Today, hundreds of thousands of people, desperate to escape war, violence & poverty, are crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe. Our response from our protected European standpoint, argues Slavoj Zizek, offers two versions of ideological blackmail: either we open our doors as widely as possible; or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions are bad, states Zizek. They merely prolong the problem, rather than tackling it. The refugee crisis also presents an opportunity, a unique chance for Europe to redefine itself: but, if we are to do so, we have to start raising unpleasant & difficult questions. We must also acknowledge that large migrations are our future: only then can we commit to a carefully prepared process of change, one founded not on a community that see the excluded as a threat, but one that takes as its basis the shared substance of our social being. The only way, in other words, to get to the heart of one of the greatest issues confronting Europe today is to insist on the global solidarity of the exploited & oppressed. Maybe such solidarity is a utopia. But, warns Zizek, if we don`t engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be lost. ...

In Against the Flow, Tom Fort wades through Eastern Europe revisiting the places he made on a trip twenty years ago, in light of two decades of deep & far reaching changes on the continent. Twenty years ago Tom fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, heading east in search of a Europe that found itself part of a new post-communist order. Politically, spiritually & economically, everything was changing at a speed people found hard to comprehend. One constant was the landscapes, its mountains & rivers. As the expansion of the EU opened the flood gates for the human tide of its citizens to come & go as they pleased, the UK found itself with a vibrant new Polish community. Tom Fort was set to wondering what had happened to the places & people he remembered so well & he decided to retrace his footsteps; this time starting on a bus from London to Krakow. ...

Dee Caffari became the first woman to sail solo round the world against the prevailing winds & currents. Her story is an adventure in the true sense of the word. It is about physical hardship in terrible conditions, overcoming sleep deprivation, 34 days of gales, 12 metre waves & cyclones. It is also about a woman who stepped outside her safe zone & dared to dream. Her courage resulted in a place in the history books alongside a handful of men, having achieved something truly extraordinary. More people have walked on the moon than have successfully completed a westabout circumnavigation, & in this inspirational book Dee shares the story of her journey from beginner to record breaker. A new chapter for this paperback edition recounts Dee`s experiences since her Record & her preparations for the Vendee Globe Race. ...

' You have to be on your guard when you go back to special places. You may be able to locate them easily enough on the map, but maps tell only one story. Times change & places & people with them. The memory plays curious tricks, & things aren't always as you remember or expect'. Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, bound for all points east. Eastern Europe was still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare, blinking, injured, full of fears but importantly full of hope too. Things were different then. Czechoslovakia was still Czechoslovakia, Russia was the USSR & the Warsaw Pact had not formally dissolved. But what did exist then, as they do now, were the rivers: the nations' lifeblood. It was along & by these rivers that Fort travelled around Eastern Europe meeting its people & immersing himself in its culture. Since that trip though, much has changed & in more recent years around one million Poles have settled in Britain. Fort's local paper has a Polish edition, his supermarket has a full range of Polish bread, sausage & beer & an influx of Polish businesses opened in his town centre. And it's not just the Poles, his gym has a Lithuanian trainer & the woman who cuts his hair is from Hungary. As a tide of people began to leave Eastern Europe & settle in the UK, Tom Fort started to wonder about what they were leaving behind & whether the friends he had made all those years ago remained. & so he decided to make the journey again, travelling against the flow of the steady human stream to explore the once familiar places. As he did so, many began to return as the recession took hold of Western Europe. Tom was keen to find out what had changed & how the places, people & way of life had moved on & of course fit in a spot of fishing along the way. ...

Written by the author of Thirty Miles: A Local Journey in Food, this book presents an intriguing adventure that strikes at the heart of the cuisine along the Mekong River. It tells how the beating heart of a cobra snake contrasts with the remarkable everyday cuisine of Cambodia. ...

Simon Yates is the man who cut the rope in Joe Simpson`s award-winning account of their struggle for survival in ” Touching the Void”. In this book, Yates recounts how he & three companions climbed the world`s largest vertical rock-face, in the Chilean Andes. ...

Sacrificed to further a father`s blood-soaked career; sacrificed for the common good; sacrificed, then forgotten. In his compelling prequel to The Successor, Kadare draws us into a land deprived of choice, a country under a reign of terror. Published here in English for the first time, the spellbinding Agamemnon`s Daughter, written in Albania in the 1980s & smuggled into France a few pages at a time, reveals a world where fear is an instrument of power, but the individual survives despite the odds. From the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize comes a searing story of love denied, then shattered under the chilling wheels of the state. Through the impeccably crafted, incisive tale of a thwarted lover`s odyssey through a single day, we are given a true sense of how hard it can be to remain human in a world ruled by fear & suspicion. ...

One of the titles in the topographic survey of the Svalbard group published in a colour version, available for the western coast, central & southern part of Spitzbergen, plus two small islands of Svenskøya & Kongsøya. The map has contours at 25-metre intervals, bold relief shading & spot heights, & shows settlements, roads & tracks, working & disused mines, airfields, lighthouses & radio beacons, etc. A grid gives UTM co-ordinates plus latitude in steps of 10` & longitude in 20’. The rest of Spitzbergen, Nordaustlandet, Edgeøya & other small islands are covered by black & white maps with contours only. Most of these maps show no geographical names, as indicated in the individual descriptions of each title. ...

This miscellany explores the fascinating & enigmatic world created by the undisputed ` Queen of Crime`, Agatha Christie. Examining her place in literary history, her books & her iconic characters, including Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple, this unique collection

Includes:: facts, trivia "es that feature in Christie`s legendary stories & the subsequent film & television adaptations. The Agatha Christie Miscellany will also delve into the secrets, mysteries & tricks that made Christie the most sensational & successful mystery writer of her time. For example, how is it that she managed to keep us guessing the murderer until the very end? Looking at her life & the influences on her writing, this entertaining & informative miscellany will, above all, unravel the secrets of Agatha Christie`s phenomenal success.

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Janet Morgan`s definitive & authorised biography of Agatha Christie, with a new retrospective foreword by the author. Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the world`s bestselling author, is a public institution. Her creations, Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple, have become fiction`s most legendary sleuths & her ingenuity has captured the imagination of generations of readers. But although she lived to a great age & was prolific, she remained elusively shy & determinedly private. Given sole access to family papers & other protected material, Janet Morgan`s definitive biography unravels Agatha Christie`s life, work & relationships, creating a revealing & faithfully honest portrait. The book has delighted readers of Christie`s detective stories for more than 30 years with its clear view of her career & personality, & this edition

Includes:: a new foreword by the author reflecting on the longevity of Agatha Christie`s extraordinary success & popularity.

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