''A trip through the American wasteland - from the people who have too little, to the people who have too much. Incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, and therefore incredibly human, this is the perfect novel for these dysfunctional times'' - Nathan Hillbr>br>''The funniest book you''ll read all year. A rollicking and zinger-filled road trip [that] sneakily deepens into a poignant tale of a man trying to outrace his problems. I was utterly floored'' - Maria Semplebr>br>''Stupendous... Reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute... I barked with laughter at the same time as wincing in pain'' Elizabeth Gilbertbr>br>A riotously satirical road trip through modern America from the brilliant author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistanbr>br>Barry Cohen, master of the universe, has just had a very public meltdown involving a dinner party, an insider trading investigation and a $30,000 bottle of Japanese whisky. So he flees New York City, leaving behind his beautiful young wife and son, but remembering to bring his six favourite designer watches. Zig-zagging south through Trump''s America on a Greyhound Bus pilgrimmage he is singularly unprepared for, Barry heads to Texas - to find his old college girlfriend and, with her, a shot at a second chance...br>br>Lake Success marries the trademark Shteyngart wit with an astonishing emotional resonance, capturing the vivid eccentricity and contradictions of America right now while speaking to the universal human experience of love, belonging, and the pursuit of happiness.>
Dave Eggers is the author of many acclaimed books, including The Circle; What is the What and Zeitoun. br>br>He is the founder of the publishing house and magazine McSweeney''s and the cofounder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired similar programs around the world.br>br>His work has been translated into forty-two languages.>
Following her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths.br>br>''Taut, masterly, wholly absorbing. Still one of the greatest stories ever written. A book that will be read in generations to come'' Daily Telegraph on The Silence of the Girls br>br>Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.br>br>But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea. And, in these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.br>br>Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can - with young, dangerously naive Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest - and begins to see the path to a kind of revenge. Briseis has survived the Trojan War, but peacetime may turn out to be even more dangerous...>
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Centurybr>br>Shorlisted for the Women''s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Awardbr>br>Booker-winning novelist Pat Barker imagines the untold story of the women at the heart of history''s greatest epicbr>br>''Magnificent... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers'' Evening Standard br>br>''Chilling, powerful, audacious... A searing twist on The Iliad. Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker''s stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion'' The Timesbr>br>''A stunning return to form'' Observerbr>br>There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now...br>br>Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?br>br>Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness history forgot.br>br>''Make[s] you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers'' Evening Standardbr>br>Praise for Pat Barker:br>br>''Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation'' Sunday Telegraphbr>br>''She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature'' Independentbr>br>''Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human'' Heraldbr>br>''You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world'' Guardian>
The unmissable debut novel by the critically acclaimed author of Between the World and Me andWe Were Eight Years in Power - a richly imagined and compulsively page-turning journey to freedomOPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK''I haven''t felt this way since I first read Beloved... I wish Toni [Morrison] was alive to actually read this book. She would be so proud'' - OprahHiram Walker is born into bondage on a Virginia plantation. But he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won''t discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family - his adoptive mother, Thena, a woman of few words and many secrets, and his beloved, angry Sophia - and into the covert heart of the underground war on slavery.Hidden amidst the corrupt grandeur of white plantation society, exiled as guerrilla cells in the wilderness, buried in the coffin of the deep South and agitating for utopian ideals in the North, there exists a widespread network of secret agents working to liberate the enslaved. Hiram joins their ranks and learns fast but in his heart he yearns to return to his own still-enslaved family, to topple the plantation that was his first home. But to do so, he must first master his unique power and reclaim the story of his greatest loss.Propulsive, transcendent and blazing with truth, The Water Dancer is a story of oppression and resistance, separation and homecoming. Ta-Nehisi Coates imagines the covert war of an enslaved people in response to a generations-long human atrocity - a war for the right to life, to kin, to freedom.''One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the top five. I was enthralled, I was devastated. I felt hope, I felt gratitude, I felt joy... [Ta-Nehisi Coates] is a magnificent writer'' Oprah>
Blistering and unignorable, exhilarating and fearless, a debut literary novel from an astonishing new talent in British fiction, for fans of Bernardine Evaristo, Claudia Rankine, Jenny Offill and Kiley Reid>
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey''s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.>
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 , The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
Whoever invented skateboarding is a genius. There's only one skater, and his name's Tony Hawk. It doesn't matter if you don't know who he is, just trust me. Not only is Hawk the world's best skater, he's also good to talk to. So I talk to Tony Hawk, and Tony Hawk talks back.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. Good Samaritan Abdulrahman has stayed on in the city, traversing its deeply flooded streets by canoe, feeding trapped dogs and rescuing survivors, as New Orleans becomes a disaster zone. But nothing could prepare him for the wholly unexpected nightmare that follows...
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2018 THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 and THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A sprawling kaleidoscopic fable' Guardian , Books of the Year 'Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first' Financial Times 'A great tempest of a novel... which will leave you awed by the heat of its anger and the depth of its compassion' Washington Post The first novel in 20 years from the Booker-prize winning author of The God of Small Things The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years-the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war, and where, from time to time, 'normalcy' is declared. Anjum, who used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men who loved her. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once an aching love story and a decisive remonstration. It is told in a whisper, in a shout, through tears and sometimes with a laugh. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, mended by love-and by hope. For this reason, they are as steely as they are fragile, and they never surrender. This ravishing, magnificent book reinvents what a novel can do and can be. And it demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts. 'A novel that demands and rewards the reader's concentration, this is a dazzling return to form' Independent 'This novel is a freedom song. Every page has the stamp of Roy's originality. Such brutality, such beauty' Amitva Kumar, the author of Immigrant, Montana 'Intricately layered and passionate, studded with jokes and with horrors ... This is a work of extraordinary intricacy and grace' Prospect Magazine 'Gorgeous, supple, playful... Roy writes with astonishing vividness... Again and again beautiful images refresh our sense of the world' The New York Times Book Review 'A masterpiece. Roy joins Dickens, Naipaul, Garcia Marquez, and Rushdie in her abiding compassion, storytelling magic, and piquant wit. An entrancing, imaginative, and wrenching epic' Booklist starred review 'Magnificent - unlike anything I've read in years. An absolutely dazzling, original, and ultimately profound novel... A masterpiece. Very few writers can write with such intense and yet precise emotional intelligence. Arundhati Roy is properly special. We should be grateful to have her among us' Mirza Waheed, author of The Book of Gold Leaves
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Everything Is Illuminated , Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , Eating Animals and Here I Am . He has also edited a new modern edition of the sacred Jewish Haggadah . Everything Is Illuminated won several literary prizes, including the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award. He edited the anthology A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell , and his stories have been published in the Paris Review , Conjunctions and the New Yorker . Jonathan Safran Foer teaches Creative Writing at New York University.
Fifteen years after the publication of Push, Sapphire gives voice to Abdul Jones, the son of her unforgettable heroine, Precious. The Kid is an electrifying story of body and spirit, rooted in the hungers of flesh and of the soul, bringing us deep into the interior life of Abdul. We meet him at age nine, on the day of his mother's funeral. Left alone to navigate in a world where love and hate sometimes hideously masquerade, forced to confront unspeakable violence, his history and the dark corners of his own heart, Abdul claws his way toward adulthood and toward an identity he can stand behind. In a generational story that moves with the speed of thought from a Mississippi dirt farm to Harlem in its heyday; from a troubled Catholic orphanage to downtown artist's lofts, The Kid tells of a twenty-first-century young man's fight to find a way toward the future. A testament to the ferocity of the human spirit, the deep nourishing power of love, and of art, The Kid becomes a young man about to take flight. Intimate, terrifying and deeply alive, Abdul's journey bears witness to an artist's birth by fire.
The dazzling second novel in Ali Smith's essential Seasonal Quartet -- from the Baileys Prize-winning, Man Booker-shortlisted author of Autumn and How to be both Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer's leaves? Dead litter.
The world shrinks; the sap sinks.
But winter makes things visible. And if there's ice, there'll be fire.
In Ali Smith's Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith's shape-shifting quartet of novels casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter.
It's the season that teaches us survival.
Here comes Winter.
