Vintage books Broken April Кадарэ Исмаиль

When the new Egyptian Pharaoh decrees that he does not want a pyramid built in his honour his advisers are aghast. It is their firm belief that peace and prosperity only make the people more difficult to control - they must be kept under the whip. So the Pharaoh agrees to the construction of a pyramid colossal beyond imagining, an edifice that crushes dozens of people as each block is added and which inexorably drains the lifeblood from the country. As Egypt builds its monument to death, its neighbours plot and gloat…

It's the 1970s and cracks are starting to appear in the alliance between China and its Communist cohort Albania. When an Albanian steps on the foot of a Chinese diplomat the tension cranks up – couriers between Tirana and Beijing carry annotated x-rays of the foot back and forth. The Chinese intend to punish their interfering little ally discreetly. But is the Sino-Albanian axis about to come adrift? This is Kadare’s surreal black comedy about the inner sanctums of political power and the mysterious causal chains that transform ordinary lives

Sara has never left Sweden but at the age of 28 she decides it’s time. She cashes in her savings, packs a suitcase full of books and sets off for Broken Wheel, Iowa, a town where she knows nobody • Sara quickly realises that Broken Wheel is in desperate need of some adventure, a dose of self-help and perhaps a little romance, too. In short, this is a town in need of a bookshop • With a little help from the locals, Sara sets up Broken Wheel’s first bookstore. The shop might be a little quirky but then again, so is Sara. And as Broken Wheel’s story begins to take shape, there are some surprises in store for Sara too…

'Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy' • Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, cowed and neglected by their husbands, make a daring plan: they will have a holiday. Leaving a drab and rainy London one April and arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean, they discover a flower-filled paradise of beauty, warmth and leisure. Joined by the beautiful Lady Caroline and domineering Mrs Fisher, also in flight from the burdens of their daily lives, the four women proceed to transform themselves and their prospects

"Революционная дорога" Ричарда Йейтса, признанная шедевром с момента своей первой публикации, - это история Фрэнка и Эйприл Уилер, яркой молодой пары, которым наскучила банальность жизни в пригороде и которые стремятся быть экстраординарными. С душераздирающим состраданием и ясностью Ричард Йейтс показывает, как решение Фрэнка и Эйприл изменить свою жизнь к лучшему приводит к предательству и трагедии • Книга на английском языке • Hailed as a masterpiece from its first publication, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright young couple who are bored by the banalities of suburban life and long to be extraordinary. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April's decision to change their lives for the better leads to betrayal and tragedy

Artist Jed Martin emerges from a ten-year hiatus with good news. It has nothing to do with his broken boiler, the approach of another lamentably awkward Christmas dinner with his father or the memory of his doomed love affair with the beautiful Olga. It is that, for his new exhibition, he has secured the involvement of none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq • The exhibition brings Jed new levels of global fame. But, his boiler is still broken, his ailing father flirts with oblivion and, worst of all, he is contacted by an inspector requiring his help in solving an unspeakable, atrocious and gruesome crime, involving none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq

A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialled and shot as soon as he is fit. Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War • Diaries, letters and memories, testaments from ordinary people whose lives were transformed, are set alongside extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into the Great War as it was experienced and as it was remembered

"Весна" - это глубоко трогательный роман о семье, нашей повседневной жизни, наших радостях и наших трудностях, прекрасно проиллюстрированный Анной Бьергер • Весна следует за отцом и его новорожденной дочерью в течение одного апрельского дня, от восхода до заката. Это день, наполненный маленькими радостями семейной жизни, но также и ее глубокими испытаниями. В этом поразительном романе из "Квартета времен года" Карл Ове Кнаусгаард бескомпромиссно размышляет о самых мрачных моментах жизни и о том, что может поддержать нас в них • Книга на английском языке • Spring is a deeply moving novel about family, our everyday lives, our joys and our struggles, beautifully illustrated by Anna Bjerger • 'Moving... A circadian novel, set over one day... Entirely ingenious' Daily Telegraph • Spring follows a father and his newborn daughter through one day in April, from sunrise to sunset

"Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first" • A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white • Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times

In San Padua you can never get the ocean out of your brain • Anne Marie's husband Cal left her on their first anniversary. Two years later and she is still adrift, living a precarious life of shift work and shared apartments • When he shows up on the doorstep, clearly in trouble, she reluctantly agrees to a drink. But later that night a gun goes off in an alley near the shore and the young couple flee together, crammed into a beat-up car with their broken past, desperate to fill their lives on this long stretch of road under hot skies

The restrictions of a wartime childhood in in London and subsequent post-war shortages have done little to enrich Timothy's early youth • But everything changes when his glamorous older sister, Kath, invites him to spend the summer at Heidelberg. Kath, who left home long ago to work for the American army, introduces her sixteen-year-old brother to a lifestyle that is deliriously fast, furious and extravagant • Dazzled by the indulgent habits of the American forces, but at the same time sensitive to the broken spirits of the German community beneath this sparkling surface, Timothy will find that his summer holiday is in more ways than one an unforgettable rite of passage

Nicholas Shakespeare’s collected stories take us around the globe and into the intimate lives of his characters and the dilemmas and temptations they face • The opening novella, ‘Oddfellows’, tells the little-known history of the only enemy attack on Australian soil during the Great War, when, in January 1915, the outback town of Broken Hill was rocked by horrifying events • From this dramatic First World War encounter, we are taken to the faded glamour of 1960s Bombay, to a Bolivian mining town in 1908 where civic folly is running amok, and to an Argentinian farm presided over by a former air stewardess and her husband • Across ocean and continents, these are stories of connection and disconnection, misunderstanding and missed opportunities, identity and displacement