All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude – and the true significance of this particular date is revealed. From one of the world’s great writers, So Late in the Day asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women.

Quando Rachel Cusk decide di recarsi in Italia per un’estate con suo marito e due bambini piccoli, non ha idea delle prove e delle meraviglie che incontrerà. Il loro viaggio li conduce sia al atteso che al sorprendente, tutti visti attraverso la prospettiva acuta e umana di Cusk.

I wanted to tell them all about the animals, but would they understand?A tea party at an Oxford college. Earnest undergraduates in floral dresses clink cups, discussing essay-crises, punting, summer balls. But to one student, they are grotesquely transformed: she is sitting among ominous armadillos with scaly shells, buzzing with black flies.

Then, the laughter comes. As she is engulfed by mirthless hysterics, the Principal has no choice but to send her away. Josephine’s entrance into the world of other people wasn’t what she imagined.

Since her mother’s death, reality seems a badly painted canvas, viewed through the wrong end of a telescope; she always thinks the wrong things, cowed by the brightness of existence. It is a relief to belong, for once, within the mental institution where she is taken. But eventually, she must reintegrate with society-and through a transformative encounter with a fellow patient, a return to real life seems possible …

Winner of the 1961 James Tait Black Prize.

Questo classico perduto del racconto di formazione è un ritratto tragicomico del crollo e della ripresa universitaria di una giovane donna, introdotto da Daisy Johnson. Volevo imparare a esistere. Non conoscevo le regole…

Volevo raccontare loro tutto sugli animali, ma avrebbero capito? Un ricevimento in un college di Oxford. Studenti universitari seri in abiti floreali brindano, discutendo di crisi per la stesura di saggi, di puntate, di balli estivi. Ma per una studentessa, sono grottescamente trasformati: è seduta tra minacciosi armadilli con gusci squamosi, ronzanti di mosche nere.

Poi, arriva la risata. Mentre viene travolta da un’isteria senza allegria, il Preside non ha altra scelta che mandarla via. L’ingresso di Josephine nel mondo degli altri non è stato come se l’era immaginata.

Dalla morte di sua madre, la realtà sembra una tela dipinta male, vista attraverso la parte sbagliata di un telescopio; pensa sempre le cose sbagliate, intimorita dalla luminosità dell’esistenza. È un sollievo sentirsi, per una volta, parte dell’istituto psichiatrico in cui è ricoverata. Ma alla fine deve reintegrarsi nella società e, attraverso un incontro trasformativo con un’altra paziente, un ritorno alla vita reale sembra possibile…

Vincitrice del James Tait Black Prize del 1961.

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach, but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person’s case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea.

Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally – the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke – a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways.

Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the nuances of emotion that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the world of one of our greatest contemporary romances to show us that in fact true love never dies.

André is now head of the family, with a little brother to keep in line and a mother to translate for – for although she’s mute, she is nothing if not communicative. Equal parts transporting and beautiful, this coming of age memoir shares the luminous, fragile truth of life for a family forever in exile, living in Rome, but still yet to find a home.

In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. A mother dies. A man falls to his death.

Couples seek escape in distant lands. The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story-about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.

The great questions in life. Everything. Tara Selter is searching for a way back into time.

A year has passed, but Tara still wakes up to the same newspapers, and the same blank faces when she explains that she has seen this all before. Until one morning, she boards a train and finds herself in a new day. It is still the eighteenth of November, but the faces are different, the weather is colder.

She realises that she has found a way out of her endless autumn. By moving across Europe rather than through time, she can collect the ingredients for the seasons: the thin film of ice on puddles, the fresh spring breeze, the blazing summer sun. As she travels, she begins to hope for a new future, one that will run in parallel to the eighteenth of November, one that she must build for herself.

The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door. When one of those lodgers – Firth, a chaotic writer – arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble.

A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse’s affections – and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?

They desire each other, they delude each other, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?