Vintage books The Dark Road Ma Jian

"Производитель лапши" • - роман Цзяня Ма • Каждую неделю автор политической пропаганды и профессиональный донор крови встречаются за ужином. Вряд ли они друзья - один из них замучен своим "искусством", другой толстый и богатый благодаря земному бизнесу по поставке запасной крови гражданам Китая • В течение одного особенно гастрономического вечера писатель начинает жаловаться на свое последнее партийное поручение: историю обычного солдата, который жертвует своей жизнью ради революционного дела. Это не тот роман, который он хочет написать, говорит он своему другу. В его голове живет ненаписанная книга о людях, которых он знает или видит каждый день на улицах - живых людях, которые гораздо лучше отражают мир, в котором живет он • Книга на английском языке

'An important book, a powerful commentary on the moral issues of the last century with the realisation that no one is completely blameless - extraordinary' Sunday Express • The Dark Room tells the stories of three ordinary Germans: Helmut, a young photographer in Berlin in the 1930s who uses his craft to express his patriotic fervour; Lore, a twelve-year-old girl who in 1945 guides her young siblings across a devastated Germany after her Nazi parents are seized by the Allies; and, fifty years later, Micha, a young teacher obsessed with what his loving grandfather did in the war, struggling to deal with the past of his family and his country

A book about family, selfishness and compassion on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, from the Booker Prize-winner • Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen – a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her own children – forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home

Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen - a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her children - forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home

"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

‘So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use’ • The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction • Annie, Francie and Archie were inseparable growing up, but in 1914 the boys are seduced by the drama of the Great War. Before leaving their small Irish village for the trenches, Francie promises his true love Annie that he will bring her little brother home safe • Six years later Francie is on the run, a wanted man in the Irish war of Independence. He needs Annie's help to escape safely across the border, but that means confronting the truth about why Archie never came back

Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not • In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever • This is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost

Soon to be a major film adaptation starring Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes • David and Jo Henniger are on their way to a party at their old friends' home, deep in the Moroccan desert. But as a groggy David navigates the dark desert roads, two young men spring from the roadside, the car swerves and collides with one of the boys • Meanwhile, festivities at the house are in full flow. Under the watchful eyes of their Moroccan staff, the extravagant hosts attend to the whims of their glittering, insatiable guests as the party rages on into a new day. The stage is set for a weekend in which David and Jo must come to terms with their fateful act and its shattering consequences

A magnificent, terrifying, panoramic view of the decline of the Polish Jewry told by the Nobel Prize winning writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer • In the topsy-turvy years between the dawn of the twentieth century and the dark days of 1939, the Moskat family battled on. But like many Jewish families in Poland they can no longer turn a blind eye to the dwindling of their fortunes. In Warsaw, where saints mingle with swindlers, tough Zionists argue with mystic philosophers, and medieval rabbis rub shoulders with ultra-modern painters, life is inexorably changing. Secularism and war inch nearer and the family Moskat clings on

His name is Lord Doyle • His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau • His game: baccarat punto blanco -- 'that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.' • Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money – and himself – up in smoke • So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, another naughty lemonade and an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyle’s way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater

A brilliant story of intrigue, retribution, revenge and redemption • Imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Edmond Dantes spends fourteen bitter years in a dungeon. When his daring escape plan works, he uses all he has learnt during his incarceration to mastermind an elaborate plan of revenge that will bring punishment to those he holds responsible for his fate. No longer the naive sailor who disappeared into the dark fortress all those years ago, he reinvents himself as the charming, mysterious and powerful Count of Monte Cristo