Juan Gay lies dying in a room in The Palace: a monumental, fading institution in the desert. There, a young man cares for him - someone whom Juan met only once, but who has haunted the edges of his life ever since.
As the end approaches, the two trade stories - resurrecting lost loves, mothers and fathers - and their lives are woven, ineluctably, into a broader story of sexuality, pathology and oppression. And, through their conversations, another story is told: that of the radical queer anthropologist Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was co-opted, and stifled, by the committee she served.
Blending fact with fiction, and drawing on oral histories and historical records, screenplay, testimony and image, Blackouts is a haunting, dreamlike rumination on memory and erasure - on the ways in which stories sustain histories.
'A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite' Eimear McBride
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion.
Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as all the while she spirals further into her fantasies...
Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern day South Korea; a tale of shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others.
Internationally acclaimed graphic artist: Drnaso's previous title SABRINA was the first ever graphic novel nominated for the Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize
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Every single person has something unique to them which is impossible to re-create, without exception. - John Smith, acting coach
From the acclaimed author of Sabrina, Nick Drnaso's Acting Class creates a tapestry of disconnect, distrust, and manipulation. Ten strangers are brought together under the tutelage of John Smith, a mysterious and morally questionable leader. The group of social misfits and restless searchers have one thing in common: they are out of step with their surroundings and desperate for change.
A husband and wife, four years into their marriage and simmering in boredom. A single mother, her young son showing disturbing signs of mental instability. A peculiar woman with few if any friends and only her menial job keeping her grounded. A figure model, comfortable in his body and ready for a creative challenge. A worried grandmother and her adult granddaughter; a hulking laborer and gym nut; a physical therapist; an ex-con.
With thrumming unease, the class sinks deeper into their lessons as the process demands increasing devotion. When the line between real life and imagination begins to blur, the group's deepest fears and desires are laid bare. Exploring the tension between who we are and how we present, Drnaso cracks open his characters' masks and takes us through an unsettling American journey.
Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.
From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.
'A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite.' Eimear McBride
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion.
Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as all the while she spirals further into her fantasies...
Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern day South Korea; a tale of shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others.
'This short novel will live on in your imagination long after you read the last page' Claire Messud
When Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of ten-year-old Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp, he leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and daughter to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant monsters are still alive, and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.
West is the extraordinary story of a quest for a myth, of Bellman's journey into the unknown and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return, facing monsters of her own. It is an eerie and timeless epic-in-miniature.
'One of the best books I've read this year... It's a book you can read in a day and that will resonate all year long in your head' Sunday Times
'Carys Davies is a deft, audacious visionary... Twisting the heart as few others can...' Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife
'A brilliant psychogeography of grief, moving as it does between place, history and memory... The White Book is a mysterious text, perhaps in part a secular prayer book' Deborah Levy, Guardian
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
From the author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts comes a book like no other. The White Book is a meditation on colour, beginning with a list of white things. But it is also a book about mourning, and of rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life from one of the great literary voices of our time.
'Wonderful. A quietly gripping contemplation on life, death and the existential impact of those who have gone before' Eimear McBride
'The White Book is a profound and precious thing... Han Kang is a genius' Lisa McInerney
1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger's intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John's wife Mary anxiously awaits news of his mission.
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.
Misha is an American impounded in a Russian's body and the only place he feels at home is New York; he just wants to live in the South Bronx with his Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, all hopes of a US visa are lost.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited and East Germany ceased to exist. In this book, Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany, including the story of Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III.
'Beautiful, horrible... the most exciting discovery I've made in fiction for some time' Kazuo Ishiguro
'Smoky, carnal, dazzling' Lauren Groff
Welcome to Buenos Aires, a place of nightmares and twisted imaginings, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses.
Thrumming with murderous intentions, family betrayals and morbid desires, these stories shine a light on a violent city gripped by urban madness; giving voice to the lost, the oppressed and the forgotten. Lucid and darkly poetic, unsettling and otherworldly, these tales of revenge, witchcraft and fetishes are a masterpiece of contemporary Gothic and a bewitching exploration of the dark inclinations that threaten to lead us over the edge.
'I loved these twisted, lustful whispers in the dark' Daisy Johnson
'Queen of Latin American gothic' Financial Times
Mariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.
The Big Guy loves his family, money and democracy. Undone by the results of the 2008 Presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of America. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family and must take responsibility for his past actions. For his wife and daughter are having their own awakenings: self-denying Charlotte enters rehab, and eighteen year old Megan, who has voted for the first time, explores a political future that deviates from her father's ideology, while delving into deeply buried family secrets.
Dark, funny and prescient, The Unfolding explores the implosion of the dream and how we arrived in today's divided world.
'The best book - in any medium - I have read about our current moment ... A MASTERPIECE' Zadie Smith
'A masterpiece for our times' Observer
WHERE IS SABRINA?
The answer is hidden on a videotape, a tape which is en route to several news outlets, and about to go viral.
A landmark graphic novel, already hailed as one of the most exciting and moving stories of recent years, Sabrina is a tale of modern mystery, anxiety, fringe paranoia and mainstream misinformation -- a book that tells the story of those left behind in the wake of tragedy, has important things to say about how we live now, and possesses the rare power to leave readers pulverised.
From our CD collections to iPods bursting with MP3s to the hallowed vinyl of DJs, recordings are the most common way we experience music. Perfecting Sound Forever tells the story of recorded music, introducing us to the innovators, musicians and producers who have affected the way we hear our favourite songs, from Thomas Edison to Phil Spector. Exploring the balance that recordings strike between the real and the represented, Greg Milner asks the questions which have divided sound recorders for the past century: should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? What does the perfect record sound like? The answers he uncovers will change the way we think about music.
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF STRANGE WEATHER IN TOKYO
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings - but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.
