‘Wonderful and timely … Hugely recommended’ STEPHEN FRY What do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think… Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker, perhaps the greatest in history. Yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. His deepest belief was that we can all be happy in a meaningful, sustained way – and he led by example. In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Iliad. In ten practical lessons we come to understand more about our own characters and how to make good decisions. We learn how to do well in an interview, how to choose a partner and life-long friends, and how to face death or bereavement. Life deals the same challenges – in Ancient Greece or the modern world. Aristotle’s way is not to apply rules – it’s about engaging with the texture of existence, and striding purposefully towards a life well lived. This is advice that won’t go out of fashion.

Aristotle’s Way: Ten Ways Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life

Edith Hall

VINTAGE ARROW - MASS MARKET

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE'I am shouting from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this book. It's so so good - realistic and funny and so truthful it almost winded me' Dolly Alderton, The High LowTwo couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can't quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children but his bereavement is getting in the way. Set in London to an exhilarating soundtrack, Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and ageing, and the fragile architecture of love. 'I just finished Ordinary People by Diana Evans and it is utterly exquisite. What a writer she is - the depth of her insight, the grace of her sentences. WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME NOT READING HER?'Elizabeth Day, Twitter'God this book is fantastic' Pandora Sykes

Ordinary People

Literature & Fiction

EVANS, DIANA

Literary

Last Samurai

Helen DeWitt

Writer's Luck

'A wonderfully candid and insightful account of a writer's life' William BoydLuck, good or bad, plays an important part in a writer's career. In 1976 Lodge was pursuing a 'twin-track career' as novelist and academic but the balancing act was increasingly difficult, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his bestselling novel Nice Work. Readers of Lodge's novels will be fascinated by the insights this book gives - not only into his professional career but also more personal experience, such as his growing scepticism of his Catholic religion and the challenges of parenting. Anyone who is interested in learning about the creative process and about the life of a writer will find Writer's Luck a candid and entertaining guide.

DAVID LODGE

Biographies & Memoirs

Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days

Christmas Days

WINTERSON, JEANETTE

Genre Fiction

Review: "To live now and not to know this work is to be a kind of historical fool missing a crucial part of the consciousness of the age" (W.L. Webb Guardian); "The ferocious testimony of a man of genius" (Stephen Spender London Magazine); "What gives the book its value is the sound it gives out; the harsh roar give out by a wise and experienced animal as a warning that the herd is in danger" (Rebecca West Sunday Telegraph); "He is one of the towering figures of the age as a writer, as moralist, as hero... in The Gulag Archipelago he has acheived the impossible" (Edward Crankshaw Observer); "It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century" (David Remnick New Yorker). About the Author: Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918. He was brought up in Rostov, where he graduated in mathematics and physics in 1941. After distinguished service with the Red Army in the Second World War, he was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for making unfavourable remarks about Joseph Stalin. He was rehabilitated in 1956, but in 1969 he was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union for denouncing official censorship of his work. He was forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and deported to West Germany. Later he settled in America, but after Soviet officials finally dropped charges against him in 1991, he returned to his homeland in 1994 and died in August 2008, aged eighty-nine. Solzhenitsyn wrote many books, of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago are his best known.

The Gulag Archipelago

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historical

Raised from the Ground

Product Description A multigenerational family saga that paints a sweeping portrait of twentieth-century PortugalFirst published in 1980, the City of Lisbon Prize–winning Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents. Set in Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast agricultural estates, the novel charts the lives of the Mau Tempos as national and international events rumble on in the background—the coming of the republic in Portugual, the two World Wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar’s life. Yet nothing really impinges on the grim reality of the farm laborers’ lives until the first communist stirrings. Finally available in English, Raised from the Ground is Saramago’s most deeply personal novel, the book in which he found the signature style and voice that distinguishes all of his brilliant work. From Booklist Though Saramago wrote his first novel in 1947 at the age of 24, critics viewing his long career in retrospect have suggested that Raised from the Ground, first published in 1980, was the novel in which Saramago found the distinctive voice that would lead him to literary prominence. Coincidentally—or not—it is also said to be one of his most personal works. A multigenerational epic set in the vast farmlands of southern Portugal, this story portrays the hardscrabble lives of the Mau Tempo family, defined by never-ending toil set to the harsh rhythms of the agricultural calendar. The bleakness is apparently permanent; world wars and an attempted assassination of dictator Salazar cannot dispel it. Only with the coming of communism—and with it the promise of equality and an eight-hour workday—might change be possible. Saramagos poetic and political fans of the English-speaking world will unite in appreciation for this long-awaited translation. st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } --Brendan Driscoll From the Back Cover Praise for José SaramagoWith parables sustained by imagination, compassion, and irony, José Saramago continually enables us once again to apprehend an illusory reality.  Nobel Prize committeeSaramago is a writer, like Faulkner, so confident of his resources and ultimate destination that he can bring any improbability to life.  John UpdikeJosé Saramago will be a permanent part of the Western canon . . . In all of his wonderful meditations upon the ruefulness of our lives, there is always the spirit of laughter beckoning us in the art of somehow going on. His achievement is one of the enlargements of life.  Harold BloomHe got ahead of us; he is ahead of us. His work belongs to our future.  Ursula K. Le Guin Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. HERE, IT’S MOSTLY countryside, land. Whatever else may be lacking, land has never been in short supply, indeed its sheer abundance can only be explained by some tireless miracle, because the land clearly predates man, and despite its long, long existence, it has still not expired. That’s probably because it’s constantly changing: at certain times of the year, the land is green, at others, yellow or brown or black. And in certain places it is red, the color of clay or spilled blood. This, however, depends on what has been planted or what has not yet been planted, or what has sprung up unaided and died simply because it reached its natural end. This is not the case with wheat, which still has some life left in it when it is cut. Nor with the cork oak, which, despite its solemn air, is full of life and cries out when its skin is ripped from it. There is no shortage of color in this landscape, but it isn’t simply a matter of color. There are days as harsh as they are cold, and others when you can scarcely breathe for the heat: the world is never content, the day it is will be the day it dies. The world does not lack for smells either, not even here, which is, of course, part of the world and well

Raised From The Ground

José Saramago

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