Faber and Faber The Music of Chance Остер Пол

«Книга иллюзий», написанная с захватывающей дух остротой и точностью, погружает читателя во вселенную, в которой комическое и трагическое, реальное и воображаемое, жестокое и нежное растворяются друг в друге. Одержимость одного человека загадочной жизнью звезды немого кино приводит его в путешествие в призрачный мир лжи, иллюзий и неожиданной любви. Потеряв жену и маленьких сыновей в авиакатастрофе, профессор из Вермонта Дэвид Циммер проводит часы бодрствования, погрязая в горе. Затем, однажды вечером, смотря телевизор, он натыкается на потерянный фильм немого комика Гектора Манна и вспоминает, как можно смеяться. . . Манн был комическим гением в фирменном белом костюме и развевающимися черными усами. Но однажды утром 1929 года он вышел из дома, и больше о нем никто не слышал

In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements around 5400 BC, to the eclipse of Babylon by the Persians in the sixth century BC. He chronicles the rise and fall of dynastic power during this period; he examines its numerous material, social and cultural innovations and inventions: The wheel, civil, engineering, building bricks, the centralized state, the division of labour, organised religion, sculpture, education, mathematics, law and monumental building • At the heart of Kriwaczek’s magisterial account, though, is the glory of Babylon – ‘gateway to the gods’ – which rose to glorious prominence under the Amorite king Hammurabi, who unified Babylonia between 1800 and 1750 BC. While Babylonian power would rise and fall over the ensuing centuries, it retained its importance as a cultural, religious and political centre until its fall to Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC

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

‘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

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

The first three volumes of Anthony Powell's remarkable A dance to the Music of Time sequence: A Question of Upbringing; A Buyer's Market; The Acceptance World • Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, and is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England. It is unrivalled for its scope, its humour and the enormous pleasure it has given to generations • These first three novels in the sequence follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles which stand between them and the 'Acceptance World'

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