Set in the cities and islands of the Mediterranean, and linked thematically, the eight stories in The Foxes Come At Night read more like a novel, a meditation on memory, life and death. Their protagonists collect and reconstruct fragments of lives lived intensely, and now lost, crystallized in memory or in the detail of a photograph. In 'Paula', the narrator evokes the mysterious, brief life of a woman he once loved; in 'Paula II', the same woman is aware of the man thinking of her. No longer a body, she is slowly fading into the distance, remembering the time they spent together, and his fear of the black night when the foxes appear. And yet the tone of these stories is far from pessimistic: it seems that death is nothing to be afraid of. Nooteboom is a superb stylist who observes the world with a combination of melancholy and astonishment. These stories are textured with humour, pathos and vast knowledge, the hallmarks of this outstanding and highly respected European writer.

The Foxes Come at Night

Literature & Fiction

cees-nooteboom

Literary

Maclehose Press Quercus

One summer's afternoon in 1981, a factory owner, Christiaan Dudok, is found dead in his study having taken his own life. He has left no suicide note, but on his desk is a newspaper from 2 April 1942, reporting on the bombing of the north German town of Lubeck. The list of the dead includes the highlighted name of Julia Bender. As a young man finishing his studies in Lubeck in 1938, Christiaan is irresistibly drawn to Julia, a courageous German who has emphatically rejected the Nazi regime. But that same year he is forced to leave both Germany and the woman he loves, even though he suspects that he is making the greatest mistake of his life. Julia is the story of a life lived wrongly, of a love so great that it endures for decades, and yet still fails. Fear of life and loss of courage, and terrifying inhuman fanaticism are the compelling themes explored in Otto de Kat's elegantly accomplished, elegiac novel.

Julia

Otto de Kat

The Vintage and the Gleaning

Smithy is a retired shearer turned vineyard worker in his autumn years. It is hard graft, but Smithy has always worked with his hands. Physically all but destroyed after a lifetime of hard liquor, but now sober, he begins to see the world with new eyes, a meditative, singular figure in the town's bar on rowdy Friday nights. But clarity can be a curse. Finally confronting his past, overwhelmed by long-buried feelings of regret, nostalgia and loss, Smithy steps in to help a young woman in a desperate situation. A cautious friendship develops, but Charlotte's husband is widely suspected of murder, and Smithy begins to fear that he will pay a high price for his gallantry. Written with an authentic music, and infused with beauty, brutality and sadness The Vintage and the Gleaning is a compelling observation of men, women and country. A remarkably accomplished debut novel.

Chambers, Jeremy

A poetic work of fiction on the one hand, an autobiography on the other, The Life of Rebecca Jones is a powerful, meditative work on one family's passage through the twentieth century. In the early years of the last century, Rebecca is born into a rural community in the Maesglasau valley in Wales; her family have been working the land for a thousand years, but the changes brought about by modernity threaten the survival of her language, and her family's way of life. Three of her siblings are afflicted with a genetic blindness, and it is they who have the opportunity to be educated elsewhere and to find work, while Rebecca and her remaining brother maintain the family farm amidst a gradual influx of new technologies, from the waterpipe to the tractor and telephone, and ultimately to television. Rebecca's reflections on the century are delivered with haunting dignity and a simple intimacy, while her evocation of the changing seasons and a life that is so in tune with its surroundings is rich and poignant. The Life of Rebecca Jones has all the makings of a classic, fixing on a vanishing period of rural history, and the novel's final, unexpected revelation remains unforgettable and utterly moving.

Life of Rebecca Jones

Angharad Price

Contemporary

All Human Wisdom

PIERRE LEMAITRE

One Italian Summer

Rebecca Serle

A Hero Born

History

金庸

Asia

An old man has his skull broken on a winter's night. His seven-year-old granddaughter finds him and refuses to speak a single word afterwards. Raffael Horn, a psychologist engaged to treat the child, becomes reluctantly involved in solving the crime. Detective Superintendent Bruno Kovacs sits in snowbound beer gardens by day and peers through binoculars at night. Year-end crimes are always a bother, he finds, not least because they disrupt his erotic schedule with Marlene, the owner of a second-hand shop. And although he doesn't mind an excuse to extract himself from Marlene's romantic New Year plans, this victim, he is quite sure, will keep him busy well in to January.A psychopathic father beats his daughters, a jogging Benedictine monk hears voices that do not come from heaven, a retired postman contemplates suicide, and a young mother believes her new-born child is the devil...The psychological profile of this small town is far from reassuring - but which member of its population was the nocturnal visitor responsible for the brutal slaying?

The Sweetness of Life

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Paulus Hochgatterer

Thrillers & Suspense

Yalo

Elias Khoury

In a bleak valley in Northern Italy, the River Po is swollen to its limits. The thick fog that usually clings to the town, blurring its surroundings and plunging its inhabitants into near-blindness, has been driven out by the raging storm. So when an empty barge drifts downriver, the fact the owner is missing does not go unnoticed. That same night Commissario Soneri is called in to investigate the murder of the boatman's brother. The brothers served together in the fascist militia fifty years earlier - could this be a revenge killing after so long? Soneri's investigation meets with a wall of silence from those who make their living along the banks of river. As the fog descends and the valley is hidden once more, Soneri must navigate fifty-year-old loyalties and deep-rooted rivalries before he can find out the truth.

River of Shadows

Valerio-Varesi

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