A powerful novel set in the closing stages of WW2, in which a 12-year-old girl escapes to the German countryside with her mother and older sister. Translated from the German.
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
An excellent Catalan novel from the 1970s, about flight and return, in which the Civil War still looms over the tail-end of Franco's era and modernity blooms. A marvellous evocation of Barce... read more
Vicenzo Fontano, the elderly owner of a bookshop, looks back over their conjoined lives on the eve of its closure for redevelopment by greedy speculators. Political and cultural dissidents, ... read more
Reymont was a Polish novelist who won the Nobel prize in 1924; this is his magnum opus, an epic of nearly 1000 pages set in the C19th, about a small Polish village. At its centre are a weal... 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.