**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024** 'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' GUARDIAN 'Stunning... An uplifting book' SUNDAY TIMES Life on our planet as you've never seen it before A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans.... continue
On a springtime Friday afternoon in Paris, Aline Berger, a 35-year-old professor of literature, waits for her train home to Brussels, thumbing impatiently through Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Then, abruptly, Orlanda materializes. Called forth by some literary magic, she is Aline's exuberant and adventurous alter ego, born of Aline's 12-year-old tomboy spirit. Fettered far too long by the adult Aline's demure propriety, Orlanda spots a receptive external host in Lucien Lefrne, a blond 20-year-old youth sitting quietly nearby. Thus begins a labyrinthine ride along converging and... continue
Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores.
A new single-volume edition of an early anti-slavery novel When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko’s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn’s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko reflects the author’s romantic views of native peoples as being in “the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin.” The novel also reveals Behn’s ambiguous attitude... continue