The Quickening Maze

The Quickening Maze
Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2010-06-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101442204

“It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty . . . A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose.” —James Wood, The New Yorker A visionary novel by "one of the most talented writers of his generation"—The Times Literary Supplement Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. Historically accurate yet brilliantly imagined, this is the debut publication of this elegant and riveting novel in the United States. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach—a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined in the catastrophic schemes of the hospital's owner, the peculiar Dr. Matthew Allen, his lonely adolescent daughter, and a coterie of mysterious local characters. With lyrical grace, the cloistered world of High Beach and its residents are brought richly to life in this enchanting book.

In the Wolf's Mouth

In the Wolf's Mouth
Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2014-02-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1448181615

From the author of the Man Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze In the Wolf’s Mouth follows the lives of four very different men, all of them navigating the chaos and horror brought about by the Second World War. Fighting for the Allies are Will Walker, an ambitious English Field Security Officer and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian-American infantryman who dreams of home and the movies. Meanwhile in Sicily, Angilù, a young shepherd caught up in corruption and Cirò Albanese, a sinister Mafioso, are fighting their own battles with devastating consequences.

Dream Sequence

Dream Sequence
Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374718768

Adam Foulds, the award-winning author of The Quickening Maze, pens a stunning and terrifying vision of the damage done between a fan and a celebrity in Dream Sequence—where the borders between inner and outer life have been made porous in a world full of flickering screens large and small. Henry became famous starring in The Grange, a television drama beloved by mothers and wives, and whose fans speak about the characters as though they were real people . . . yet Henry dreams of escaping the small screen. An audition for a movie directed by a highly respected Spanish auteur holds the promise of a way forward. Whether holed up in his apartment eating monkish meals of rice and steamed vegetables or snorting cocaine at desert parties in Doha, Henry’s awareness of his own image, of his relative place in the world, is acute and constant. But Henry has also—unwittingly—become an important part of the life of recently divorced Kristin. He appears repeatedly on the television in her beautiful, empty Philadelphia house, and her social media feeds bring news of his London home, his family. What Kristin wants is simply to get as close to him in real life as she has in her fandom.

The Broken Word

The Broken Word
Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 75
Release: 2011-03-29
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1101513489

The stunning debut from "one of the best British writers to emerge in the past decade." (Julian Barnes) With a voice that is at once fierce and lyrical, Adam Foulds tells the story of the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in 1950s Kenya. Tom, a young man who has returned to his family's farm, rapidly becomes caught up in the intensifying events of violence and brutality in a conflict Foulds illustrates as both utterly contemporary and yet deeply burdened by the history of race and empire in this region. The Broken Word was the recipient of the Costa (Whitbread) Poetry Award, and Foulds's The Quickening Maze was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

The Glass Room

The Glass Room
Author: Simon Mawer
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2009-10-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590513975

Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes an instant masterpiece. Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the avant-garde. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor's Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves. As the Landauers struggle for survival abroad, their home slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet possession and finally back to the Czechoslovak state, with new inhabitants always falling under the fervent and unrelenting influence of the Glass Room. Its crystalline perfection exerts a gravitational pull on those who know it, inspiring them, freeing them, calling them back, until the Landauers themselves are finally drawn home to where their story began. Brimming with barely contained passion and cruelty, the precision of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession, and the fear of failure - the Glass Room contains it all.

The Truth About These Strange Times

The Truth About These Strange Times
Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1780228724

From the author of the Man Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze, a brilliant, touching and funny story about an extraordinary friendship. 'A novel bursting with incident, humour, humanity and literary promise' Sunday Times Saul Dawson-Smith is ten years old. He can memorise the sequence of a shuffled deck of cards in under a minute and is in training for the World Memory Championships. Howard McNamee is twenty-eight: lonely, overweight, poorly educated, and on the run from his memories of a murky Glaswegian childhood. As Howard navigates a bewildering new life in London - including accidentally acquiring a Russian fiancée - he is taken under the wing of Saul's parents, and forms an unlikely friendship with the solitary boy. But as pressure mounts before the Championship, Howard realises he must act to save his small friend from a life of unbearable expectation. And so, he and Saul head out on the strangest road trip of all time - one that will turn both their lives upside down.

Love and Summer

Love and Summer
Author: William Trevor
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2009-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101148535

It?s summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn?t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty?s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn?t know that the Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt- out cinema. A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent man, has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. Ellie leads a quiet, routine life, often alone while Dillahan runs the farm. Florian is planning to leave Ireland and start over. Ellie is settled in her new role as Dillahan?s wife. But Florian?s visit to Rathmoye introduces him to Ellie, and a dangerously reckless attachment begins. In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.

Daddy Issues

Daddy Issues
Author: Katherine Angel
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2022-06-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1839764392

On the fraught bonds between daughters and their fathers, women and the patriarchywomen patriarchy In this beguiling, incisive book, critically acclaimed writer Katherine Angel examines the place of fathers in contemporary culture with her characteristic mix of boldness and nuance, asking how the mixture of love and hatred we feel toward our fathers—and patriarchal father figures—can be turned into a relationship that is generative rather than destructive. Moving deftly between psychoanalysis from Freud to Winnicott, cultural visions of fathering from King Lear to Ivanka Trump, and issues from incest to MeToo, Angel probes the fraught bond of daughters and fathers, women and the patriarchal regime. What, she asks, is this discomfiting space of love and hate—and how are we to reckon with both fealty and rebellion? As in her earlier book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, Angel proves herself to be one of the most perceptive feminist writers at work today.

Unmastered

Unmastered
Author: Katherine Angel
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1846146674

Unmasteredis a new kind of book that allows us to think afresh about desire. Incisive, moving, and lyrical, it opens up a larger space for the exploration of feelings that can be difficult to express. Touching on experiences of desire and pleasure, as well as grief and pain, the book probes the porousness between masculine and feminine, thought and sensation, self and culture, power and pliancy. Katherine Angel reflects on the history of her own feelings, on her encounters and beliefs, and shows how our lives can be shaped by sexuality and feminism; by the words we use, and the stories we tell. The result is a book letting light into places that are often dark and constrained - a searching, erotic work that shifts in meaning and resonance even as it is read.

The Diagnosis

The Diagnosis
Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2001-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 037542119X

From the bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes this harrowing tale of one man's struggle to cope in a wired world, even as his own biological wiring short-circuits. As Boston’s Red Line shuttles Bill Chalmers to work one summer morning, something extraordinary happens. Suddenly, he can't remember which stop is his, where he works, or even who he is. The only thing he can remember is his corporate motto: the maximum information in the minimum time. Bill’s memory returns, but a strange numbness afflicts him. As he attempts to find a diagnosis for his deteriorating illness, he descends into a nightmarish tangle of inconclusive results, his company’s manic frenzy, and his family’s disbelief. Ultimately, Bill discovers that he is fighting not just for his body but also for his soul.