Showing results for "World Englishes" in Biographical Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. A Guardian Fiction Book of the year. Sometimes discovery brings destruction. "When We Cease to Understand the World" shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness.

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style - the iconic little black dress - and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII - as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

Though her name is synonymous with elegance and chic, the iconic Coco Chanel had a complicated dark side, and in late August 1944, as World War II drew to a close, she was arrested and interrogated on charges of treason to France.

Brought to you by Penguin. The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an...

A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers. 'A wonderful novel, full of energy and art, at once funny and heartbreaking...terrific' WASHINGTON POST Anniversary edition with a new afterword from the author. A worldwide bestseller since its publication, Irving's classic is...

Wang Er, a twenty-one-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession of his crimes, but he instead takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writing about the Cultural Revolution’s impact on his life and those around him. Finally, alone and humbled, Wang Er must come to terms with the banality of his own existence.

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

Foolish Cur has fallen into a trap. By resorting to forbidden magic when he failed to overthrow the Emperor, he has done exactly as the gods wanted. Now they are free to wage their war, twisting the world into new forms, as strange and terrible beasts walk the earth. To fix what he has caused will take every ounce of Foolish Cur's cunning. But mending the pattern of the world is too large a task for one man alone.

Paris, 1940. The Nazis have occupied the city - and the Ritz. The opulent old hotel, so loved by Parisians, is now full of swaggering officers, their minions and their mistresses. For American Olivia Olsen, working as a chambermaid at the hotel means denying her nationality and living a lie, every day bringing the danger of discovery closer. When Hitler’s right-hand man moves in and makes her his pet, she sees an opportunity to help the Resistance - and draw closer to Jack, her contact, whose brusque instructions may be a shield for something more....

January 2003. The Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opéra Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie and Jacques. Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath.

Barney Panofsky - Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur - is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three marriages, or his successful trashy TV company, Totally Unnecessary Productions, he quickly proves that his memory may be slipping, but his bile isn’t.

Setting off in search of his brother, William-Wetherby heads to Liverpool. Since they were last together their world has changed and with no one to turn to, he needs a friend. When he rents a room with a local family, he refuses to tell his landlady or her daughter, Bella, anything about his past. But their curiosity is piqued. As their friendship develops and he begins to trust her, Bella hopes he'll settle down. But a final surprise from Mr. Wetherby reignites past grievances...and this time, William-Wetherby is ready for a fight.

"Absolutely riveting. A stay-up-all night read about two very different women who discover just how strong they can be—and just how much they'll dare—during the brutal Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II. This story of endurance and sisterhood will have you turning pages...

The internationally acclaimed author harnesses his brilliant imagination and masterful storytelling ability to create a catalog of new words inspired by stories of real people in this wondrous book reminiscent of Italo Calvino's mesmerizing Invisible Cities. How many times have words not been...

In turn of the century England, the Jolivet family leads a charmed existence. Daughter of a wealthy vineyard owner and a French pianist, vivacious Marguerite, the eldest of three, loves spinning stories and entertaining her family's well-connected friends. Marguerite, taking the stage name Rita, quickly draws the attention of legendary theatre producer Charles Frohman. From the West End to Broadway, and then in the new medium of silent film, her star burns brighter with every role. But soon, war is raging across Europe. Rita receives word from Inez that their brother is about to enlist.

This novel provides a fascinating look into life in late 14th-century England, the women and men Chaucer loves, the intrigues of the Richardian court, and what compels someone who holds some of the most important jobs in the English bureaucracy to spend his nights writing poetry that is still being read and studied 600 years after his death.

The critically acclaimed author of The Madonnas of Leningrad (“Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share” —Isabel Allende), Debra Dean returns with The Mirrored World, a breathtaking novel of love and madness set in 18th century Russia...

In the midst of the first Gulf War, a young Iraqi girl huddles with her neighbours in an air raid shelter. There, she meets Nadia. The two girls quickly become best friends and together they imagine a world not torn apart by civil war, sharing their dreams, their hopes and their desires, and their first loves. But as they grow older and the bombs continue to fall, the international sanctions bite and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again.