Fiction

Jamaica, 1976. Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley's house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught. From the acclaimed author of The Book of Night Women comes a dazzling display of masterful storytelling exploring this near-mythic event. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters--slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists, an...

"Early in my working life I had discovered that salesmanship consisted not of providing people with what they needed, but with that which was essential to their dreams. I was confident that our dining-room suite, complete with carpets, curtains and an artificial fireplace, would shortly be snapped up by people occupying oven-hot semis in the newer and, as yet, treeless, housing estates on the island. The possibility of winter is essential to the happiness of people living in the tropics." Her...

Lilian Shang, a history professor in Maryland, knew that her father, Gary, had been the most important Chinese spy ever caught in the United States. But when she discovers his diary after the death of her parents, its pages reveal the full pain and longing that his double life entailed--and point to a hidden second family that he'd left behind in China. As Lilian follows her father’s trail back into the Chinese provinces, she begins to grasp the extent of her father's dilemma--torn between lo...

On the cusp of independence, cultures collide in a bedroom in Singapore. As the Vietnam War rages on, the English-educated scholar Lee Hua Min—“the finest product of the University”—finds himself hopelessly disillusioned. Enter Wong Ching Mei, a Chinese-educated former nightclub singer seeking to enrol in Nanyang University. Mirroring the intense tussles between the English- and Chinese-speaking during Singapore’s formative years, Hua Min and Ching Mei trade ferocious barbs even as they are i...

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? Patrick Bateman has it all: good looks, youth, charm, a job on Wall Street, reservations at every new restaurant in town and a line of girls around the block. He is also a psychopath. A man addicted to his superficial, perfect life, he pulls us into a dark underworld where the American Dream becomes a nightmare... With an introduction by Irvine Welsh, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is one of the most controversial and talked-about nov...

As Stephen King will attest, the popularity of the occult in American literature has only grown since the days of Edgar Allan Poe. American Supernatural Tales celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation's brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and-of course- Stephen King. By turns phantasmagoric, spectral, and demonic, this is a frighteningly good addition to Pengu...

Aminoacid Boy is a creature from outer space sent on Earth from his Lord, a bio-architectural-metal-meat-machine living in a dark cave. He generates the whole things in a chaotic way. Physical and mechanical laws drive the transformations in his universe where equilibrium and chaotic states alternate without any final aim. The Lord discovers that on planet Earth there are species whose individuals can find their own reasons for living, they have desires and will. They are able to feel pain an...

Ram Karan, a corrupt official in the Delhi school system, lives in one of the city's slums with his widowed daughter and his eight-year-old granddaughter. Bumbling, contradictory, sad, Ram is a man corroded by a guilty secret. An Obedient Father takes the reader to an India that is both far away and real--into the mind of a character as tormented, funny, and ambiguous as one of Dostoevsky's anti-heroes.Paperback: 288 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571313594Published by Faber &...

In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore explores the passing of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and comic pitfalls. Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, irony and half-cracked love wend their way through these stories, in which Moore is always tender, never sentimental and often heartbreakingly funny.Paperback: 208 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571273928Published by Faber & Faber

Mars has grown up. It is fully terraformed - genetically engineered plants and animals live by newly built canals and young but stormy seas. It is politically independent. A brave and buzzing new world. Most of the First Hundred have died. Those that remain are like walking myths to Martian youth. Earth has grown too much. Chronic overpopulation, bitter nationalism, scarce resources. For too many Terrans, Mars is a mocking utopia. A dream to live for, fight for... perhaps even die for.Paperba...

translated by Philip Gabriel Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine', and Oumi, 'blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, 'white root', and Kurono, 'black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki's friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unab...

translated by Philip Gabriel An instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of love, friend­ship, and heartbreak for the ages.Paperback: 336 Pa...

Translated by Katrina Dodson The publication of Clarice Lispector's Collected Stories, eighty-five in all, is a major literary event. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don't know what to do with themselves. Lispector's stories take us through their lives--and ours. From one of...

Set in Wyoming and India, the stories in Cowboys and East Indians explore the immigrant experience and collisions of cultures in the American West as seen through the eyes of outsiders. From Indian motel owners to a kleptomaniac foreign exchange student, a cross-dressing sari-wearing cowboy to oil-rig workers, an adopted cowgirl to a medical tourist in India - the characters in these stories are lonely and are looking for connection, and yet they can also be problematic and aggressive in orde...

Translated by Jeremy Tiang In the late 1970s, a young Singaporean writer arrives in Jeddah with an infant son. She encounters a strange and often hostile environment with curiosity, empathy and good humour. In this collection of linked stories, the narrator confronts, among others, a bored expat wife with dangerously extravagant tastes, a divorced engineer with the face of a camel, and a desperate security guard who finds solace in downing bottles of perfume. Beguiling, plaintive and profound...

They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation. They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, ...

Dream Fossil is a collection of 15 short stories by the late Satoshi Kon. These stories, serialized in a variety of magazines in the 1980's, give a rare glimpse into the early stages of Kon's uniquely compelling style of storytelling. The buds of dream-like themes and imaginative worldviews that would blossom in his later animated works are also readily apparent. Yes the flights of fancy are anchored by knowing, empathetic portrayals of the very human nature of each story. Paperback: 424 Page...

With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work. Beautiful, clever, rich-and single-Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harr...

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved. A man and a woman meet over casual conversation on a flight from Paris to London, and so begins a love story - from first kiss to first argument, elation to heartbreak, and everything in between. Each stage of the relationship is illuminated with startling cl...

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets,...

For eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju, life in Dehli in the late 1970s follows a comfortable, predictable routine: bathing on the roof, queuing for milk, playing cricket in the street. Yet, everything changes when their father finds a job in America--a land of carpets and elevators, swimsuits and hot water on tap. Life is exciting for the two brothers as they adjust to prosperity, girls and 24-hour TV, until one hot, sultry day when everything falls apart. Darkly comic, Family L...

In Feather Woman of the Jungle, the people of a Yoruba village gather on ten memorable nights to hear the stories and wisdom of their chief. They learn of his adventures, among them his encounter with the Jungle Witch and her ostrich, his visit to the town of the water people and his imprisonment by the Goddess of Diamonds. Each night the people return, eager to discover if there is a happy ending.Paperback: 144 pagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571320738Published by Faber & ...

It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet that leads them to grant consciousness and language to a group of dogs staying overnight at a veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs escape and become a pack. They are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from a...

In her 35th novel, science fiction master Sheri S. Tepper boldly weaves together the storylines of eleven of her previous works--from King's Blood Four (1983) to The Waters Rising (2010). In Fish Tails, two of Tepper's beloved characters--Abasio and Xulai (A Plague of Angels and The Waters Rising)--and their children travel from village to village scattered across the sparsely populated land of Tingawa. They are searching for others who might be interested in adopting their sea-dwelling lifes...

In an act of breathtaking imagination, J. M. Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe. In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Frida...

An old wooden mansion that turns on its inhabitants. A dissection class with a most unusual subject. A funeral where the dead are definitely not laid to rest. Ranging from the terrifying to the comedic, from the erotic to the loathsome, these stories showcase Junji Ito's long-awaited return to the world of horror.Hardback: 224 PagesProduct Dimensions: 146 x 210 mmISBN: 9781421580791Published by Viz Media

In the stories of Adjei-Brenyah's debut, an amusement park lets players enter augmented reality to hunt terrorists or shoot intruders played by minority actors, a school shooting results in both the victim and gunman stuck in a shared purgatory, and an author sells his soul to a many-tongued god. Adjei-Brenyah's writing will grab you, haunt you, enrage, and invigorate you. By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful ab...

100 scary stories to read with the light on, selected and introduced by award-winning author Louise Welsh. The perfect gift for fiction lovers. Haunted houses, mysterious Counts, weeping widows and restless souls, here is the definitive anthology of all that goes bump in the night. Hand-picked by award-winning author Louise Welsh, this beautiful collection of 100 ghost stories will delight, unnerve, and entertain any fiction lover brave enough… Here are gothic classics, modern masters, Booker...

Translated by Sherif Hetata and Shirley Eber God Dies by the Nile is Saadawi's attempt to square religion with a society in which women are respected as equals; Searching expresses the poignancy of loss and doubt with the hypnotic intensity of a remembered dream; while in The Circling Song, Saadawi pursues the conflicts of sex, class, gender and military violence deep into the psyche. Paperback: 504 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9781783605965 Published by Zed Books

In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the po...

In Hard Times, Dickens illustrates the condition of England through his depiction of the fictional northern city of Coketown. Among its inhabitants are Thomas Gradgrind, the utilitarian headmaster who attempts to impose his rigid worldview on his family circle, and the uncaring businessman Mr Bounderby. Their materialist philosophies, as opposed to the world of 'fancy', or imagination, are tested throughout the novel, which also explores workers' conditions in factories, trade unions and the ...

translated by Alyson Waters Emmanuel Bove was one of the most original writers to come out of twentieth-century France and a popular success in his day. Discovered by Colette, who arranged for the publication of his first novel, My Friends, Bove enjoyed a busy literary career, until the German occupation silenced him. During his lifetime, his novels and stories were admired by Rilke, the surrealists, Camus, and Beckett, who said of him that “more than anyone else he has an instinct for the es...

Two little girls are taken by their mother to Morocco on a 1960s pilgrimage of self-discovery. For Mum it is not just an escape from the grinding conventions of English life but a quest for personal fulfilment; her children, however, seek something more solid and stable amidst the shifting desert sands.Paperback: 192 PagesProduct Dimensions: 111 x 181 mmISBN: 9780241973660Published by Penguin Books

Pembe and Adem Toprak leave Turkey for London. There they make new lives for their family. Yet the traditions and beliefs of their home come with them--carried in the blood of their children, Iskender and Esma. Trapped by past mistakes, the Toprak children find their lives torn apart and transformed by a brutal and chilling crime. Set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak...

Abandoned by a succession of relatives, orphaned sisters Ruthie and Lucille find themselves in the care of their eccentric aunt Sylvie in their rural home town in Idaho. Ruthie narrates the sisters' story as Lucille moves out into the world and Ruth falls further back into her own family's dark past. Against the stunning backdrop of a bleak wintery landscape in a small desolate town, Marilynne Robinson's first novel is a powerful portrayal of loss, loneliness and the struggle towards adulthoo...

How to Be Both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real--and all life's givens get ...

My name's Johanna Morrigan. I'm fourteen, and I've just decided to kill myself. I don't really want to die, of course! I just need to kill Johanna, and build a new girl. Dolly Wilde will be everything I want to be, and more! But as with all the best coming-of-age stories, it doesn't exactly go to plan... The brilliant Number One bestselling novel from Caitlin Moran, the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of How to Be a Woman.Paperback: 352 pagesProduct Dimensions: 126 x 198 mmI...

A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer’s cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered: shot through the throat. And though Sponer has so far committed no crime, he is drawn into the late Jack Mortimer’s life, and might not be able to escape its tangles and intrigues before it is too late… Twice filmed, I Was Jack Mortimer is a tale of misappropriated identity as darkly captivating and twisting as the books of Patricia Highsmith.Paperback: 160 Pages Product Dimensions...

Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Grav...

Originally conceived as a novel but then transformed into a play by Ayn Rand, Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run, and she turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal--a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their reactions a glimpse into their secret selv...

Translated by Shelly Byrant You Jin brings to her travel writing the same wit evident in her fiction. Whether she is trekking through the Amazon rainforest, exploring the caves of Granada with gypsy pickpockets, visiting a farm stay in Tasmania, or negotiating for a horsehair-lacquer cup in Myanmar, she is adept at weaving a whimsical incident into a compelling and amusing narrative. Her trademark spirited humour brings to life the vastness of the globe we inhabit, as well as more intimate en...

A woman fleeing her previous existence meets a fellow Singaporean on an overnight train in Norway. A foreign worker is decapitated in an HDB building site accident. A Singaporean wife must negotiate Beijing as her British husband awaits a heart transplant. And in different corners of the world, Singaporeans and exiles mark National Day in their own ways. Jeremy Tiang’s debut collection weaves together the lives of its characters across the world—from Switzerland, Norway, Germany, China, Canad...

This collection of translated tales is from the most famous work in all of Japanese classical literature--the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. This collection of traditional Japanese folklore is akin to the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer or Dante's Inferno--powerfully entertaining tales that reveal striking aspects of the cultural psychology, fantasy, and creativity of medieval Japan--tales that still resonate with modern Japanese readers today. The ninety stories in this book are filled with keen psycho...

Edited by Lucas Ho and featuring an interview with the playwright by Huzir Sulaiman, Joel Tan: Plays Volume 1 is a compilation of seven remarkable plays from a playwright establishing his place in the Singapore theatre industry.  From the humorously thought-provoking 'Mosaic' to the delicately poignant 'The Way We Go', Joel effortlessly captures the intricacies of the modern world with evocative stillness and unapologetic intelligence, marrying unconventional narrative structure with a strong...

William Burroughs, legendary drug addict, founder member of the Beats and author of Naked Lunch, relates with unflinching realism the addict's life: from initial heroin bliss to an unabated hunger for the needle, and the horrors of cold turkey and back again.Paperback: 144 PagesProduct Dimensions: 111 x 181 mmISBN: 9780241956786Published by Penguin Books

Lilia has been leaving people behind her entire life. Haunted by her inability to remember her early childhood, and by a mysterious shadow that seems to dog her wherever she goes, Lilia moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers and friends along the way. But then she meets Eli, and he's not ready to let her go, not without a fight. Gorgeously written, charged with tension and foreboding, Emily St. John Mandel's Last Night in Montreal is the story of a life spent at the centre of ...

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures. Filmed by ...

This issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. Inside these pages, you’ll find: • the harsh realities of living as a refugee within a calorie-based economy by acclaimed award-winner Paolo Bacigalupi; • the uneasy combination of domestic troubles and virtual reality by Palanca Prize winner Kate Osias; • the unexpected and complete disappearance of Singapore itself by Singapore Literature Prize winner Ng Yi-...