Vintage books J. A Novel Джейкобсон Говард

'A very funny, bitterly intelligent novel...do read it' Malcolm Bradbury • Sefton Goldberg: mid-thirties, English teacher at Wrottesley Poly in the West Midlands; small, sweaty, lustful, defiantly unappreciative of beer, nature and organised games; gnawingly aware of being an urban Jew islanded in a sea of country-loving Anglo-Saxons. Obsessed by failure - morbidly, in his own case, gloatingly, in that of his contemporaries - so much so that he plans to write a bestseller on the subject • In the meantime he is uncomfortably aware of advancing years and atrophying achievement, and no amount of lofty rationalisation can disguise the triumph of friends and colleagues, not only from Cambridge days but even within the despised walls of the Poly itself, or sweeten the bitter pill of another's success

A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question • At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything – including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs • Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing –especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There's very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left

The great Icelandic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Halldor Laxness • 'There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life' New York Review of Books • First published in 1946, this is a humane, epic novel set in rural Iceland. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family, will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus's obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever • Written by the Nobel prize-winner dubbed the 'Tolstoy of the North', this is a magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and one man's dogged struggle for independence

Gripping, terrifying, an unputdownable read. Discover Graham Greene's most iconic novel • A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things.' • In this gripping, terrifying, and unputdownable read, discover Greene's iconic tale of the razor-wielding Pinkie • 'Brighton Rock when I was about thirteen. One of the first lessons I took from it was that a serious novel could be an exciting novel - that the novel of adventure could also be the novel of ideas' Ian McEwan

The new novel from the bestselling author of The Idiot follows one young woman's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood • Selin is the luckiest person in her family • The only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's her second year, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer • On the plus side, her life feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy, abandoned women in them? And how does one live a life as interesting as a novel - a life worthy of becoming a novel - without turning into a crazy, abandoned woman oneself?

This remarkable illustrated novel is Eco's most accessible and entertaining book since The Name of the Rose • In this fascinating, abundant new novel from the incomparable Eco, Yambo, a rare-book dealer, has suffered a bizarre form of memory loss. He can remember every book he ever read but nothing about his own life • In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws into his old family home and searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and diaries kept in the attic. And so Yambo relives his youth: Mussolini, Catholic education, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the flames to capture one simple, innocent image, that of his first love

A brilliantly funny, bestselling novel by the award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time • 'A painful funny humane novel: beautifully written, addictively readable and so confident' The Times • Discover this brilliantly comic and moving bestselling novel by the award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise • At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray • The family is not pleased, as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former colleagues

From the author of the bestselling Suite Franзaise • Translated by Sandra Smith, with an introduction by Patrick Marnham • In 1929, 26-year-old Irиne Nйmirovsky shot to fame in France with the publication of her second novel David Golder. At the time, only the most prescient would have predicted the events that led to her extraordinary final novel Suite Franзaise and her death at Auschwitz. Yet the clues are there in this astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul • Golder is a superb creation. Born into poverty on the Black Sea, he has clawed his way to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil. When the novel opens, he is at work in his magnificent Parisian apartment while his wife and beloved daughter, Joyce`, spend his money at their villa in Biarritz

From the Pulitzer prize-winning Sunday Times bestseller Anne Tyler. The Tin Can Tree is now re-jacketed along with the rest of Tyler's books in striking new backlist style • Read Pulitzer Prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Anne Tyler's classic exploration of the impact of grief on a family • When young Janie Pike dies in a tragic accident, she leaves behind a family numbed with grief and torn with guilt and recrimination. In this compassionate and haunting novel Anne Tyler explores how each member of the family learns to face the future in their own way • **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 1 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** • 'One of my favourite authors' Liane Moriarty • 'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan • 'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve • 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks

A searing novel that traces the destruction of a community in communist China • Told through the eyes of Xiao Qiang, a young boy, this deeply moving novel shares the tragic story of the blood-contamination scandal in China's Henan province • Looking for a way to lift Ding Village from poverty, its directors and organisers open blood-plasma collection stations, hoping to sell the plasma to those in need. At first the scheme is a commercial success. Soon, however, whole communities are wiped out after contracting HIV. As Xiao narrates the fate of Ding Village, his family is torn apart by suspicion and retribution

A strikingly powerful novel exploring the motivations of a suicide bomber in Israel, told through the eyes of her husband • Now an award-winning film, winner of the Frankfurt Book Fair prize for best literary film adaptation • Tel Aviv. A suicide bomber has killed 19 in a packed city centre restaurant. Dr Amin Jaafie, an Israeli Arab, is a surgeon at a nearby hospital. Respected and admired by his colleagues, the doctor represents integration at its most successful. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn as his beloved wife's body is found among the dead... could she have caused the devestation? • From the graphic, shocking description of the bombing that opens the novel to its searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its costs

'The greatest love story I've ever read' Andrew Davies • Anna Karenina is a novel of unparalleled richness and complexity, set against the backdrop of Russian high society. Tolstoy charts the course of the doomed love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer who pursues Anna after becoming infatuated with her at a ball. Although she initially resists his charms Anna eventually succumbs, falling passionately in love and setting in motion a chain of events that lead to her downfall. In this extraordinary novel Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, while evoking a love so strong that those who experience it are prepared to die for it