Helen Of Nowhere
3.990 kr.In the middle of the countryside, a realtor is showing a disgraced professor around an idyllic house. She speaks not only about the home’s many wonderful qualities but about its previous owner, the mystifying Helen, whose presence still seems to suffuse every fixture. Through hearing stories of Helen’s chosen way of living, the man begins to see that his story is not actually over – rather, he is being offered a chance to buy his way into the simple life, close to the land, that’s always been out of reach to him. But as evening fades into black, he will learn that the asking price may be much higher, and stranger, than anticipated. Philosophically and formally adventurous, at once intimate and cosmic in scope, Helen of Nowhere asks: What must we give up in exchange for true happiness?
Ætíð minnast – Strákurinn, moldvarpan, refurinn, hesturinn og stormurinn
6.390 kr.„Dag nokkurn munt þú líta til baka og gera þér grein fyrir hversu erfitt þetta var, og hversu vel þú stóðst þig.“
Love In Exile
3.990 kr.Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture.
Love, she argues, is as much a collective question as a personal one. Yet our collective ideals of love have developed in a society which is itself profoundly sick and loveless; in which consumer capitalism sells us ever new, engrossing fantasies of becoming more loved or lovable. In this highly politicized terrain, boundaries are purposefully drawn to keep some in and to keep others out. Those who exist outside them are ignored, denigrated, exiled.
In Love in Exile, Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself.
Things In Nature Merely Grow
3.690 kr.‘There is no good way to say this,’ Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
‘There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.’
There is no good way to say this – because words fall short. In this remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance, Li turns to thinking and searching for words that might hold a place for her son, James. Li does ‘the things that work’: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.
Zone
3.490 kr.Francis Mirkovic, a French Intelligence Services agent for fifteen years, is travelling first class on the train from Milan to Rome. Handcuffed to the luggage rack above him is a briefcase containing a wealth of information about the war criminals, terrorists and arms dealers of the Zone – the Mediterranean region, from Barcelona to Beirut, from Algiers to Trieste, which has become his speciality – to sell to the Vatican. Exhausted by alcohol and amphetamines, he revisits the violent history of the Zone and his own participation in that violence, beginning as a mercenary fighting for a far-right Croatian militia in the 1990s. One of the truly original books of the decade, and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence, Mathias Enard’s Zone is an Iliad for our time, an extraordinary and panoramic view of violent conflict and its consequences in the twentieth century and beyond
Street of Thieves
3.990 kr.In Tangier, young Lakhdar finds himself homeless after being caught in flagrante with his cousin Meryem. As the political and religious tensions in the Mediterranean flare up with the Arab Spring and the global financial crisis, Lakhdar and his friend Bassam entertain dreams of emigration, fuelled by a desire for freedom and a better life. Part political thriller, part road-movie, part romance, the latest novel by Mathias Enard takes us from the violence of Tangier’s streets to Barcelona’s louche Raval quarter.
Street of Thieves is an intense coming-of-age story that delves deep into the brutal realities of the immigrant experience.
Compass
4.690 kr.As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran, as well as the various writers, artists, musicians, academics, orientalists, and explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the centre of these memories is his elusive, unrequited love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East. An immersive, nocturnal, musical novel, full of generous erudition and bittersweet humour, Compass is a journey and a declaration of admiration, a quest for the otherness inside us all and a hand reaching out like a bridge between West and East, yesterday and tomorrow.
Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, this is Mathias Enard’s most ambitious novel since Zone.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
3.990 kr.In 1506, Michelangelo – a young but already renowned sculptor – is invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, alongside an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci’s design was rejected: ‘You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal.’ Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II – whose commission he leaves unfinished – and arrives in Constantinople for this truly epic project. Once there, he explores the beauty and wonder of the Ottoman Empire, sketching and describing his impressions along the way, and becomes immersed in cloak-and-dagger palace intrigues as he struggles to create what could be his greatest architectural masterwork.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants – constructed from real historical fragments – is a thrilling page-turner about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched pieces, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.
Mið-Austurlönd – fortíð, nútíð og framtíð
6.990 kr.Mið-Austurlönd – sem afmarkast af Egyptalandi í vestri, Íran í austri, Tyrklandi í norðri og Jemen í suðri – eru einhver mesti suðupottur okkar tíma og hafa raunar verið um áratugaskeið. Nær daglega flytja fjölmiðlar þaðan fréttir af stríðshörmungum, kvennakúgun, misskiptingu og neyð. Um leið hafa víglínurnar færst óþægilega nærri Vesturlöndum – hryðjuverk í nágrannalöndum okkar og straumur flóttafólks meinar okkur að loka augunum fyrir ástandinu.Ýmis vandamál Mið-Austurlanda eiga rætur í tíðum og víðtækum afskiptum Vesturlanda af þessum heimshluta í fortíð og nútíð. Fleira kemur þó til því íbúar svæðisins hafa á síðastliðnum hundrað árum beitt ýmsum aðferðum til að finna hinn gullna meðalveg hefðar og nútíma, sjálfstæðis og jafnréttis, ofbeldis og framfara, trúfrelsis og einstaklingsfrelsis.Þessi þýðingarmikla bók kom fyrst út árið 2018, hlaut þá einstakar viðtökur og hefur ítrekað verið endurprentuð. Hér er um nýja útgáfu að ræða þar sem síðustu vendingum sögunnar eru gerð skil, meðal annars atburðum á Gaza, þróun mála í Sýrlandi og borgarastríði í Jemen.Magnús Þorkell Bernharðsson, prófessor í nútímasögu Mið-Austurlanda við Williams College í Massachusetts og gistikennari við guðfræði- og trúarbragðafræðideild Háskóla Íslands, er helsti sérfræðingur okkar í sögu þessa svæðis. Hér fjallar hann um öll meginstefin í sögu Mið-Austurlanda á yfirvegaðan og aðgengilegan hátt.
Irpa
4.990 kr.Eftir ítrekuð fósturlát þráir Edda tilbreytingu. Hún er orðin þreytt á vinnunni, íbúðinni, matarboðunum með vinkonunum og eilífum óléttutilkynningum þeirra … öllu. Þegar hún sér litla eyju á Austfjörðum auglýsta til sölu sannfærir hún Atla um að þar geti þau byrjað nýtt líf.
Á Varpey vex allt og dafnar, björgin eru full af fugli, brekkurnar þaktar berjalyngi og hafið í kring krökkt af fiski. Edda og Atli koma sér fyrir í litla íbúðarhúsinu og hefjast handa við að breyta hlöðunni í gistiheimili. Þegar Edda tekur að sjá hvítklæddri konu bregða fyrir telur hún fyrst að sér hljóti að hafa missýnst. Smám saman verður hún þó sannfærð um að þau séu ekki ein á eyjunni heldur deili henni með einhverjum sem vilji þeim illt, einhverjum sem hefur bæði líf og dauða í hendi sér.
Hildur Knútsdóttir er einn virtasti ungmennabókahöfundur landsins en hún hefur einnig slegið í gegn með nóvellum sínum fyrir fullorðna, ekki síst í hinum enskumælandi heimi. The New York Times útnefndi Myrkrið milli stjarnanna eina af tíu bestu hrollvekjum ársins 2024 og bókin hefur jafnframt verið tilnefnd til bæði Dublin-bókmenntaverðlaunanna og World Fantasy-verðlaunanna. Kvikmyndarétturinn að bæði þeirri bók og Irpu hefur auk þess verið seldur til erlendra framleiðslufyrirtækja.
