Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous gifts Solution: Give better ones in return

Gift

David L. Flusfeder

Harpercollins Pb

Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous giftsSolution: Give better ones in returnPhilip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters: Can we have a pony - please? I want to go to boarding school - please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar.But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is simple: they give great presents. Their gifts are exquisite: a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them indiscriminately: on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity: two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.

The Gift

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Fourth Estate Ltd.

The much-anticipated new novel from the acclaimed author of ‘The Gift ‘ – a blend of detective novel, historical fiction and the painful coming-of-age of a confused young boy. ‘Edgar was neither hard-bitten nor hard-boiled. He hadn’t seen too much – he’d hardly seen anything at all – and he was bursting, overflowing, with inaccessible juvenile potency. No one would suspect him of a dangerous agenda. But he could not drive a car. And he still needed permission to stay out past suppertime.’ Edgar Pagan, nearly thirteen, detests his English mother’s new boyfriend, so when she takes her son away from him across the Atlantic to spend time with his American father, it is a relief and a new adventure for him. He is an unlikely detective, Edgar, but that is what he becomes at the Pagan house, home to his grandmother Fay, and again some years later when he sets down on paper the Pagan past, in particular the peculiar circumstances of his father’s ancestors in the nineteenth century, ‘the story of how I came to be me.’ ‘The Pagan House’, David Flusfeder’s extraordinary new novel, is the story of how a family came to be established, of the extreme nineteenth-century Christian sect, the Perfectionists, utopians with a belief in free love, who built that family home. It is about the life and tragic death of Mary Pagan, the shaping force in this unusual family, and the impending death 150 years later of her descendent, Edgar’s grandmother, and the consequent destiny of that house. With its blend of detective novel, historical fiction and the painful coming-of-age of a confused young boy in Edgar, Flusfeder brilliantly weaves these strands together with style and verve. ‘Wise and a complete story and a very good one,’ said Jonathan Franzen of Flusfeder’s last book, ‘the best book you’ll give yourself all year,’ said Will Self. With this new novel he has surpassed himself.

THE PAGAN HOUSE

Literary

Harper-perennial

Fourth Estate trade 1st edition paperback new In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

A Film by Spencer Ludwig

Set in the colourful, threatened world of occupied Warsaw just before the Holocaust, this third novel by a highly praised writer tells the story of Gloria, a young Freudian analyst whose sole client, a Jewish tycoon, fakes his own suicide and thereby drags Gloria into a web of intrigue, deception and betrayal.Gloria, the sexy, clever, appealing narrator of David Flusfeder's brilliant third novel, is thrown into a series of adventures after the faked suicide of her sole client, a Jewish tycoon in occupied Warsaw. She is dragged into a plot to assassinate Igo Sym, one of several real-life figures appearing in the novel: a Polish movie star who became `Volkdeutsch' during the Nazi occupation.Murder, comedy, paranoia, heartache and depth psychology... these are the threads running through this vividly readable new novel by the author of `MAN KILLS WOMAN' and `LIKE PLASTIC'. In original, sensual prose, Flusfeder has woven a novel both entertaining and thoughtful, preoccupied by war, by the idea of `psychic infection', by sexual and physical power, by danger and the exotic.

Morocco

Fourth Estate