Vintage books In Patagonia Чатвин Брюс

Bruce Chatwin provides a fascinating background to indigenous Australian life • The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines, Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account, Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories

The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared literary treasury • In 1999, journalist and historian Geert Mak criss-crossed the continent in the simple yet monumental quest to trace European twentieth-century history as the world slipped into the twenty-first. In Europe is a dazzling account of that journey, and combines the larger story of Europe with intimate, vivid detail. It is also now a poignant reminder that the European project was then and is now a unprecedented experiment; that we still have ‘a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to explain.’

It is the rainy season. Drunk and delirious, an old man lies dying in the Queensland bush. In his opium-hazed last hours, a priest finds his deserted shack and listens to his last words. Half-awake and half-dreaming the old man tells the story of an adventure set decades in the future, in a very different world

I read somewhere that the decision to emigrate comes from a need to breathe • The hope of a better life is stronger than any other feeling. My mother decided it was better to know I was in danger far from her; but on the way to a different future, than to know I was in danger near her; but stuck in the same old fear • At the age of ten, Enaiatollah Akbari was left alone to fend for himself. This is the heartbreaking, unforgettable story of his journey from Afghanistan to Italy in an attempt to find a safe place to live

After just a year of close, loving marriage, Ruth has been widowed. Her beloved husband, Ben, has been killed in a tragic accident and Ruth is left, suddenly and totally bereft • Unable to share her sorrow and grief with Ben's family, who are dealing with their pain in their own way, Ruth becomes increasingly isolated, burying herself in her cottage in the countryside as the seasons change around her. Only Ben's young brother Jo, is able to reach out beyond his own grief, to offer Ruth the compassion which might reclaim her from her own devastating unhappiness • The result is a moving, lyrical exploration of love and loss, of grief and mourning, from a masterful writer

First published in 1964 and 1965, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are a brilliantly inventive and offbeat collection of John Lennon's stories, drawings and poems

'A remarkable piece of work. A magnificent novel' Salman Rushdie, Observer • Touching and wonderfully funny, In Custody is woven around the yearnings and calamities of a small-town scholar in the north of India. An impoverished college lecturer, Deven, sees a way to escape from the meanness of his daily life when he is asked to interview India's greatest Urdu poet, Nur - a project that can only end in disaster

Thomas needs to speak to his mother before she dies • But he's set to give a talk to a conference of physiotherapists in the Netherlands; if he leaves now will he get to her deathbed in time? • Will he be able to say what he couldn't say before? He can't concentrate on what is happening now: his mind won't sit still. Should he try to solve his friend's marital crisis? Should he reconsider his separation from his own wife? And why does he need to pee again? • In Extremis is Tim Parks's masterwork: a darkly hilarious and deadly serious novel about infidelity, mortality and the frailties of the human body

Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill. It defines us as a species • It enabled us to walk out of Africa and to spread as far as Alaska and Australia. It freed our hands and freed our minds. We put one foot in front of the other without thinking - yet how many of us know how we do that, or appreciate the advantages it gives us? In this hymn to walking, neuroscientist Shane O'Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits it confers on our bodies and minds, and urges us to appreciate - and exercise - our miraculous ability

Stifled by the torpor of colonial South Africa and trapped in a web of reciprocal oppression, a lonely sheep farmer seeks comfort in the arms of a black concubine. But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace • As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda's consciousness starts to drift and the line between fact and the workings of her excited imagination becomes blurred. What follows is the fable of a woman's passionate, obsessed and violent response to an Africa that will not heed her

В 1960 году Джон Стейнбек и его пес Чарли отправились в своем зеленом пикапе заново открывать душу Америки, посещая маленькие городки от Нью-Йорка до Нового Орлеана.Эта поездка стала "Путешествиями с Чарли", одной из его самых любимых книг • Полвека спустя Герт Мак отправляется в путь из дома Стейнбека. Миля за милей, следуя по стопам Стейнбека через картофельные поля штата Мэн в бескрайние прерии Среднего Запада и натыкаясь на сверкающие пригороды и заколоченные магазины, Мак ищет корни Америки и то, что осталось от мира, который описывает Стейнбек. Как изменилась Америка за последние пятьдесят лет; что осталось от американской мечты; и что общего у Европы и Америки сейчас? • Книга на английском языке • In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans

Eva is walking by the river with her seven-year-old daughter when they catch sight of a man’s body in the water. Eva tells her daughter to wait while she calls the police, but when she reaches the phone box she doesn’t call them. Instead she phones her father, and makes no mention of her discovery • When the body is eventually found, it soon becomes clear to Inspector Sejer and his team that this was no accidental drowning – the man was the victim of a very violent killer. But the trail has gone cold. Until, one night, Eva receives a phone call