240 pp paperback with flaps ISBN 978 1 897959 48 0 £9.99 / AUS $19.95 > about the author | | Jorge Semprun The Cattle Truck
Translated by Richard SeaverGasping for breath in a cattle truck occupied by 119 other men, a young Spaniard captured fighting with the French Resistance counts off the days and nights as the train rolls slowly but inexorably towards Buchenwald.
On the five seemingly endless days of the journey, he talks to an unnamed Frenchman from Semur. Sometimes the conversation sends him into daydreams about his childhood; sometimes he looks into the future and the nightmare setting in which his friend's memory will come back to haunt him.
When at last the concentration camp's Wagnerian gates come into sight, 'the guy from Semur' dies suddenly and inexplicably and the young Spaniard has to face the camp alone.
'Elegant and powerful'
The Independent
'Crucial ... It deserves to be widely read'
New York Times
'The diabolical plot of this extraordinary novel was supplied by the Nazis, who had no idea that Jorge Semprun would use it one day for purposes both humane and cautionary. The Cattle Truck is a work of fiction founded on unimaginable fact.'
Paul Bailey |
160 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 20 6 US $13.99 > about the author | | Steve Aylett Bigot HallBigot Hall is the nightmare home of a family that most people would prefer to forget – but which Steve Aylett chooses to celebrate. Uncle Burst believes his face is made of pasta; the violent, grill-mouthed Uncle Snapper is confined to a treehouse; Uncle Blute is drowned in the lake at the wheel of his Morris Traveller where he remains perfectly preserved listening to classical music on the car radio; and Nanny Jack strikes terror into the community as she abandons yet another grave to return home.
Through this strangely happy breed strolls a nameless anti-hero who, when not evading blowtorch-wielding nuns, is passionately in love with his beautiful, spaced-out sister …
'Steve Aylett is without doubt one of the most ambitious and talented writers to emerge in England in recent years. While his work echoes the best of William Burroughs, it has the mark of real originality. It's hip, cool and eloquent.'
Michael Moorcock
'Aylett's prose is like poetry' The Independent |
160 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 11 4 £7.99 / US $8.95 / AUS $19.75 > about the author | | Ivan Vladislavić The Folly'A less steadfast man might have taken to his heels, but Malgas stood firm. He even had the presence of mind not to confront the apparition directly. He sensed danger: he saw himself turned to stone… He watched the floating balustrade out of the corner of his eye. It shimmered, and shimmied, and emitted a halo of brilliant light. It faded, and was on the point of vanishing altogether, but, as Malgas's heart skipped a beat, it glowed again and with a new intensity, and appeared to stabilize and solidify somewhat. It grew a landing, it excreted a film of crimson linoleum, it oozed wax. Then it gave birth to a flight of stairs…'
A vacant patch of South African veld next to the comfortable, complacent Malgas household has been taken over by a mysterious, eccentric figure with 'a plan'. Fashioning his tools out of recycled rubbish, the stranger enlists Malgas's help in clearing the land and planning his mansion. Slowly but inevitably, the stranger's charm and the novel's richly inventive language draw Malgas into 'the plan' and he sees, feels and moves into the new building. Then, just as remorselessly, all that seemed solid begins to melt back into air.
'In the tradition of Elias Canetti, a tour de force of the imagination'
André Brink
'The prose is stunning. It gives the impression of the words and the phrases having been caught from the inside.'
Tony Morphet |
144 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 02 2 £7.99 / US $11.95 / AUS $19.75 | | Ursule Molinaro Fat SkeletonsMara is a translator. In her Greenwich Village apartment she successfully renders her native Czech into best-selling English, until one fine night she notices alarming similarities between her own Prague childhood and a 'brilliant novel' by a rising young star of Czech literature. Making contact with the author, Mara realises that he had been the protégé – perhaps the lover – of her now dead novelist mother. She threatens to reveal his plagiarism of her own past and her mother's papers, and is soon caught in a web of threats and counter-threats.
As the layers of deception in the lives of Mara, her mother and the young author are steadily revealed, the boundaries between literary creation and lived experience begin to evaporate.
Ursule Molinaro is the author of ten novels, including Positions with White Roses and The New Moon with the Old Moon in Her Arms, and has translated works by Herman Hesse, Christa Wolf, Nathalie Sarraute and Dino Buzatti.
'Wickedly playful' The Observer
'Made me laugh uproariously' Financial Times |
