In a remote Austrian valley during WW1, a woman tries to provide for her family after her husband is drafted into the army. Based on the author's own family history. Powerful, succinct.
A PhD student thinks she's identified the first female British artist, then discovers an error in her research. An Icelandic novella about ambition and untruth.
AZ conjures lives, relationships, families, political upheavals in just a few paragraphs. This clever, tranquil novella begins with a professor telling his stepdaughter a bedtime story about... read more
Escape to the West and life in the East through the eyes of a young woman loyal to the GDR: oppression in conflict with idealism. First published in East Germany in 1963.
Irreverent, witty and often barmy novel about how people make sense of war. Begins in 1940 with a young woman running naked down the boulevard du Montparnasse.
Smoky, noirish novel that follows an actress from her childhood in provincial Hungary to the glamour - and strictures - of her career behind the Iron Curtain.
The subtle and growing bonds between two couples in occupied Turin: this is a classic of wartime Italian fiction, translated now into English for the first time. Bassani called it "successfu... read more
Five stories - from a young artist and a deserting soldier to an old man reminiscing beneath a lime tree - all interwoven by the common threads of war, memory and German history.