Penguin In the Castle of My Skin Lamming George

Shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and published here as a Penguin Essential for the first time • Nine-year-old Suleiman is just awakening to the wider world beyond the games on the hot pavement outside his home and beyond the loving embrace of his parents. He becomes the man of the house when his father goes away on business, but then he sees his father, standing in the market square in a pair of dark glasses. Suddenly the wider world becomes a frightening place where parents lie and questions go unanswered. Suleiman turns to his mother, who, under the cover of night, entrusts him with the secret story of her childhood

Nine-year-old Suleiman is just awakening to the wider world beyond the games on the hot pavement outside his home and beyond the loving embrace of his parents. He becomes the man of the house when his father goes away on business, but then he sees his father, standing in the market square in a pair of dark glasses. Suddenly the wider world becomes a frightening place where parents lie and questions go unanswered. Suleiman turns to his mother, who, under the cover of night, entrusts him with the secret story of her childhood

In this heartfelt memoir, Yan Lianke brings the reader into his boyhood home in Song County, Henan Province, painting a richly detailed portrait of rural China during the Cultural Revolution • It is a hard but loving childhood. Yan’s family carve out a modest existence, though food is often so scarce they have to find edible bark and clay for sustenance. Working sixteen-hour shifts in a quarry, Yan’s hands become as crooked as twigs, but the satisfaction of hard physical labour and earning money to support his family proves intoxicating. Reading novels is an escape for Yan, and he yearns to become a writer after hearing about a woman who was allowed to remain in the city of Harbin after publishing her first novel • Caught between his obligations as a son and a brother, and his longing for a new life, Yan eventually joins the army

The path to achieving Zen (a balance between the body and the mind) is brilliantly explained by Professor Eugen Herrigel in this timeless account • This book is the result of the author's six year quest to learn archery in the hands of Japanese Zen masters. It is an honest account of one man's journey to complete abandonment of 'the self' and the Western principles that we use to define ourselves. Professor Herrigel imparts knowledge from his experiences and guides the reader through physical and spiritual lessons in a clear and insightful way • Mastering archery is not the key to achieving Zen, and this is not a practical guide to archery. It is more a guide to Zen principles and learning and perfect for practitioners and non-practitioners alike

The third book from the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute and internationally bestselling author of The Little Book of Hygge, Meik Wiking • Why is it that a piece of music, a smell, a taste can take us back to something we had forgotten? How is it that we remember our first kiss in detail, but barely remember anything of a fortnight's holiday from five years ago? Memories are the cornerstones of our identity, shaping who we are, how we act, and how we feel. But how do we make and keep the memories that bring us lasting joy? • Happiness expert Meik Wiking has the answers. In The Art of Making Memories he brings together his extensive research drawn from the world's biggest study on happy memories (which involved 1000 people from 75 countries), conducted at the Happiness Research Institute, along with data and diaries, interviews, global surveys and studies, and real-life behavioural science and happiness experiments, to explain the nuances of nostalgia, the different ways we form memories around our experiences, and how we can become better at recalling them

The First Rule is the most important: 'Always run, never fight' • For 3000 years Mia's family has shaped Earth's history to push humanity to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices along the way • And now, in the year of 1968, Mia finds herself about to help launch the first people into space. She can't take them to the stars, not quite yet. But with her adversary almost upon her, and with the future of the planet at stake, one thing is becoming clearer • Obeying the First Rule is no longer an option • For the first time since her line's first generation, Mia will have to choose to stand her ground • But the overwhelming odds mean that she risks not only her bloodline, but also the future of the human race

Bringing into harsh focus the daily struggle for existence in a Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is translated by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics • This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold - and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life

Nobel prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells a tale of an unrequited love that outlasts all rivals in his masterpiece Love in the Time of Cholera, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time • Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza's impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. Having sworn his eternal love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again • When Fermina's husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love

'Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .' • The Third Battle of Ypres, ending in a desperate struggle for the ridge and little village of Passchendaele, was one of the most appalling campaigns in the history of warfare. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in summer of 1917, mostly raw young troops keen to do their bit for King and Country. This book tells their tale of mounting disillusion amid mud, terror and increasingly desperate attacks, yet it is also a story of immense courage, comradeship, high spirits and hope • In Passchendaele, Lyn Macdonald lets over 600 soldiers speak for themselves

'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love' • Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza's impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina • When Fermina's husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?

Жан-Батист Гренуй был брошен младенцем на грязных улицах Парижа восемнадцатого века, но, повзрослев, обнаружил, что обладает необыкновенным даром: обонянием, более сильным, чем у любого другого человека. Постепенно он учится использовать этот дар в искусстве создания самых изысканных духов во Франции. И все же есть один аромат, который он не может уловить: аромат невинной юной девственницы. Чтобы усовершенствовать свои эксперименты, он должен заполучить этот конечный ингредиент любой ценой • Книга на английском языке • Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is abandoned on the filthy streets of eighteenth-century Paris as a baby, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Gradually he learns how to exploit this gift in the art of creating the most sublime perfumes in France

In both time and space, the cosmos is astoundingly vast, and yet is governed by simple, elegant, universal mathematical laws • On this cosmic timeline, our human era is spectacular but fleeting. Someday, we know, we will all die. And, we know, so too will the universe itself • "Until the End of Time" is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to understand it. Greene takes us on a journey across time, from our most refined understanding of the universe's beginning, to the closest science can take us to the very end. He explores how life and mind emerged from the initial chaos, and how our minds, in coming to understand their own impermanence, seek in different ways to give meaning to experience: in story, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and our longing for the timeless, or eternal