Giovanna Granato Books

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

In un quieto soggiorno un fratello e una sorella non piú giovani preparano la tavola per un ospite amato, da tanti anni lontano. In una abitazione isolata un giovane medico sta per visitare una donna che ha quattro dita amputate da una misteriosa ferita. Nella casa paterna, ormai vuota dei genitori defunti, un ragazzo aspetta da un altro ragazzo la brutalità piú estrema pur di dare senso alla propria esistenza. Sempre, nei luoghi dove Haslett ambienta la propria narrazione, si compie una via crucis lancinante e si manifesta al tempo stesso, in tutta la sua trepida gloria, l'epifania della vita. Sembra anzi che soprattutto nel dolore, nella mancanza, nella perdita, nella deformità mentale o fisica, in ciò che di solito va scartato, e forma invece buona parte dell'intera nostra realtà, i personaggi di Haslett acquistino una statura tanto superiore a chi li vorrebbe, in qualche modo, «misurare», curare. E la perenne imminenza della catastrofe che caratterizza la loro discesa agli inferi è tutt'uno, per noi lettori, con la tranquilla luminosità della lingua che li racconta.

One of the most original and daring writers in English letters, Michel Faber shows his incredible mastery of wildly diverse literary forms with this, his long-awaited second collection of stories. Faber’ s characters in these 17 fictions are often dislocated— fragile beings confronting moments of fracture— in worlds that are both real and surreal. From the achingly sad lives of “ The Safehouse” to the moments of exquisite happiness in “ Vanilla-right Like Eminem” to the futuristic savagery of “ The Fahrenheit Twins,” these are fearless stories that crack our humanity wide open. With his brilliant characterization and pitch-perfect prose, Michel Faber has produced a short story collection that will seal his reputation as one of our most arresting and gifted writers.

Find out what became of Sophie.Michel Faber revisits the world of his bestselling novel The Crimson Petal and the White, conjuring tantalising glimpses of its characters, their lives before we first met them and their intriguing futures. You'll be desperate for more by the time you reluctantly re-emerge into the twenty-first century.

A compelling emotional mystery about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling. A dying writer bids a young bookshop assistant to write her biography.

Luke moves to Paris and, with his new love and the other expatriate couple from whom they become inseparable, wanders the Eleventh Arrondissement where clubs, cafes, banter, and Ecstasy now occupy Gertrude Stein's city "which is not real but is really there".In Paris Trance, Geoff Dyer fixes a dream of happiness -- and its aftermath -- with photographic precision. Boldly erotic and hauntingly elegiac, comic and romantic, this brilliant reconception of the classic expatriate novels of the Lost Generation confirms Dyer as one of our most original and talented writers.

A novel inspired by the writings of Thomas Mann, including his childhood, his wife Katia, and the times is which they lived -- the First World War, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile.

A compilation of fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time

The Courage Consort, possibly the seventh best-known a cappella vocal ensemble in Britain, are given two weeks in a Belgian chateau to rehearse their latest commission, the monstrously complicated Partitum Mutante.