Too Much Happiness
990 kr.These are dazzling, provocative stories about manipulative men and the women who outwit them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments which change or haunt a life. Alice Munro’s stories surprise and delight, turning lives into art, expanding our world and shedding light on the strange workings of the human heart.
Henry V
1.290 kr.Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King Hardcover
Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt, he is remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. For one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, “the greatest man who ever ruled England.”
For Dan Jones, Henry V is one of the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down. He was a hardened, sometimes brutal warrior, yet he was also creative and artistic, with a bookish temperament. He was a leader who made many mistakes, who misjudged his friends and family, but he always seemed to triumph when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, put down rebellions, and secured England’s borders; in foreign diplomacy, he made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for three generations of calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses.
Henry V is a historical titan whose legacy has become a complicated one. To understand the man behind the legend, Jones first examines Henry’s years of apprenticeship, when he saw the downfall of one king and the turbulent reign of another. Upon his accession in 1413, he had already been politically and militarily active for years, and his extraordinary achievements as king would come shortly after, earning him an unparalleled historical reputation. Writing with his characteristic wit and style, Jones delivers a thrilling and unmissable life of England’s greatest king.
Death at the Sanatorium
3.490 kr.High up in the mountains stands a sanatorium. Once a hospital dedicated to treating tuberculosis, it now sits haunted by the ghosts of its past.
One wing of the hospital remains open and houses six employees: the caretaker, two doctors, two nurses and a young research assistant. Despite the wards closing decades ago, they remain at the hospital to conduct research. But the cold corridors, draughty windows and echoey halls are constant reminders of the building’s dark history.
When one of the nurses, Yrsa, is found brutally murdered, they discover that death has never left this place – and neither did its secrets. None can escape this terrifying legacy. Despite just four suspects the case is never solved and remains open for two decades.
Until a young criminologist named Helgi Reykdal attempts to finally lay the ghosts of the hospital’s past to rest . . .
Slags
4.390 kr.Once a slag, always a slag?
It’s the 1990s. Sarah is 15, obsessed with boy bands, sex and getting drunk on Malibu. Most of all, she’s hung up on her teacher, Mr Keaveney.
Fast forward 26 years. Sarah is 41, the last of the party girls. But the mad nights out are losing their shine. And her teenage dreams are now distant, queasy memories.
There’s only one thing for it: an adventure. So, Sarah sets off with her sister Juliette on a whisky-fuelled campervan trip across Scotland.
The sisters have never been alike, but they know all the dark corners of each other’s history – and it’s time to dig up some demons, kicking and screaming.
Because the things that once defined us shouldn’t define us forever, should they?
Your Absence is Darkness
3.690 kr.When a local woman offers to reunite him with her sister, he realises he’s lost not only his bearings, but his memory as well: he doesn’t recognise either woman, and as their stories unfold, he is plunged into a history spanning centuries and lives: a city girl drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze; a farmer’s wife whose essay on the humble earthworm changes the course of lives; a pastor who writes to dead poets and falls in love with a stranger; a musician plagued by cosmic loneliness, who discovers that his life has been a lie; and an alcoholic transfixed by the night sky.
Faced with the violence of destiny and the effects of choices, made and avoided, that cascade between lives, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart. An incandescent, audacious novel about the misfortune of mortality and the strange salve of time, Your Absence is Darkness is a spellbinding story of death, desire and the perfect agony of star-crossed love.
Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton
Happiness Forever
4.390 kr.A hilarious and utterly original debut novel following a woman trying to make sense of her life and herself as she falls in love with her therapist. Sylvie is only happy when she is at therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist.
She wants to kiss her and roll around on the floor with her. She thinks about her every second they’re not together (roughly 167 hours and 10 minutes per week). She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it is – as her therapist suggests – a case of extreme ‘erotic transference’, or a lost person’s need to connect, Sylvie isn’t sure.
Beyond therapy, Sylvie has what she considers to be a small life: a job as a veterinary nurse, her little brain-damaged dog, Curtains, and a new friend Chloe who she met on the beach. When the therapist delivers some devastating news, Sylvie has to imagine new and lasting ways of coping (that don’t include being adopted by the therapist). Her world has begun to open up, inching beyond the fear that has confined her until now, and she must decide whether she’s ready for a bravery of feeling.
In this stunning debut novel, Adelaide Faith encapsulates the great vulnerability, difficulty and joy of being alive.
hum it on the phone
3.490 kr.The poems in hum it on the phone are made up of fragments from interdisciplinary artist Audrey Roger’s diary entries, notebooks, descriptions of dreams she has had, as well as from a range of found material clipped from exhibition reviews and press releases, national park guidelines, tarot and palmistry readings, walking guides, song lyrics, lifestyle/relationship web articles, fortune teller machine cards, film scripts, breathing techniques from a yoga manual, occult books, and immigration guidelines.
Orlanda
3.490 kr.There’s a voice in Aline’s head: a voice that wants out. Brash, boisterous and sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim literature professor for whom each day promises to be as quiet and conventional as the last. That is until, after thirty-five years of imprisonment, her alter ego breaks free.
Taking on a life of his own, Orlanda – Aline’s second self – slips into the taut, rugged body of a young man. As Aline continues unaware, Orlanda follows, dragging gleeful chaos in his wake, vowing to leave both their existences forever altered. A bewitching fable, an androgynous dream, Orlanda is one woman’s reckoning with all the hidden sides of her soul.
History of Violence
3.490 kr.I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment.
He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria. We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o’clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me.
He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began. History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, class, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes.
Who Killed My Father
3.490 kr.In Who Killed My Father, Édouard Louis explores key moments in his father’s life, and the tenderness and disconnects in their relationship.
Told with the fire of a writer determined on social justice, and with the compassion of a loving son, the book urgently and brilliantly engages with issues surrounding masculinity, class, homophobia, shame and social poverty. It unflinchingly takes aim at systems that disadvantage those they seek to exclude – those who have their expectations, hopes and passions crushed by a society which gives them little thought.
The Practice of Not Thinking : A Guide to Mindful Living
3.690 kr.THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER offers a variety of Buddhist techniques to help us feel calmer every day . . .
Nothing has changed . . .
and everything has changed . . .
I feel calmer and more centred’ Sunday TimesWhat if we could learn to look instead of see, listen instead of hear, feel instead of touch? Former monk Ryunosuke Koike shows how, by incorporating simple Zen practices into our daily lives, we can reconnect with our five senses and live in a more peaceful, positive way. When we focus on our senses and learn to re-train our brains and our bodies, we start to eliminate the distracting noise of our minds and the negative thoughts that create anxiety. By following Ryunosuke Koike’s practical steps on how to breathe, listen, speak, laugh, love and even sleep in a new way, we can improve our interactions with others, feel less stressed at work and make every day calmer.
Only by thinking less, can we appreciate more.
Road to October 7 : A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism
4.690 kr.In Road to October 7, Erik Skare argues that Palestinian Islamism is far more complex and dynamic than generally assumed. The phenomenon has continuously developed through disputes between moderates and hardliners. These struggles have largely been settled by external drivers – intra-Palestinian competition, Israeli violence and repression, or shifts in the regional power balance.
Suspicion
3.690 kr.Onizuka Kumako is a fierce woman: tall, beautiful, and not afraid to speak her mind. In Tokyo bars, she seduces customers and commits petty crime, using her connections to the local yakuza to get by. When she meets Shirakawa Fukutaro, a rich widower desperate for companionship and unaware of her shady past, the two hit it off and are soon married. But their newlywed bliss is suddenly cut short: one rainy July evening, their car veers off course, plunges into the harbour and Fukutaro is pulled beneath the waves.
Suspected of murder and labelled a femme fatale, Kumako is hounded by the press, but stays firm, repeatedly proclaiming her own innocence. As pressure from dogged journalists mounts, the tide of public opinion is rising against her. But when a scrupulous defence lawyer takes on her case, doubt begins to creep in . . .
In this intricate, psychological noir, masterfully translated into English for the first time, Seicho Matsumoto draws out the hidden demons that guide our convictions, our biases and our deepest desires.
Ariel
4.690 kr.‘The world is blood-hot and personal’: in her moving and illuminating introduction, the poet Emily Berry remembers her own teenage encounters with Ariel and offers a personal way into this definitive collection. She shows us how Plath can crystallize our most volatile emotions, transforming them into images so potent and precise that they resonate with us all. Plath has been an inspiration to successive generations; her influence, enduring and profound.
‘If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded . . . They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity . . . the book is a major literary event.’ A. Alvarez, Observer, 1965
The Red Tenda of Bologna
1.290 kr.‘It’s an improbable city, Bologna – like one you might walk through after you have died.’
A dreamlike meditation on memory, food, paintings, a fond uncle and the improbable beauty of Bologna, from the visionary thinker and art critic.
The New Age of Sexism
5.690 kr.AI is here, bringing a seismic shift in the way our society operates. Might this mean a future reimagined on equitable terms for women and marginalised groups everywhere?
Not unless we fight for it. At present, power remains largely in the hands of a few rich, white men. New AI-driven technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, are putting women in danger, their rights and safety sacrificed at the altar of profitability and reckless speed.
In The New Age of Sexism, Sunday Times bestselling author and campaigner Laura Bates takes us deep into the heart of this rapidly evolving world. She explores the metaverse, confronts deepfake pornography, travels to cyber brothels, tests chatbots, and hears from schools in the grip of online sexual abuse, showing how our lives – from education to work, sex to entertainment – are being infiltrated by easily accessible technologies that are changing the way we live and love. What she finds is a wild west where existing forms of discrimination, inequality and harassment are being coded into the future we will all have little choice about living in – unless we seize this moment to demand change.
Gripping, courageous and eye-opening, The New Age of Sexism exposes a phenomenon we can’t afford to ignore any longer. Our future is on the line. We need to act now, before it is too late.
Flashlight
5.690 kr.One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, probably drowned.
The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit. As Louisa and her American mother Anne return to the US, this traumatic event reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened to Serk slowly unravels.
Flesh
5.490 kr.Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion.
As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István’s life spirals out of control. Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London’s super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.
The Portable Beat Reader
990 kr.Beginning in the late 1940’s, American literature discovered a four-letter word, and the word was “beat.” Beat as in poverty and beatitude, ecstasy and exile. Beat was Jack Kerouac touring the American road in prose as fast and reckless as a V-8 Chevy. It was the junk-sick surrealism of William Burroughs; the wild, Whitmanesque poetry of Allen Ginsberg; and the lumberjack Zen of Gary Snyder.
The Portable Beat Reader collects the most significant writing of these and fellow members (and spiritual descendants) of the Beat Generation, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, Leroi Jones, and Michael McClure. In poetry, fiction, essays, song lyrics, letters, and memoirs, it captures the triumphant rudeness, energy, and exhilaration of a movement that swept through American letters with hurricane force.
The Dead Girls’ Class Trip: Selected Stories
3.690 kr.A new translation of the best and most provocative short stories by the author of Transit and The Seventh Cross.
Best known for the anti-fascist novel The Seventh Cross and the existential thriller Transit, Anna Seghers was also a gifted writer of short fiction. The stories she wrote throughout her life reflect her political activism as well as her deep engagement with myth; they are also some of her most formally experimental work. This selection of Seghers’s best stories, written between 1925 and 1965, displays the range of her creativity over the years. It includes her most famous short fiction, such as the autobiographical “The Dead Girls’ Class Trip,” and others, like “Jans Is Going to Die,” that have been translated into English here for the first time. There are psychologically penetrating stories about young men corrupted by desperation and women bound by circumstance, as well as enigmatic tales of bewilderment and enchantment based on myths and legends, like “The Best Tales of Woynok, the Thief,” “The Three Trees,” and “Tales of Artemis.” In her stories, Seghers used the German language in especially unconventional and challenging ways, and Margot Bettauer Dembo’s sensitive and skilled translation preserves this distinction.
Storm
3.690 kr.A thrilling, innovative novel about the interplay between nature and humankind by the author of Names on the Land.
With Storm, first published in 1941, George R. Stewart invented a new genre of fiction: the eco-novel. California has been plunged into drought throughout the summer and fall when a ship reports an unusual barometric reading from the far western Pacific. In San Francisco, a junior meteorologist in the Weather Bureau takes note of the anomaly and plots “an incipient little whorl” on the weather map, a developing storm, he suspects, that he privately dubs Maria. Stewart’s novel tracks Maria’s progress to and beyond the shores of the United States through the eyes of meteorologists, linemen, snowplow operators, a general, a couple of decamping lovebirds, and an unlucky owl, and the storm, surging and ebbing, will bring long-needed rain, flooded roads, deep snows, accidents, and death. Storm is an epic account of humanity’s relationship to and dependence on the natural world.