Dagbók bóksala
990 kr.Shaun Bythell er bóksali í Wigtown, fögru sjávarþorpi í Skotlandi. Þar rekur hann stærstu fornbókabúð landsins í eldgömlu húsi þar sem 100.000 bækur þekja alla veggi og fylla öll horn og skot. Paradís bókaormanna? Ja, næstum því …
Bráðfyndin og hrífandi frásögn þar sem brugðið er upp lifandi myndum af sérvitringum og furðufuglum sem eru daglegir gestir í bókabúðinni og skrýtna fólkinu sem vinnur þar, auk þess sem ástarlíf bóksalans kemur við sögu og hin eilífa glíma við að ná endum saman. Fyndin og kaldhæðin frásögnin heldur lesandanum föngnum frá fyrstu blaðsíðu.
Snjólaug Bragadóttir þýddi.
„Hlý, sniður og sprenghlægileg.“ – Daily Mail
„Dásamleg skemmtun.“ – The Observer
Tales from the Heart : True Stories from my Childhood
2.490 kr.‘I walked in a daze of illusions toward my future.’
Deeply felt and told with an intrepid spirit, Tales from the Heart are the intimate, formative stories from the childhood of the legendary Caribbean writer, Maryse Condé. These affecting vignettes follow Condé’s early encounters with love, grief, friendship, as she navigates the pernicious legacy of slavery and colonialism in her home of Guadeloupe and as a student in Paris.
A Moment of War
2.490 kr.In one of the great English war memoirs, we learn what it is to cross the Pyrenees through freezing snow to fight fascism in Spain; to narrowly escape execution by your own side; to kill a man with a borrowed rifle and feel nothing but shame. Moving and shrapnel-sharp, A Moment of War recalls the defeat of idealism; ‘that flush of youth which never doubts self-survival, that idiot belief in luck’.
Kjarvalskver
1.990 kr.Þessi bók geymir í einu lagi viðtöl Matthíasar Johannessens við Jóhannes Kjarval, bæði þau, sem birzt hafa áður og einnig önnur, sem ekki hafa fyrr komið á prent, auk áhrifamikils lokaþáttar frá hendi Matthíasar. Viðtölin eru svo merkileg heimild um einhvern mesta og frumlegasta persónuleika þjóðarinnar, að sjálfsagt má þykja, að þau séu til á einum stað, enda mun lesandi fljótt finna innra samhengi þeirra og listræna stígandi.
Allar heimildir um Jóhannes Kjarval eru og verða mikils virði. Og þótt Matthías Johannessen sé viðurkenndur snillingur að gera viðtöl við hina ólíkustu menn, er óvíst, að honum hafi nokkurn tíma tekizt betur en hér. Samband hans og Kjarvals er náið og skemmtilegt. Eitt er víst, að það myndi á fárra valdi að festa hugmyndaflug og leik Kjarvals jafn-trúverðuglega á blað og hér er gert. Í þessum viðtölum heyrist umfram allt rödd listamannsins sjálfs ósvikin, sterk og margbreytileg. Hún tekur yfir ótrúlega vítt svið milli ólíkindaleiks og trúnaðar, milli ævintýralegs gamans og djúprar alvöru.
Ecce Homo : How One Becomes What One is
2.490 kr.I am not a man, I am dynamite
Weeks before his final mental breakdown, Nietzsche set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo is the result. A summary of his life’s work as a philosopher, with chapter headings including ‘Why I Am So Wise’ and ‘Why I Write Such Good Books’, it is part mocking self-judgement and part battle cry, and remains one of the most singular, strange examples of the genre ever written.
The Possession
3.190 kr.‘The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city – the whole world – with a person you may never have met.’ These words set the framework for The Possession, a striking portrait of a woman after a love affair has ended. Annie Ernaux pulls the reader through every step of jealousy, of a woman’s need to know who has replaced her in a lost beloved’s life. Ernaux’s writing, characteristically gorgeous in its precision, depicts the all too familiar human tendency to seek control and certainty after rejection.
Vandratað í veröldinni
1.290 kr.Franzisca Gunnarsdóttir segir frá bernskuárum á Skriðuklaustri hjá afa sínum Gunnari Gunnarssyni, rithöfundi og fjölskyldu
Just Kids
3.990 kr.In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City, Scribner’s Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol’s Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years–the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.
Paris France
2.490 kr.All Frenchmen know you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three and that civilisation comes upon you by contact with an older woman, by revolution, by army discipline, by any escape or any subjection, and then you are civilised and life goes on normally in a latin way.
Gertrude Stein’s Paris France, published in 1940 on the day Paris fell to Nazi Germany, is a witty account of Stein’s life in France, and the perfect introduction to her work.
Pathemata: Or, The Story of My Mouth
3.990 kr.It’s not the dream that matters, it’s the telling of the dream – the words you choose, the risks you take in externalising your mind
This is a dreamlike portrait of a body in struggle to connect with itself and others. As the narrator contends with chronic pain, and with a pandemic raging in the background, she sets out to examine the literal and symbolic role of the mouth in the life of a writer.
Merging dreams and dailies, Pathemata recounts the narrator’s tragicomic search to alleviate her suffering, a search that eventually becomes a reckoning with various forms of loss – the loss of intimacy, the loss of her father and the loss of a pivotal friend and mentor. In exacting, distilled prose, her account blurs the lines between embodied, unconscious and everyday life.
With characteristic precision, humour and compassion, Nelson explores the limits of language to describe experience, while also offering a portrait of an unnerving and isolating time in our shared history. A stunning, original experiment in interiority by the adored author of Bluets and The Argonauts, Pathemata is a personal and poetic reckoning with pain and loss, both physical and emotional, as well as an uncanny meditation on love, affliction and resilience.