Bücher veröffentlicht von PICADOR

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "Moving, funny... Here is a man looking back on his life and country with joy and sorrow."-John Freeman, The Boston GlobeSouth African novelist and playwright Zakes Mda's remarkable life story of growing up in South Africa, Lesotho, and America, told with style and gusto.The most acclaimed South African writer of his generation, Zakes Mda's novels venture far beyond the conventional narratives of a people's struggle against apartheid. In this memoir, he tells of a life that intersects with the politics of his country-a story that is, at its heart, the classic adventure of an artist, lover, and bon vivant. Living in exile with his father in Basutoland (now Lesotho) during the first pangs of his country's independence, a series of brutal and poignant initiations ushered him toward the life of a writer-and that of a perpetual outsider. Through the indignity of Boer racism, the turmoil of the Soweto uprisings, not to mention three marriages and his eventual immigration to America, Mda struggled to remain his own man. With Sometimes There Is a Void, he shows that independence opened the way for the stories of individual South Africans in all their variety.

A Times Literary Supplement's Book of the Year 2020A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

A powerful literary debut chronicling a year in the life of one thoroughly modern familyClare Verey, a twenty-nine-year-old mother of three, bakes her own bread and grinds her own spices. She has a comfortable home in the suburbs and a devoted husband. Why is it, then, that when her best friend's lover appears in her life he has the power to invert her world? Why is the desire for more never satisfied?So begins Accidents in the Home, a novel that exposes the emotional underbelly of a modern-day family. Clare's narrative is deftly intertwined with the stories of her extended family: her mother, Marian, the clever daughter of a Dostoevsky scholar whose husband leaves her for a beautiful young art student; Clare's half brother, Toby, a dreamy boy who prefers to view life through the lens of a camera; her troubled younger half sister, Tamsin, who develops an apparatus of taboos and rituals to restore order to her chaotic past. In the world Tessa Hadley has created, family is no longer a steady foundation but a complex web of marriages, divorces, half siblings, and stepchildren that expands with every new connection and betrayal. Accidents in the Home offers a startling, intimate portrait of family life in our time.

More than just a travelogue, Travels in Siberia is also an account of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and a personal reflection on the all-around amazingness of Russia, a country that still somehow manages to be funny.

"A great Faustian fable, and a literary endeavor of historical ingenuity that we now may start to characterize as Krachtian." -Karl Ove Knausgaard The follow-up to Christian Kracht's acclaimed novel Imperium (a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year), The Dead mines the feverish early years of the Nazis' rise to power for a Gothic tale of global conspiracy, personal loss, and historical entanglements large and small. In Berlin, Germany, in the early 1930s, the acclaimed Swiss film director Emil Nägeli receives the assignment of a lifetime: travel to Japan and make a film to establish the dominance of Adolf Hitler's Nazi empire once and for all. But his handlers are unaware that Nägeli has colluded with the Jewish film critics to pursue an alternative objective-to create a monumental, modernist, allegorical spectacle to warn the world of the horror to come. Meanwhile, in Japan, the film minister Masahiko Amakasu intends to counter Hollywood's growing influence and usher in a new golden age of Japanese cinema by exploiting his Swiss visitor. The arrival of Nägeli's film-star fiancée and a strangely thuggish, pistol-packing Charlie Chaplin-as well as the first stirrings of the winds of war-soon complicates both Amakasu's and Nägeli's plans, forcing them to face their demons . . . and their doom."The Dead is the beautiful, brilliant, and utterly mad novel that Thomas Mann would have written had he known the East like Yukio Mishima and loved his adopted Hollywood with the gusto of Nathanael West." -Joshua Cohen"The Dead is a story of love and sadness in times when the weak were broken by the unforgiving ideologies of fascism and National Socialism . . . I read The Dead twice in a row, first for the story and then for the beauty of the prose." -Sjón

Bestselling author John Boyne's A History of Loneliness tells the riveting narrative of an honorable Irish priest who finds the church collapsing around him at a pivotal moment in its history. Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good." Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church. He sees his friends stand trial, colleagues jailed, the lives of young parishioners destroyed, and grows nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insults. At one point, he is even arrested when he takes the hand of a young boy and leads him out of a department store looking for the boy's mother. But when a family event opens wounds from his past, he is forced to confront the demons that have raged within the church, and to recognize his own complicity in their propagation, within both the institution and his own family. A novel as intimate as it is universal, A History of Loneliness is about the stories we tell ourselves to make peace with our lives. It confirms Boyne as one of the most searching storytellers of his generation.

"For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. It's a wonderful, necessary book."- Hillary ClintonThe four most powerful African American women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in America.The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years-Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore-a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson's first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Over the years, they've filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they've worked with those who have shaped our country's history-US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who've worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of "hurrying history" so that every American - regardless of race, gender or religious background - can have a seat at the table. This is their story.

A brilliant and daring novel that reimagines OvidΓÇÖs MetamorphosesIn the tradition of his bestselling debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary MasonΓÇÖs Metamorphica transforms OvidΓÇÖs epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas and Atalanta, and strings them together like the stars in constellationsΓÇöeven Ovid becomes a story. ItΓÇÖs as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino; Metamorphica is an archipelago in which to linger for a while; it reflects a little light from the morning of the world.

For one year, Colin Beavan and his family forsake electricity, cars, packaged products and a host of consumer goods in order to make as little impact on the planet as possible -- and find themselves happier and healthier in the end. Beavan's online sensation is now an essential book of environmental advocacy and a high profile foundation.

"This arresting debut collection of stories decisively establishes Mr. Tower as a writer of uncommon talent." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Mr. Bones, the heroic dog of Paul Auster's astonishing book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high-school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in recent American fiction.

A brilliant, devastating tale about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.

The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authorsFrom Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent.A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's?A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.

From the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less comes Andrew Sean Greer's extraordinarily haunting love story The Confessions of Max Tivoli, told in the voice of a man who appears to age backwards.A Today Show Book Club PickWe are each the love of someone's life.So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward--on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child.The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man's body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love.Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's life and confessions question the very nature of time, of appearance and reality, and of love itself. A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.