The year is 1985. East Germany is in the grip of communism. Magda, a brilliant but disillusioned young linguist, is desperate to flee to the West. When a black market deal brings her into contact with Robert, a Scottish research student at Leipzig University, she conceives a plan to escape. Robert stumbles into a complex world of shifting half-truths
- one that will undo them both. More than a decade later, Robert returns to post-communist Leipzig in search of answers. Can he track Magda down? & will the past give up its secrets?
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* Soon to be a major motion picture starring Helen Mirren & Donald Sutherl&, coming April 2018* Ella & John have shared a wonderful life for more than sixty years. Now they`re on the run from their doctors & middle-aged children, who just want them to go gently into that undignified night of old age. In their trusty camper van, the pair embark on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery along Route 66. Though time is catching up with them, Ella is determined that together they`ll make it to their final destination for one more carefree day together, even if it is their last. ...

As recommended on BBC Radio 2 Book Club, a tense, sensuous & piercingly insightful story of sexual obsession. Each summer, Jenn & her husband Greg return to Deia, on Mallorca`s dramatic west coast. This year the arrival of Emma, Jenn`s stepdaughter, & her new boyfriend Nathan threatens to upset their equilibrium. Beautiful & reckless, Nathan stirs something unexpected in Jenn. As she is increasingly seduced by Nathan`s youth & the promise of passion, the line between desire & obsession begins to blur. What follows is a highly-charged liaison that puts lives & relationships in jeopardy. For Jenn, after this summer, nothing can ever be the same. ...

In the summer of 1967, not long after the Six Day War, three young Palestinian men ventured into the town of Ramla in Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes, from which they & their families had been driven out nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had the door slammed in his face, one found that his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir, was met at the door by a young woman named Dalia, who invited him in... This poignant encounter is the starting point for the story of two families
- one Arab, one Jewish
- which spans the fraught modern history of the region. In the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard of his childhood home, Bashir sees a symbol of occupation; Dalia, who arrived in 1948 as an infant with her family, as a fugitive from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. Both are inevitably swept up in the fates of their people & the stories of their lives form a microcosm of more than half a century of Israeli-Palestinian history. What began as a simple meeting between two young people grew into a dialogue lasting four decades.” The Lemon Tree” offers a much needed human perspective on this seemingly intractable conflict & reminds us not only of all that is at stake, but also of all that is possible.

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A ring-tailed lemur is stowed away on a boat from Madagascar, & eventually ends up in the home of an eccentric but dysfunctional family. His night-time antics cause confusion, as he nibbles on the family`s plants & raids their larder. But he brings great joy once they discover him curled up in a teapot, filling a little girl`s life with hope & happiness. ...

Lampedusa`s masterpiece, one of the finest works of twentieth century fiction, is set amongst an aristocratic family, facing social & political changes in the wake of Garibaldi`s invasion of Sicily in 1860. At the head of the family is the prince, Don Fabrizio. Proud & stubborn, he is accustomed to knowing his own place in the world & expects his household to run accordingly. He is aware of the changes which are rapidly making men historically obsolete but he remains attached to the old ways. His favourite nephew, Tancredi, may be an ardent supporter of Garibaldi & may later marry outside his class, but Don Fabrizio will make few accommodations for the modern world. Containing, for the first time in any language, the full original text, Tomasi di Lampedusa`s classic tale lovingly memorialises the details of a vanishing world while retaining its melancholic & ironic sense of time passing & the frailty of human emotions. ...

The Vintage Classics Europeans series
- with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions
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The Leopard`s Wife is a novel of love in an impossible l&. Smiles, a famous English concert pianist, wants to make amends with his African-American schoolmaster, Lyman Andrew, who has buried himself in the war-torn jungle of the Congo. Smiles owes his success to the man he helped ruin & harbors a dark secret from the past & his brutal public school. But a bomb has exploded at a hotel in Kinshasa where Smiles was due to play at a peace & reconciliation concert & he is accidentally invited to his own funeral. Coffins are broken open by the Presidential Guard & when he is not in his, Smiles is suspected of being one of the rebels. He escapes on a ramshackle boat with the grand piano meant for his recital, which is now destined for his old schoolmaster more than a thousand miles upriver, where the rebel forces are gathering & exiles are fleeing the war in the east. On the way he falls in love with Lola, the beautiful wife of Xavier, the head of the Presidential Guard & the Leopard of the title, & Smiles begins to appreciate anew the majesty of creation & the Congo as he brings Beethoven into the atrocity haunted forest. But all the time the Leopard is following.. . ...

From the writer of one of the most memorable debuts of recent years. An eighteen-year-old Irish girl arrives in London to study drama & falls violently in love with an older actor. This older man has a disturbing past that the young girl is unprepared for. The young girl has a troubling past of her own. This is her story & their story. The Lesser Bohemians is about sexual passion. It is about innocence & the loss of it. At once epic & exquisitely intimate, it is a celebration of the dark & the light in love. ...

The vibrant energy of 1990s London. A year of passion & discovery. The anxiety & intensity of new love. An eighteen-year-old Irish girl arrives in London to study drama & falls violently in love with an older actor. While she is naive & thrilled by life in the big city, he is haunted by demons, & the clamorous relationship that ensues risks undoing them both. At once epic & exquisitely intimate, The Lesser Bohemians is a celebration of the dark & the light in love. ...