No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands.Who was Nescio? Nescio—Latin for “I don’t know”—was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, the highly succ...

Henry Miller's famously banned book is "a matter-of-fact celebration of chucking one's dreary life and following your heart to Paris" (Richard Price).Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller's masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in...

**Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction**'This is a novel to lose yourself in' The Times'Essential reading' Spectator'Extraordinarily magical' New York Times'The most important book I have read for forty years' Observer_________________Athos and I stood together on deck and looked across the water at the br...

Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat in Paris provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of the city in years.In this enchanting Paris memoir, acclaimed author and long-time resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. This love letter to Frenc...

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is the complete collection of short fiction from the world-renowned Lydia Davis.WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2013'What stories. Precise and piercing, extremely funny. Nearly all are unlike anything you've ever read' Metro'I loved these stories. They are so well-written, with such clarity of thought and precision of language. Excellent' William Leith, Evening ...

This warm and lyrical semi-autobiographical first novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen charts the coming of age of Lawrence Breavman, the only son of a Jewish Montreal family.‘Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.’Lawrence Breavman seeks two things: love and beauty. Beginning with the innocent games of delicious misadventure with first love Lisa and the absorbing wanders through Montre...

A sensational international bestseller, and winner of Frances’ coveted Prix Goncourt, ‘The Lover’ is an unforgettable portrayal of the incandescent relationship between two lovers, and of the hate that slowly tears the girl’s family apart.Saigon, 1930s: a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society.A sensational internatio...

For the first time all of Carol Shields’ remarkable short stories – some previously unpublished – are gathered together in one volume.‘Carol Shields’ stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure’ Alice MunroIn the Collected Stories we bring together Carol Shields’ original short-story volumes, Various Miracles, The Orange Fish and Dressing Up for the Carnival, as well as many stories not previously published in the UK, including ‘Segue’, her last work.In these...

Dr Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth and Max Ferber are exiled across a shattered Europe.Set across Europe and America from the late nineteenth century through the aftermath of the Holocaust, The Emigrants reconstructs lives marked by displacement and loss.Through photographs discovered in drawers, half-remembered conversations and the slow reconstruction of letters and diaries, The Emigrants pieces together lives fractured by exile. Ea...

A sweeping and sensuous novel of a son’s quest to recover his family’s lost masterpieces, looted by the Nazis during the occupation.Max Berenzon’s father is the most successful art dealer in Paris, owner of the Berenzon Gallery, home to both Picasso and Matisse. To Max’s great surprise, his father forbids him from entering the family business, choosing instead to hire a beautiful and brilliant gallery assistant named Rose Clément. When Paris falls to the Nazis, the Berenzons surviv...

In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick’s finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.