Fiction

Extraordinary and diverse people inhabit this rich, ripe, occasionally raucous collection of short stories. Some are based on real people - Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's handsome and reluctant muse who never asked to be called the Black Venus, trapped in the terminal ennui of the poet's passion, snatching at a little lifesaving respectability against all odds... Edgar Allen Poe, with his face of a actor, demonstrating in every thought and deed how right his friends were when they said 'No man is...

Junichiro Tanizaki's Seven Japanese Tales collects stories that explore the boundary at which love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of voluptuous cruelty. A beautiful blind musician exacts the ultimate sacrifice from the man who is both her disciple and her lover. A tattooist turns the body of an exquisite young girl into a reflection of her predatory inner nature. A young man is erotically imprisone...

translated by Terence Kilmartin, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and D. J. Enright In Sodom and Gomorrah, Proust's narrator not only depicts the class tensions of a changing France at the beginning of the twentieth century but also exposes the decadence of aristocratic Parisian society and muses upon the subjects of homosexuality and sexual jealousy.Paperback: 656 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780099362517Published by Vintage UK

translated by Terence Kilmartin, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and D. J. Enright In the opening volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator travels backwards in time in order to tell the story of a love affair that had taken place before his own birth. Swann's jealous love for Odette provides a prophetic model of the narrator's own relationships. All Proust's great themes--time and memory, love and loss, art and the artistic vocation--are here in kernel form.Paperback: 544 PagesProduct Dimensions: 1...

Is it just a case of summertime blues or a full-blown career crisis? Newspaper reporter Jim Qwilleran isn't sure, but he's hoping a few days in the country will help him sort out his life. With cats Koko and Yum Yum for company, Qwill heads for a cabin owned by a family friend. But from the moment he arrives, things turn strange. Eerie footsteps cross the roof at midnight. Local townsfolk become oddly secretive. And then, while fishing, Qwill hooks on to a murder mystery while Koko develops a...

translated by Terence Kilmartin, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and D. J. Enright In The Guermantes Way Proust's narrator recalls his initiation into the dazzling world of Parisian high society. Looking back over his time in the glamorous salons of the aristocracy, he satirises this shallow world and his own youthful infatuation with it. His observations, and his experiences with his lover Albertine, also educate him in the volatile nature of desire as he walks the path towards adulthood.Paperback: 72...

translated by Terence Kilmartin, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and D. J. Enright Within a Budding Grove describes the first shoots of an astonishing love affair. When Proust's adolescent narrator travels from Paris to the sunny seaside town of Balbec he meets an intriguing set of new acquaintances who provide him with both friendship and entertainment. Most significantly of all he meets a dark-haired girl with sparkling eyes and a tiny beauty spot on her chin: the mysterious Albertine, who will becom...

Grady Tripp is an over-sexed, pot-bellied, pot-smoking, ageing wunderkind of a novelist now teaching creative writing at a Pittsburgh college while working on his 2,000-page masterpiece, Wonder Boys. When his rumbustious editor and friend, Terry Crabtree, arrives in town, a chaotic weekend follows - involving a tuba, a dead dog, Marilyn Monroe's ermine-lined jacket and a squashed boa constrictor. A novel of elegant imagination, bold humour and undeniable warmth, Wonder Boys firmly established...