Faber and Faber The Republic of False Truths Al Aswany Alaa

Scruton argues that the tragedies and disasters of the history of the European continent have been the consequences of a false optimism and the fallacies that derive from it. In place of these fallacies, Scruton mounts a passionate defence of both civil society and freedom. He shows that the true legacy of European civilisation is not the false idealisms that have almost destroyed it – in the shapes of Nazism, fascism and communism – but the culture of forgiveness and irony which we must now protect from those whom it offends. The Uses of Pessimism is a passionate plea for reason and responsibility, written at a time of profound change

- Have you ever forgotten the name of someone you’ve met dozens of times? • - Or discovered that your memory of an important event was completely different from everyone else’s? • - Or vividly recalled being in a particular place at a particular time, only to discover later that you couldn’t possibly have been? • We rely on our memories every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is, they are far from being the accurate record of the past we like to think they are. In The Memory Illusion, forensic psychologist and memory expert Dr Julia Shaw draws on the latest research to show why our memories so often play tricks on us – and how, if we understand their fallibility, we can actually improve their accuracy. The result is an exploration of our minds that both fascinating and unnerving, and that will make you question how much you can ever truly know about yourself

1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare’s life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear • 1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra • Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come

When Glasgow journalist Gerry Conway receives a phone call promising unsavoury information about Scottish Justice Minister Peter Lyons, his instinct is that this apparent scoop won’t warrant space in The Tribune. But as Conway’s curiosity grows and his leads proliferate, his investigation takes him from Scotland to Belfast. Shocked by the sectarian violence of the past, and by the prejudice and hatred he encounters even now, Conway soon grows obsessed with the story of Lyons and all he represents. And as he digs deeper, he comes to understand that there is indeed a story to be uncovered; and that there are people who will go to great lengths to ensure that it remains hidden • Compelling, vividly written and shocking, All the Colours of the Town is not only the story of an individual and his community – it is also a complex and thrilling inquiry into loyalty, betrayal and duty

‘That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .’ • This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna’s unwritten account of what happened • Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround us. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world: like the settings of Kafka stories, it is one that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies • In the Country of Last Things is a tense, psychological take on the dystopian novel

Michael Frayn’s classic novel is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, where John Dyson dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life – until one day his great chance of glory at last arrives • Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

The quote from Karl Marx taken out to the headline treats a person as a rational being realizing the being as a whole and inexhaustible. Hence - the problem of philosophical knowledge and philosophical perception of the whole as a purely philosophical problem. For its solution the author is developing a theory of being, motion, space and time, relying on modern natural, inter alia, on cosmological perceptions of the world, challenging some of them, including the "theory of enlargement of the Universe", "recession of galaxies" et al. Decision of assigned tasks required author to address to the problems associated with a fundamental question of philosophy, as well as the theory of knowledge, consciousness, nature of the ideal and the mechanisms of spiritual production

The sinking of the White Ship in 1120 is one of the greatest disasters England has ever suffered. In one catastrophic night, the king’s heir and the flower of Anglo-Norman society were drowned and the future of the crown was thrown violently off course • In a riveting narrative, Charles Spencer follows the story from the Norman Conquest through to the decades that would become known as the Anarchy: a civil war of untold violence that saw families turn in on each other with English and Norman barons, rebellious Welsh princes and the Scottish king all playing a part in a desperate game of thrones. All because of the loss of one vessel – the White Ship – the medieval Titanic

The Penguin English Library Edition of Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James • "I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?" • This edition contains two of Henry James's most popular short works • Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? In Daisy Miller Henry James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces • Oscar Wilde called James's chilling The Turn of the Screw 'a most wonderful, lurid poisonous little tale'

Set against the background of violence and state repression in a turbulent period of French history, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia chronicles the incredible and outrageous life of Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist dubbed ‘The Red Virgin of Montmartre’. A utopian dreamer, notorious anarchist, teacher, orator and poet, she was decades ahead of her time. Always a radical, she fought on the barricades defending the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 against the reactionary regime that massacred thousands of French citizens after the Commune’s defeat. Deported to a penal colony on the other side of the Earth, she took up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression • Celebrating the utopian urge in nineteenth-century literature and politics and the origins of science fiction, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia is the third collaboration of best-selling academic and graphic novelist Mary M