Vintage books This Sporting Life Storey David

A collection of essays on writers and writing by the Booker-shortlisted novelist and critic • Writing about real lives takes various forms, which overlap and may be combined with each other: biography, autobiography, biographical criticism, biographical fiction, memoir, confession, diary • In these thoughtful and enlightening essays David Lodge considers some particularly interesting examples of life-writing, and contributes several of his own. The subjects include celebrated modern British writers such as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Muriel Spark and Alan Bennett, and two major figures from the past, Anthony Trollope and H.G.Wells. Lodge examines connections between the style and the man in the diaries of the playwright Simon Gray and the cultural criticism of Terry Eagleton, and recalls how his own literary career was entwined with that of his friend Malcolm Bradbury

Momik, the only child of two survivors, is brought up in Israel by a family seeking to ignore the past. No-one will explain to him what life was like 'Over There' or what the 'Nazi Beast' is. His 9-year-old mind imagines a Nazi Beast hiding in the cellar, waiting to feed on Jews. Momik increasingly shields himself from all feeling and attachment. But through the stories his great-uncle tells him-the same stories he told the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp-Momik, too, becomes "infected with humanity." • See Under: Love is a luminously imaginative and profoundly affecting work

Сюжетные линии "Кампусной трилогии" Дэвида Лоджа, берущие начало в Рэдбриджском университете Раммиджа, повествуют о комических приключениях ученых, которые выходят за пределы знакомой территории. Начиная с конца 60-х годов "Смена мест" следует за ничем не примечательным преподавателем английского языка Филипом Своллоу и выдающимся американским профессором Моррисом Цаппом, когда они обмениваются работой, местами обитания и, в конечном счете, женами. В "Маленьком мире" Своллоу, Зепп, Перс Макгарригл и прекрасная Анжелика Пабст снимаются на международной конференции, сочетая академические разборки и туризм, эзотерические беседы и романтику. И, наконец, лектор-феминистка Робин Пенроуз меняет промышленный роман на каску в "Хорошей работе", когда она становится тенью босса фабрики Виктора Уилкокса

This book is about learning to live • Echoing Socrates’ statement that the unexamined life not worth living, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws on his twenty-five years of work and more than 50,000 hours of conversations to form a collection of beautifully rendered tales that illuminate the human experience • These are stories about everyday lives: from a woman who finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip to a young man loses his wallet, to the more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer and the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD • 'Definitive' Daily Telegraph • Orwell has become one of the most potent and symbolic figures in western political thought. Even the adjective 'Orwellian' is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature and language yet, despite this iconic status, the man who was born Eric Blair in 1903 remains an enigma • Drawing on a mass of previously unseen material, D J Taylor offers a strikingly human portrait of the writer too often embalmed as a secular saint. Here is a man who, for all his outward unworldliness, effectively stage-managed his own life; who combined chilling detachment with warmth and gentleness, disillusionment with hope; who battled through illness to produce two of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century

A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade • Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months • In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade

A miracle of storytelling bursting with heartache and high spirits • Half Apache and mostly orphaned, the adventures of Edgar Presley Mint begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head • Shunted from the hospital to a reform school to a Mormon foster family, comedy and trouble accompany Edgar - the irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart, and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home • This riveting picaresque novel has become an international best-seller

On the outskirts of Paris, two men have been found with their throats cut. In Normandy, two stags have been killed and their hearts cut out. Meanwhile a seventy-five-year-old nurse who has murdered several of her patients has escaped from prison. Is there a connection between the three cases? • In this mystery, Commissaire Adamsberg is pitted against nemeses past and present: Ariane Lagarde, France's foremost pathologist and Adamsberg's enemy since they argued over a case twenty-three years earlier, and Louis Veyrenc, a new recruit with a grudge, who has been assigned the job of protecting the Commissaire's ex-girlfriend. As the different strands of Vargas's compelling story begin to intertwine, events move towards a gripping climax

A tangled tale of falling in love - with three very different men • Flora Trevelyan is a ten-year-old misfit, despised by her selfish and indolent parents, and left to wander the streets of a small French town whilst her parents prepare to depart for life in colonial India. There she befriends the locals, acquires an extensive vocabulary of French foul language and encounters the privileged lifestyle of the elegant, middle-class British families holidaying in 1920s France • Introduced for the first time to kindly, civilised and, above all, caring people Flora falls helplessly and hopelessly in love with not one but three young men • Over the next forty years Flora will grow from an awkward schoolgirl into a stunning beauty and explore, consummate and finally resolve each of these affairs

A heartbreaking story of love, loss and survival from the multi-million copy bestselling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin • Returning from life as a fighter pilot in the First World War, Daniel is struggling to put the trauma of the Western Front behind him • As the 1920s dawn, he and his wife Rosie move to a tea plantation in Ceylon with their small daughter to make a fresh start. Yet navigating their new world could test their marriage to its limits • Back in England, Rosie's sisters are dealing with impossible challenges in their searches for family, purpose and happiness. These are precarious times, and taking unconventional means may be the only way to get what they want. Around them the world changes, and events in Germany take a dark and forbidding turn

Могут ли лошади испытывать стыд? Горюют ли олени? Почему петухи обманывают кур? • Мы склонны считать, что мы единственные живые существа, способные испытывать чувства, но задумывались ли вы когда-нибудь, что происходит в голове животного? От покрытой листвой лесной подстилки до внутренностей пчелиного улья - внутренняя жизнь животных открывает царство животных так, как никогда раньше. Мы слышим истории о благодарном горбатом ките, о ежике, которому снятся кошмары, и о сороке, которая совершает прелюбодеяние; мы встречаем пчел, которые строят планы на будущее, свиней, которые учат свои собственные имена, и ворон, которые катаются на санках ради забавы. И наконец-то мы узнаем, почему существуют осы • Книга на английском языке • Can horses feel shame? Do deer grieve? Why do roosters deceive hens? • We tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings but have you ever wondered what's going on in an animal's head? From the leafy forest floor to the inside of a bee hive, The Inner Life of Animals opens up the animal kingdom like never before

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire • Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed to acknowledge his son • A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull • Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection - some key to understanding what makes us the people we become • Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else's life