Bücher veröffentlicht von W W NORTON

Why do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say "Umm?" I'm being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra.Min works at the BBC as a sound engineer, and in theory she's married, but her husband George is so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off even when he's still in the room. Luckily, she has her friends and lovers to distract her: in Min's self-lacerating, bracingly opinionated voice, life boils down to sex appeal-and of late she's being courted by an internationally renowned opera singer whom she refers to as The Bloater (a swelled, salted herring). Disgusted by and attracted to him in equal measure, her dilemma-which reaches a hysterical, hilarious pitch-is whether to sleep with him or not.Rosemary Tonks-the salt and pepper of the earth-is a writer who gets her claws into the reader with all the joy of a cat and a mouse. Vain and materialistic, tender and savage, narrated in brilliant, sparkling prose, The Bloater is the perfect snapshot of London in the 1960s.

A novel of love and valor, war and stupidity, life and death (as well as what may lay beyond our mortal coils), Baron Bagge concerns a young Austrian cavalry lieutenant in the Carpathian mountains at the beginning of WWI. The baron leads a desperate charge across a bridge to meet the Russian forces, following the orders of his mentally unstable commander:"We were soon to have proof of his unreliability... But perhaps it is not right to place the blame on him. Perhaps his foolishness was merely the instrument of fate, and the disaster into which he led his squadron, the slaughter of so many men and horses, took place in order that something which could no longer happen within the realm of the living-because it was too late-could happen after life." And, swaying in a kind of fugue, the baron wanders off the bridge into unknown realms, where-mesmerized by Lernet-Holenia's phosphorescent style-the reader joins his waking dream.

I was alone when someone pounded on my door. Who could it be?So begins Tono the Infallible, Evelio Rosero's gripping novel about an intense relationship between a writer and a sociopath. Visited by his friend (a kind of Colombian Rasputin) seemingly at the verge of death, the writer, Eri, looks back on the arc of both of their lives. Unique in both its tone and its structure, the novel takes us from their student days (school fights, playground revelations, and an unforgettable trip to the seaside) into their adult years, involving rumors of a hippie cult and a bizarre raucous theater exhibit of history's most violent crimes. Tono uses his charm and wealth-as well as reputed magical powers-to manipulate others, but it isn't until the end of the book that the devastating truth is revealed-and how true is it? Reminiscent of the fiction of Roberto Bolano and the films of Alfonso Cuarón, this brilliant novel takes us into the heart of his country's darkness, creating an unforgettable portrait of a society where humanity still endures, despite its brutality.