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Joseph Knight
€12,00by James Robertson
‘A book of such quality as to persuade you that historical novels are the true business of the writer.’
Daily Telegraph
A gripping, shocking story of history, enlightement and slavery from the bestselling author of THE FANATIC. JOSPEH KNIGHT confirms James Robertson as one of our foremost novelists.
Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his years in the Caribbean.
Now, in 1802, Sir John Wedderburn is settling his estate, and has hired a solicitor’s agent, Archibald Jamieson, to search for his former slave. The past has haunted Wedderburn ever since Culloden, and ever since he last saw Knight, in court twenty-four years ago, in a case that went to the heart of Scottish society, pitting master against slave, white against black, and rich against poor.
As long as Knight is missing, Wedderburn will never be able to escape the past. Yet what will he do if Jamieson’s search is successful? And what effect will this re-opening of old wounds have on those around him? Meanwhile, as Jamieson tries to unravel the true story of Joseph Knight he begins to question his own motivation. How can he possibly find a man who does not want to be found?
James Robertson’s second novel is a tour de force, the gripping story of a search for a life that stretches over sixty years and moves from battlefields to the plantations of Jamaica, from Enlightenment Edinburgh to the back streets of Dundee. It is a moving narrative of history, identity and ideas, that dramatically retells a fascinating but forgotten episode of Scottish history.
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Jude the Obscure
€20,00di Thomas Hardy
It is an exploration of the chaos that follows from excessive individualism and rationality. It is indeed the story of a difficult and tragic journey beyond culture, but the narrative point of view still evokes a moral sensibility continuous with the past
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Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers
€16,30di Samuel Beckett
‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ was first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1958, and has since been played by a host of distinguished actors including Albert Finney and Max Wall. ‘Embers’ was specially written for radio and first performed in 1959.
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Krapp’s Last Tape and Other Shorter Plays
€14,25di Samuel Beckett
Krapp’s Last Tape was first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1958, and described as ‘a solo, if that is the word, for one voice and two organs: one human, one mechanical. It fills few pages. It is perhaps the most original and important play of its length ever written.’ (Roy Walker)
The present volume brings together Krapp’s Last Tape and Beckett’s other shorter works or ‘dramaticules’ written for the stage. It will be complemented by a forthcoming Faber edition of dramatic works written for radio and screen.
Arranged in chronological order of composition, these shorter plays exhibit the laconic means and compassionate ends of Beckett’s dramatic vision.
KRAPP ‘Here I end this reel. Box – [Pause.] – three, spool – [Pause.] – five. [Pause.] Perhaps my best years have gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back. [Staring motionless before him.]
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Lexicographers and grammarians in the history of English
€11,00by Roberta Facchinetti
This book delves into three scholars who contributed to the advancement of English lexicographic and grammar writing tradition between the 16th and the 19th century. Specifically, Peter LEVINS authored Manipulus Vocabulurom (1570), the first hardword rhyming dictionary; Anthony HUISH’s Priscianus Nascens (1660) and Priscianus Ephebus (1668) were aimed at English schoolboys learning to translate from English into Latin and vice versa; finally, Percival LEIGH’s Comic English Grammar (1840) laid bare a cross section of English socio-linguistic idiosyncrasies that could hardly be unveiled in a ‘serious’, scholarly way. From language teaching to translation, from lexicology to lexicography, from theoretical studies to socio-linguistic parody, the three scholars examined complement each other in terms of genres exploited, content analysed and methodology enacted; most of all, they testify to the fact that viewing language – particularly lexico-grammar – from different perspectives is a winning way to understand the past (and present) of language itself.
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Love
€10,00di Angela Carter
“One day, Annabel saw the sun and moon in the sky at the same time. The sight filled her with a terror which entirely consumed her for she had no instinct for self-preservation if she was confronted by ambiguities.”
Annabel and Lee are married; Lee and Buzz are brothers. A quirky threesome, they have set up a household on the fringes on university life in the late sixties. Their hermetic existence is filled with drugs, sex, alchohol, intensity, and madness; their relationships with one another are haunting and complex.
Carter’s compelling tale carries echoes of Poe and Bronte into the very modern world of artists’ flats, psychiatrists’ offices, and generational conflicts. It is ultimately a tale of the search for loyalty and love in the midst of emotional starvation.
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Malamine un african à Paris
€16,00di Simon-Pierre Mbumbo, Christophe Edimo
” Malamine, si tu retournes en Europe, tu ne reviendras jamais ! ” prédit la jeune femme. Mais Malamine, qui n’est pas “de la bonne tribu”, n’a pas la force de rester en Afrique. A Paris ce fier diplômé de la Sorbonne est brancardier, dans l’attente de se rendre utile pour l’Afrique. Il rencontre Germaine l’infirmière française, Diane l’africaine sans-papier, Maurice le confident, Ntounou l’éditeur afrocentriste et l’ultranationaliste Osagefyo. Mais tous ont des influences contradictoires. Alors, pour ne pas se perdre, Malamine devra, tel un alchimiste, transformer ses frustrations en espérances.
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Northanger Abbey
€9,00di Jane Austen
The Penguin English Library Edition of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen ‘To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive’ During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works. The Penguin English Library – 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
