'Les mères ont davantage à voir avec les guerres qu'elles n'imaginent. C'est le contraire de ce que tout le monde pense. Il ne peut pas y avoir de guerre sans mères', déclare ici l'un des personnages.

Trois jeunes gens et leurs mères, des pères absents et des fils égarés : un conscrit en proie aux mauvais traitements de l'armée russe, un jeune Tchétchène à la recherche de sa mère, un voyou de bonne famille. Puis la rencontre d'une âme soeur, une chimère.

Une poignée de femmes essaient de sauver leurs fils de la guerre, de la solitude et du crime. Le tout à Saint-Pétersbourg, à la veille du tricentenaire de la ville, sur fond de guerre de Tchétchénie.

Les personnages semblent n'être à leur place nulle part dans leur famille ou dans leur pays, ce qui donne toute sa force à la figure de la chimère, aberration rejetée par la nature et par l'homme, projetée dans des amours absolues.

Les histoires s'entrelacent, Bernardo Carvalho orchestre une multiplicité de points de vue et de voix sans jamais perdre l'axe récurrent de la maternité et de son revers, le sentiment d'être orphelin, sans protection, déplacé, dont la guerre est la représentation la plus crue.

Un roman magnifique.

«Du premier texte jusqu'aux derniers, l'auteur fait preuve d'une admirable persévérance fantasmatique, mettant en scène des héros mus par leurs pulsions sadomasochistes ou leur fétichisme. Ou encore des personnages hantés par la figure d'une mère disparue et dont le deuil paraît impossible.»

Anne Bayard-Sakai, Préface, «Tanizaki, ou l'avidité romanesque»

«Car on pouvait douter que ce fût là un regard de femme : étincelant, lourd, effrayant, il était gorgé d'une espèce de profonde, insondable fascination ; aussi quand elle me fusillait du regard, un frisson parfois me passait-il dans le dos.» Un amour insensé

Réunit :

Un amour insensé
Svastika
Le goût des orties
Yoshino
Le récit de l'aveugle
Le coupeur de roseaux
Shunkin, esquisse d'un portrait
Le chat, son maître et ses deux maîtresses
La clef : la confession impudique
Journal d'un vieux fou

Following some explicit hints to my daughter, I was delighted to receive this as a Father's Day gift. I consider myself a fairly well-read person, but only in the extremely limited sense of having read just about everything Clive James has ever written, ranging from his TV reviews, literary criticism, autobiography, novels and verse to his lyrics for singer-songwriter Pete Atkin. More broadly, what I've read in his books has introduced me to other writers, and it's always been entertaining to see his opinion (particularly when it's not high) on books which I've already read.

There's more of the same in this book, but its scale and structure dwarfs anything he's produced up until now. Some four years in the writing, it's been viewed as the culmination of his life's work (although he's rumoured to have already started work on a second volume). At first glance, it's a collection of more than a hundred critical essays on selected cultural or historical figures, mostly from 20th century Europe. Digging deeper reveals other things, as he uses his ideas about the person as a jumping-off point for musings on other topics such as plagarism, fame, memory, reading, grammar and bibliophilia.

His range of reference is extraordinary, taking in books written in German, French, Italian and Spanish (all of which he apparently reads fluently). There's a strong didactic element running through this work, as he breaks off to give advice on the most profitable way to learn languages, the best dictionaries and translations, and which books are most easily used as a starting point for breaking into a specific language. He also tells stories of the tracking down of books in shops all over the world that are explicit - even loving - in their physical detail as he describes their bindings, typeface and paper, and how they look on his shelves at home.

His main theme here, however, is culture and the struggles of liberal humanism against totalitarianism. This is clearly a big subject, and each one of these essays illuminates it from a slightly different angle until you're left feeling wiser, older and sadder at the heroism and destruction that inspired this work. Along the way, his lively and playful turns of phrase are enough to make you start making notes in the margin yourself - to take just one example at random, on p498 he describes the constant need to refresh our memory of good things that we've read as 'a polishing of the pipe, like El Dorado's throat'. I'm sure I won't read a better book this year, and perhaps for some time to come afterwards as well.

After the success of The Northern Clemency, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us another slice of contemporary life, this time the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of a small English town.

Hanmouth, situated where the river Hand flows into the Bristol channel, is usually quiet and undisturbed. But it becomes the centre of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. This tragic event serves to expose the range of segregated existences in the town, as spectrums of class, wealth and lifestyle are blurred in the investigation. Behind Hanmouth's closed doors and pastoral façade, the extraordinary individual lives of the community are laid bare. The undisclosed passions of a quiet international aid worker are set against his wife, seemingly a paragon of virtue to the outside world; a recently-widowed old woman tells a story that details her late discovery of sexual gratification; and the Bears have a memorable party. As the search for the missing girl continues, the case is made for increased surveillance, and old notions of privacy begin to crack.

King of the Badgers is a powerful study of the vital importance of individuality and the increasingly intrusive hand of political powers. Like its predecessor, it is another devastating – but frequently very funny – portrait of England from one of this country's finest novelists.

A collection that traces the celebrated career of a grande dame of contemporary literature.

This complete gathering of Paula Fox's short works spans forty-five illustrious years of her career, from 1965 to 2010. There are perfectly turned stories (two of which—'Grace' and 'The Broad Estates of Death'—won the O. Henry Prize) in which characters unexpectedly find themselves at a crossroads and struggle to connect with others. There is memoir—a genre where Fox's honesty, grace, and perception set her apart—in which Fox revisits childhood ideas about art and reality, life in New York in the 1960s, and her relationship with her husband's family. And there are essays—pointed, funny, relentlessly persuasive pieces on such topics as censorship and the corruption of language. Enlivened by Fox's signature wit and electrified by her unsparing insights into human nature, News from the World is essential for Fox's loyal readers and perfect to introduce those who are meeting her for the first time.

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.

Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

“Dyer is very funny, in both senses—sort of like a postmodern Kingsley Amis. His writing is acute and bad-tempered in the great British tradition, and his prose is the equal of anyone in the country.” — ZADIE SMITH

Geoff Dyer has earned the devotion of passionate fans on both sides of the Atlantic through his wildly inventive, romantic novels as well as several brilliant, uncategorizable works of nonfiction. All the while he has been writing some of the wittiest, most incisive criticism we have on an astonishing array of subjects—music, literature, photography and travel journalism—that, in Dyer’s expert hands, becomes a kind of irresistible self-reportage.

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition collects twenty-five years of essays, reviews, and misadventures. Here he is pursuing the shadow of Camus in Algeria and remembering life on the dole in Brixton in the 1980s; reflecting on Richard Avedon and Ruth Orkin, on the sculptor Zadkine and the saxophonist David Murray (in the same essay), on his heroes Rebecca West and Ryszard Kapuscinski, on haute couture and sex in hotels. Whatever he writes about, his responses never fail to surprise. For Dyer there is no division between the reflective work of the critic and the novelist’s commitment to lived experience: they are mutually illuminating ways to sharpen our perceptions. His is the rare body of work that manages to both frame our world and enlarge it.

“Dyer’s writing does what the best critical writing always does, encouraging us to view, read, or listen closely to art, literature, and music as well as to pay close attention to various cultural forms and their impact on our personal lives.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

“[T]he book is chock-full of Dyer at his most open, thoughtful and lyrical. . . . Whether in sketches or rigorous studies, each piece bears the mark of Dyer’s unique intelligence and wit.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS

Londres, 1895. Olive Wellwood, célèbre écrivain, décide de créer un livre unique, relié d'une couleur différente, tout spécialement pour chacun de ses enfants. Dans leur vaste demeure près du marais de Romney, ils évoluent dans un monde de contes de fées. Pourtant chaque famille porte le poids de ses secrets. Tous grandissent dans les étés enchantés de l'époque post-victorienne, mais tandis que les garçons se rebellent contre leurs parents et que les filles rêvent d'indépendance, ils ignorent qu'un avenir sombre les attend. Et
que les adultes qui les aiment les trahiront malgré eux. Le Livre des enfants est une oeuvre époustouflante, véritable reconstitution historique qui ressuscite l'époque de la création de Peter Pan. C'est aussi un roman intime et poignant sur les rapports entre parents et enfants, les luttes les plus âpres de cette époque charnière mais aussi les plaisirs les plus intenses que nous offre la vie. Seule A. S. Byatt pouvait en être l'auteur.

Thom Jones fait ici ce qu’il sait faire de mieux et même plus encore. On y retrouve des boxeurs, des vétérans de la guerre du Viêt-Nam, des Marines, mais aussi une mère harcelée par son fils hypocondriaque, un proviseur gardant dans son bureau une tarentule afin d’impressionner ses étudiants et ses employés, deux amants perturbés abandonnant tout pour aller vivre dans une cahute sur une plage… Avec son humour noir dopé aux amphétamines, Jones fait le portrait de personnages abîmés, rejetés aux marges de la vie, qui ne peuvent se résoudre à abandonner une partie qu’ils savent pourtant perdue d’avance. Habités par la maladie, la folie et la souffrance, ils livrent leur ultime combat. Partagées entre désespoir et enthousiasme, entre vision réaliste et fiévreuse de la vie, les nouvelles de Thom Jones révèlent les paradoxes douloureux auxquels sont confrontés les hommes aujourd’hui. Sonny Liston était mon ami confirme le talent singulier de Thom Jones et le place comme l’un des meilleurs écrivains américains contemporains.

Voici un livre qui se dévore. Pourtant, son auteur met en garde le lecteur : ne pas manger ce livre, sinon son visage risque d'enfler et son corps de se boursoufler Il est en effet possible que le lecteur, pris par surprise, se transforme en ces petits êtres difformes qui peuplent les marges des manuscrits médiévaux. population menaçante, qui frappe d'irréligiosité l'espace ô combien sacré de la rime. L'on pénètre un 'monde à l'envers', où danse des morts et d'autres visions apocalyptiques accomplissent une ritournelle chantante. Vers et autres vers en prose rampent dans votre gosier, se faufilent dans vos draps. C'est une poésie scatologique, une poésie de pétarades. Patrik Ourednik nous entraîne dans une valse de mots, dans une prose imagée, où l'art de la chute détient une force de proposition, principe de la poésie, que l'auteur renouvelle à bon compte. Une poésie grivoise et sacrilège à avaler toute crue.