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George Orwell

An enlightening anthology of George Orwell's journalism and non-fiction writing, showing his genius across a wide variety of genres. Selected by leading expert Peter Davison. 
 
Famous for his novels and essays, Orwell remains one of our very best journalists and commentators. Confronting social, political and moral dilemmas head-on, he was fearless in his writing: a champion of free speech, a defender against social injustice and a sharp-eyed chronicler of the age. But his work is also timeless, as pieces on immigration, Scottish independence and a Royal Commission on the Press attest. 
 
 Seeing Things As They Are, compiled by renowned Orwell scholar Peter Davison, brings together in one volume many of Orwell’s articles and essays for journals and newspapers, his broadcasts for the BBC, and his book, theatre and film reviews. Little escaped Orwell’s attention: he writes about the Spanish Civil War, public schools and poltergeists, and reviews books from Brave New World to Mein Kampf. Almost half of his popular ‘As I Please’ weekly columns, written while literary editor of the Tribune during the 1940s, are collected here, ranging over topics as diverse as the purchase of rose bushes from Woolworth’s to the Warsaw Uprising. 
 
 Whether political, poetic, polemic or personal, this is surprising, witty and intelligent writing to delight in. A mix of well-known and intriguing, less familiar pieces, this engaging collection illuminates our understanding of Orwell’s work as a whole.

Seeing Things as They Are

Selected Journalism and Other Writings

Lawrence Osborne

‘I am taking a few months off to travel and wander, drinking my way across the Islamic world to see whether I can dry myself out, cure myself of a bout of alcoholic excess. It is a personal crisis, a private curiosity… I am curious to see how non-drinkers live. Perhaps they have something to teach me.’ 
 
Booze is mankind's premier drug of choice, the most popular mind-altering substance ever devised, and it plays a furtive, celebrated and subversive role in nearly every culture on earth. In The Wet and the Dry, Lawrence Osborne explores the culture of permission, particularly in the West, and the opposing culture of prohibition, notably in the Islamic East. 
 
Osborne’s globe-trotting odyssey takes him from the luxurious bars of Milan to the vineyards of Lebanon, threatened by Hezbollah; from Swedish vodka to Pakistani strawberry gin; from the Nellie Dean pub in Soho to the dangerous brothels and drinking dens on the Malaysian border; from the boutique scotch produced on Islay to the liquor destroying Native American reservations; and from the only brewery in the dry country of Pakistan to the search for a bottle of New Year’s champagne in Oman. All the while, Osborne’s own Irish family history of terrifying alcoholism fails to deter him from seeking out a drink wherever he can.

The Wet And The Dry

A Drinker's Journey

A selection of George Orwell's prescient, clear-eyed and stimulating writing on the subjects of truth and lies. With an introduction by Alan Johnson. 
 
'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.' 
 
This selection of George Orwell’s writing, from both his novels and non-fiction, gathers together his thoughts on the subject of truth. It ranges from discussion of personal honesty and morality, to freedom of speech and political propaganda. Orwell’s unique clarity of thought and illuminating scepticism provide the perfect defence against our post-truth world of fake news and confusion. 
 
'The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.' 
 
Includes an introduction by Alan Johnson and passages from Burmese Days, The Road to Wigan Pier, Coming Up for Air, The Lion and the Unicorn, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s letters, war-time diary, criticism and essays including ‘Fascism and Democracy’, ‘Culture and Democracy’, ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’, ‘As I Please’, ‘Notes on Nationalism’, ‘The Prevention of Literature’, ‘Politics and the English Language’ and ‘Why I Write’.

Orwell on Truth

Anthony Powell

These journals, started in 1982 when Powell had become 'stuck' on a novel, became the place where he could most happily exercise his extraordinarily acute and often witty powers of observation and record his memories of times and writers past. 
 
This, the second volume of the journals sees the writer in his house in Somerset, The Chantry, encountering old friends, journalists, publishers, relations. He reads through the plays of Shakespeare, and also re-reads A dance to the Music of Time, giving an astonishingly dispassionate and perceptive analysis of his own greatest creation. He remembers Evelyn Waugh, Phillip Larkin, Malcolm Muggeridge, Gerald, Brenan and John Betjeman. He is visited by, among others, V.S Naipaul, Alison Lurie, Roy Jenkins, and Harold Pinter. He becomes a Companion of Honour. His beloved cat Trelawney dies. In these frank and entertaining pages, the daily life of a writer unfolds in a volume that will delight his many fans as much as its predecessor did.

Journals 1987-1989

Volume 5 of The Complete Works of George Orwell 
 
Victor Gollancz personally commissioned Orwell to write about the distressed north of England in January 1936. After Orwell handed in his typescript a little before Christmas Day 1936, he immediately left to fight in Spain. Shortly afterwards the book was selected for publication by the Left Book Club. This meant a print run of 47,340 copies instead of 2,150, so bringing Orwell to a much wider audience. The first part of Orwell's account, Gollancz wrote in Left News in April 1937, ‘has done, perhaps in a greater degree than any previous book, what the [Left Book] Club is meant to do – it has provoked thought and discussion of the keenest kind’. All copies of the original Left Book Club and first public editions of The Road to Wigan Pier were sold. This edition reproduces the illustrations selected for that first edition, corrects the text and prints Victor Gollancz’s Foreword as an Appendix. (See Volume Ten for Orwell’s Wigan Pier Diary and the research materials he wrote and collected in order to write The Road to Wigan Pier.)

Road To Wigan Pier

Volume 8 of The Complete Works of George Orwell 
 
Rejected by such eminent figures as Victor Gollancz and T.S. Eliot (for Faber &amp; Faber), and by Jonathan Cape (influenced by ‘an important official at the Ministry of Information’), Animal Farm was published to great acclaim by Martin Secker &amp; Warburg on 17 August 1945 in an edition of 4,500 copies. Orwell’s immortal satire – ‘contre Stalin’ as himself wrote to his French translator – is as vivid and pungent today as it was on its first publication, and can be read on many levels. Orwell subtitled the book ‘A Fairy Story’, a genre in which he was keenly interested. It combines the poster-paint clarity of fable with the dark and mordant tones of a bitter political allegory. 
 
Animal Farm is indisputably a masterpiece, and places Orwell firmly in the great satirical tradition of Swift and Defoe. This edition incorporates all Orwell’s changes and reproduces his introduction, ‘The Freedom of the press’, which in the event he withdrew, and the preface to the Ukrainian edition, in its complete form, written at the request of the Ukrainian Displaced Persons Organisation in Munich. Also published here for the first time is Orwell’s dramatisation of Animal Farm for BBC Radio (1947).

Animal Farm

George Orwell was an inveterate keeper of diaries. Eleven diaries are presented here, and we know there may be two more from his time in Spain hidden away in the NKVD Archives in Moscow. Covering the period 1931-1949, this volume follows Orwell from his early years as a writer up to his last literary notebook. 
 
His Hop-Picking Diary covers some of Orwell's time spent down and out; a wonderful entry from 1931 tells of a communal shave in the Trafalgar Square fountains. The notes from his travels through industrial England, which formed the basis of The Road to Wigan Pier, show the development of the gifted young novelist and impassioned social commentator. 'Frightful landscape of slag-heaps and belching chimneys.[...] Beards of ice on lock gates.' This same acute power of observation is evident in his diaries from Morocco, where he also encountered extreme poverty. We catch a glimpse of a different Orwell at home. His domestic diaries chart the progress of his garden and animals with a keen eye, from the succinct, 'Pig active again.' to the more poetic, 'One of the plants that carries the snow most beautifully is lavender.' 
 
The wartime diaries make fascinating reading, from descriptions of events overseas, to the daily violence closer to home and his astute perspective on the politics of both. Orwell offers a different take on the typical view of the home front. 'War is simply a reversal of civilised life, its motto is "Evil be thou my good", and so much of the good of modern life is actually evil that it is questionable whether on balance war does harm.' 
 
The diaries provide a new and entirely refreshing insight into Orwell's character and help towards an understanding of his great works.

Diaries

Michelle Orange

'Rich and moving' New York Times 
 
'A book that expands and breaks your heart' Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. 
 
A revelatory enquiry into selfhood, freedom, mortality, storytelling, and what it means to be a mother's daughter 
 
During one of the texting sessions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our relationship, my mother revealed the existence of someone named Janis Jerome. 
 
So begins Michelle Orange's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of maternal legacy - in her own family and across a century of seismic change. Jerome, she learns, is one of her mother's many alter egos: the name used in a case study, eventually sold to the Harvard Business Review, about her midlife choice to leave her husband and children to pursue career opportunities in a bigger city. 
 
A flashpoint in the lives of both mother and daughter, the decision forms the heart of a broader exploration of the impact of feminism on what Adrienne Rich called 'the great unwritten story': that of the mother-daughter bond. 
 
Through a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism, Pure Flame pursues a chain of personal, intellectual, and collective inheritance, tracing the forces that helped transform the world and what a woman might expect from it.

Pure Flame

On Mothers and Daughters

Amil

We had always been rare and mysterious creatures. We’d been taught this ever since we were children. 
 
With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill’s exhilarating stories transport us to strange new worlds. 
 
In a near future where women are an endangered minority, two young friends try to break free from a facility designed for those few who can still give birth. Every year in a secluded seaside village, a maiden is sacrificed to a divine sea serpent. Elsewhere, the last female shaman of an indigenous tribe tells her stories to a visiting research team. And in South Korea’s Alps Grand Park, the residents exist in an exclusive world dominated by giant air purifier towers as others are left to live in the shade. 
 
The women in these stories find themselves trapped – by circumstance, society or tradition – as they fight for a means of escape. This sweeping and subversive collection celebrates their strength and their courage, their desire for independence and self-expression. 
 
Translated by Archana Madhavan

Roadkill

As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home in discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art and low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film and drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him and some of his most incisive criticism lay ahead. 
 
These essays follow Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or a body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary. With masterpieces such as 'Politics and the English Language' and 'Rudyard Kipling' and gems such as 'Good Bad Books', here is an unrivalled education in - as George Packer puts it in his foreword to this new two-volume collection - 'how to be interesting, line after line'.

Critical Essays

Rachel Aspden

In 2003, Rachel Aspden arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old trainee journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. Of Egypt's 80 million citizens, two-thirds were under 30. The new generation were stifled, broken and frustrated – caught between a dictatorship with nothing to offer them and autocratic parents still clinging to tradition and obedience after a lifetime of fear. 
 
In January 2011, the young people’s patience ran out. They thought the revolution that followed would change everything for them. But as violence escalated, the economy collapsed and as the united front against Mubarak shattered into sectarianism, many found themselves wavering, hesitant to discard the old ways. 
 
What happens when a revolution unravels? 
 
Why is a generation raised on Hollywood movies and global brand names turning to religion? 
 
How do you choose between sex and tradition, consumerism and faith? 
 
Why would people who once chanted for freedom support a military state? 
 
And where will the next generation take the Middle East? 
 
Following the stories of four young Egyptians – Amr the atheist software engineer, Amal the village girl who defied her family and her entire community, Ayman the one-time religious extremist and Ruqayah the would-be teenage martyr – Generation Revolution unravels the complex forces shaping the lives of young people caught between tradition and modernity, and what their stories mean for the future of the Middle East.

Generation Revolution

On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East

Cédric Sapin-Defour

Having a dog as company makes nothing feel excessive – not time or space. It's not even about passing time, but being of it. 
 
A tiny ad in a local newspaper catches Cédric Sapin-Defour’s eye: a litter of Bernese Mountain Dog puppies need homes. A lonely, single, sports teacher and mountain climber in the French Alps, Cédric visits the dogs and immediately falls for the puppy with a blue collar. 
 
Named Ubac, French for the north side of the mountain – the rainy, cloudy slope – the puppy quickly upends Cédric’s life. They go on hikes together, taking to the hills and exploring, forging a bond that brings joy and a sense of fulfillment and adventure. They brave the world together, hate to be apart, crave the mountains and the natural world; they protect each other. 
 
Over the course of thirteen years, their pack expands to include Mathilde, Cédric’s wife, and more dogs. Ubac and Me is an intimate meditation on a joyous life lived too fast, the aching pain of separation, and the transformative effect of unconditional love. A dog named for the rainy side of the mountain is an inspiring lesson in how walking the rocky, cloudy hills together can bring the greatest light, the sunniest joys, even if the shared journey is unbearably short. 
 
 
‘Not just a tribute to the love humans feel for their pets but also a means of voicing the deep grief that can be felt after a dog’s death, when all that is left is a collar and hairs, and the house seems too big without them.’ Guardian 
 
Ubac and Me has been a surprise bestseller and word-of-mouth sensation in France, championed by indie booksellers, selling 400,000 copies. 
 
Translated by Adriana Hunter.

Ubac and Me

A Life of Love and Adventure With a French Mountain Dog

Volume 9 of The Complete Works of George Orwell 
 
‘It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ This is the opening sentence of the most influential novel of the century, in English or in any of the sixty or more languages which boast a translation. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been described as chilling, absorbing, satirical, momentous, prophetic and terrifying. It is all these things, and more. 
 
Not only does the novel have a ferocious impact, it has also made an irreplaceable contribution to the language – Big Brother, Newspeak, Thought Police, Unperson and Doublethink are just a few words it introduced. 
 
Originally entitled ‘The Last Man in Europe’, Nineteen Eighty-Four also proved to be Orwell’s last book, the physical effort of typing up the final draft leading to his eventual collapse from TB that had dogged him since before the outbreak of the Second World War. He lived long enough to see it become an immediate bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic on publication in June 1949. 
 
For this edition the text had been meticulously edited according to Orwell’s wishes, including the re-instatement of Winston Smith’s controversial acceptance of the equation ‘2+2=5’.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Carmen Martin Gaite

As compulsively page-turning as a thriller, Carmen Martin Gaite's drama of broken dreams, lies, and the search for love is an intense meditation on the strange adventure of living 
 
"Ever since the beginning of the world, living and dying have been two sides of one coin, tossed in the air - But for me - to be perfectly honest - living's the strange thing" 
 
The protagonist of this novel, a 35-year-old woman who has lived hard and loved hard, has just lost her mother. Struggling to keep her curiosity about an inexplicable world intact, she finds her precarious equilibrium constantly besieged by resurfacing oddballs from her past and her own tendency to daydream. To force a little structure into her life, she decides to pick up her old, unfinished doctoral dissertation about an extravagant 18th century adventurer. As she wades through old papers in a dusty archive, she is forced to confront her own strange childhood, her parents' strange relationship, and the feelings that bond her to the strange architect she shares a life with.

Living's The Strange Thing

Louis de Bernières

Donald Sammut

Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems from Louis de Bernières, written over a lifetime, and capturing its many forms – from rapture, infatuation, urgency, to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. 
 
Poetry was de Bernières’ first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience. This, his second collection, bears the mark of many influences, from the classical Persian poets, to Neruda, to Quintus Smyrnaeus, to Brian Patten. 
 
Beautifully illustrated by Donald Sammut, this is an indispensable companion on the lover’s journey.

Of Love and Desire

Ada Moncrieff

The perfect festive murder mystery for 2024 from 'modern rival to Agatha Christie' Ada Moncrieff 
 
It's Christmas 1937 and an eclectic list of guests and staff have gathered for the grand re-opening of Maybridge castle, a newly renovated yet still crumbling hotel deep in the Cumbrian countryside. They are: 
 
The ex-socialite owner 
The Doctor and his new wife 
The stylish journalist 
The know-all housekeepers 
The still-grieving widower and his son 
The tarot readers 
The passionate academic 
The persistent investigative reporter 
The elder amateur sleuth, and her cat 
 
An innocent game of murder-in-the-dark will turn into a real game of life and death. And by the time the first sherries have been drunk, one of these people will be dead - and one of them the killer. Someone has changed the rules, but who?

Murder at Maybridge Castle

Philip Gray

A master forger. A hidden fortune. A dangerous game of cat and mouse... 
 
In post-war Flanders, Adelais de Wolf's family is slowly, inexplicably, falling apart: her mother evermore lost to religious devotion, her father to alcohol. But with the death of a beloved uncle, Adelais finds herself in receipt of an unexpected legacy: a shuttered house in a rundown district and its contents – contents that hold the promise of independence and wealth. All that is required is application, nerve, and a willingness to break the law. 
 
Adelais stifles her doubts and her fortunes are transformed. But with her rise comes complications: her victimless crimes may not be as victimless as she supposed. Nor has she counted on the singular fanaticism of Major de Smet of the Federal Gendarmerie, a brutal detective who never forgives and never forgets. 
 
Embroiled in a game that has gone on too long, will Adelais find the cost of her fortunes too high?

The House with Nine Locks

George Orwell was a tireless and lively correspondent. He communicated with family members, friends and newspapers, figures such as Henry Miller, Cyril Connolly, Stephen Spender and Arthur Koestler, and strangers who wrote to him out of the blue. This carefully selected volume of his correspondence provides an eloquent narrative of Orwell's life, from his schooldays to his final illness. 
 
Orwell's letters afford a unique and fascinating view of his thoughts on matters both personal, political and much in between, from poltergeists, to girls' school songs and the art of playing croquet. In a note home to his mother from school, he reports having 'aufel fun after tea'; much later he writes of choosing a pseudonym and smuggling a copy of Ulysses into the country. 
 
We catch illuminating glimpses of his family life: his son Richard's developing teeth, the death of his wife Eileen and his own illness. His talent as a political writer comes to the fore in his descriptions of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, his opinions on bayonets, and on the chaining of German prisoners. And of course, letters to friends and his publisher chart the development and publication of some of the most famous novels in the English language, providing unparalleled insight into his views on his own work and that of his contemporaries. 
 
A Life in Letters features previously unpublished material, including letters which shed new light on a love that would haunt him for his whole life, as well as revealing the inspiration for some of his most famous characters. Presented for the first time in a dedicated volume, this selection of Orwell's letters is an indispensible companion to his diaries.

A Life in Letters

Denise Mina

If you were responsible for a miscarriage of justice would you admit it? 
 
‘So sharp it’ll cut your fingers' ERIN KELLY 
'Mina at her blazing, blood-splattered best' LUCY WORSLEY 
'A stand-out read' Guardian 
'Propulsive mystery’ ALAFAIR BURKE 
‘Blisteringly good' SARAH HILARY 
'Taut ... the topics she chooses are serious and urgent' The Scotsman 
'Devastatingly angry and acidic' Irish Times 
 
Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O’Sheil’s evidence put a killer behind bars – or so everyone thinks. Since the trial, Claudia has learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong. 
 
Now as she takes the stage to give a speech before London’s elite specialists, Claudia has to choose: keep lying and leave the wronged killer behind bars or stand up, tell the truth and rip her life apart. 
 
The truth can set you free. Or destroy your life. 
 
Praise for Denise Mina 
'Crime-writing royalty' IAN RANKIN 
'A delight' ANN CLEEVES 
'Highly original' THE TIMES 
'Darkly brilliant' OBSERVER

The Good Liar

Volume 3 of The Complete Works of George Orwell 
 
No one has ever been as severe as George Orwell himself as to the merits of A Clergyman’s Daughter. He didn’t want this, his second novel, reprinted and he had, he once said, ‘made a muck of it’. Orwell’s disenchantment may in part stem from the way the book was – to use his favourite word for this process – ‘garbled’ during its passage from the typescript to print. 
 
Although it is generally agreed that Orwell did not effectively reconcile the sections of this novel, the development of the narrative was greatly hindered by the effects of censorship. This arose from the publisher’s understandable fears at the time that the book as submitted would lead to actions for libel, defamation and obscenity. In consequence, many pages were ‘toned down’ (again, Orwell’s words), what was specific was made vague and unlocalised, and Dorothy’s crucial loss of memory left unexplained. 
 
The discovery of details of cuts and changes required – most important of which is Mr Warburton’s attempt to rape Dorothy – make it possible to assess A Clergyman's Daughter afresh. Some passages can be restored precisely; whole areas of change can be identified though not restored. As a result, Dorothy’s ‘little odyssey’, her loss of faith and her subsequent resigned acceptance of her lot, can at last be read with a far clearer understanding of what Orwell intended. No one who reads A Clergyman's Daughter can ever regard the plight of those who exist homeless and adrift in a great city in the same way again, especially in the bitter cold of winter. Here Orwell is unforgettable: nowhere else does he write with quite such poignancy.

A Clergyman's Daughter

Volume 4 of The Complete Works of George Orwell 
 
Originally published in 1936, before Orwell achieved fame, Keep the Aspidistra Flying takes Money as its theme. Gordon Comstock gives up a good job in an advertising agency to become a part-time bookshop assistant at a meagre wage, thereby gaining leisure for writing. However, after some modest success in the world of letters he eventually slides into the abyss, to be rescued by the faithful Rosemary. 
 
Ironically, Gordon’s voyage of discovery leads him back to commercial security, marriage, and the unexpected pleasures of domesticity. But above all he learns of the courage of keeping up appearances despite hardships. The symbol of this is the potted aspidistra: the ugly, stubborn, organic emblem of social and biological survival. 
 
This new edition restores most of the material censored on first publication due to fears of action for libel, defamation and obscenity. Of particular interest are the previously suppressed advertising slogans of the 1930s and, in light of the censorship he experienced, Orwell's ironic choice of surname for Gordon: Comstock.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Bernard Crick

The authoritative biography of George Orwell, written with the cooperation of Orwell's widow. 
 
‘In its thoroughness, and its mastery of a considerable volume of material, this is the definitive biography of Orwell.’ Sunday Times 
 
‘It is hardly worth using up space to declare just how good it is. Different readers will come away from its seventeen pungent and packed chapters with diverse memories of its excellence.’ Guardian

A Life

D. B. John

A propulsive, timely spy thriller from the critically acclaimed author of STAR OF THE NORTH 
 
An explosive conspiracy is on the verge of detonation… 
 
A Korean man is poisoned in broad daylight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. 
 
A Russian intelligence officer is assassinated in a Washington hotel. 
 
And a real-estate mogul has just become the 45th President of the United States. 
 
The world teeters on the brink and three individuals find themselves caught up in the crosshairs: 
 
Jenna, a seasoned CIA officer, whose past missions refuse to stay buried. 
 
Lyosha, a student in Moscow who confronts Vladimir Putin on live TV only to suffer the consequences. 
 
And Eric, a North Korean spy in the heart of the White House who adores the man he is working to undermine: the President. 
 
In a world of shifting allegiances and betrayal, RED STAR DOWN is a global and gripping thriller that explores the intricate web of politics, espionage, and deception during one of the most turbulent periods in recent history.

Red Star Down

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 
 
The year is 1984, and life in Oceania is ruled by the Party. Under the gaze of Big Brother, Winston Smith yearns for intimacy and love - "thought crimes" that, if uncovered, would mean imprisonment, or death. But Winston is not alone in his defiance, and an illicit affair will draw him into the mysterious Brotherhood and the realities of resistance. 
 
Nineteen Eighty-Four has been described as chilling, absorbing, satirical, momentous, prophetic and terrifying. It is all these things, and more. 
 
The Authoritative Text. With an introduction by Robert Harris. 
 
*The jacket of this stunning hardback edition features period artwork by Elizabeth Friedlander, one of Europe's pre-eminent 20th-century graphic designers. Look out for complementary editions of Orwell's essential works Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London.*

Paul Durcan

WINNER OF THE 2014 IRISH BOOK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 
 
O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor was first published in a tiny edition in Dublin in 1975. It was Paul Durcan's first fully-fledged collection, and already displays an astonishingly mature, visionary power, shot through with the surrealism and heart-breaking comedy that have since become his hallmark. It won him the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Now Durcan's readers can discover what they have been missing. The poems are printed in the order he originally intended, and the volume concluded with six poems from his very first collaborative collection, Endsville (1967), with Brian Lynch.

O Westport In The Light Of Asia Minor

Nicci Cloke

'Unique, punchy and super-smart, Her Many Faces is itself so multifaceted, so rich - a courtroom drama, a character study, a social commentary - but it wears each guise with real heart and style' ABIGAIL DEAN 
 
'Beautifully written, experimental, and fast-paced. I’m addicted' GIlLIAN McALLISTER 
 
Daughter. Friend. Lover. Victim. Murderer. Who is the real Katie Cole? 
 
When four wealthy and influential members of London’s most exclusive private club are poisoned, a young waitress is charged with their murder. As the trial grips the nation, five men begin to question how well they really knew her. 
 
There's her father, who remembers the sweet girl growing up in Devon; her childhood friend, who is swept up in her fascination with conspiracy theories; her lover, who wants to distance himself from a young woman with an obsession; her barrister, who knows she's hiding something; and the journalist investigating the case, who is convinced he knows exactly what she is: a cold-blooded killer. 
 
Five men. Five stories. But are they ready to hear hers? 
 
'An ingenious, indignant, beautifully wrought psychological thriller. Nicci Cloke had me fooled repeatedly and I absolutely loved it' ERIN KELLY 
 
'Stunning: so clever, so gripping, so timely. This deserves to be huge' LUCY FOLEY

Her Many Faces

George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist. From his earliest published article in 1928 to his untimely death in 1950, he produced an extraordinary array of short non-fiction that reflected - and illuminated - the fraught times in which he lived and wrote. 'As soon as he began to write something,' comments George Packer in his foreword to this new two-volume collection, 'it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge - in short, to think - as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.' 
 
This collection charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites classics such as 'Shooting an Elephant' with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these narrative essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plain-spoken and brilliantly complex.

Narrative Essays

"A reminder - and an affirmation - of Paul Durcan's singular contribution not just to Irish poetic culture but the broader world of contemporary poetry" Irish Times 
 
For fifty years the poet Paul Durcan has explored and questioned a world both real and imagined. 
 
Steeped in the goings-on of Ireland and preoccupied with its concerns, he has delighted, enriched and unsettled his readers. His prodigious output of more than twenty collections bursts with poems that are courageously personal and passionately spiritual – a body of work that contains multitudes. 
 
‘The great enemy of art is the ego’ says Durcan. ‘It keeps getting in the way. One needs the ego to disappear so that I become you; I become the people walking up and down the street.’ 
 
First published in 1967, Durcan remains the most of companionable of poets. His vivacity and ability to surprise has never been clearer than in this new selection of eighty of his finest poems, published in celebration of his 80th birthday. 
 
EDITED BY NIALL MACMONAGLE 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY COLM TOIBIN

80 at 80

José Eduardo Agualusa

While swimming in the clear blue waters of the Rainbow Hotel, Daniel Benchimol finds a waterproof camera, floating seemingly lost in the sea. He goes on to discover that the camera belongs to Moira, a Mozambican artist famous for a series of photos depicting her own dreams. On seeing the images, Daniel realises that Moira is also the mysterious woman whom he has been dreaming about repeatedly. The two meet, and Daniel becomes involved in a unusual dream experiment with a Brazilian neuroscientist, who's working with Moira on a machine to film and photograph people’s dreams. 
 
Meanwhile, Daniel’s daughter Karinguiri, one of Angola’s young dreamers, is arrested along with six friends for staging a protest during a presidential press conference in Luanda. The group go on hunger strike, attracting worldwide press attention, showing the power of young people when they raise their voices against the regime. 
 
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers is a surreal, vivid novel about the slipperiness of truth and reality, art versus dictatorship, courage versus fear, change and the old order, amidst the politics of Angola's tumultuous past, present and future.

The Society of Reluctant Dreamers

Diogo Mainardi

'The Fall is a moving portrait of a relationship with a child and a place. It is a rare book: by turns heartbreaking, angry and lyrical' – Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare With Amber Eyes. 
 
Step 1: Tito has cerebral palsy. 
 
Step 2: I blame Tito’s cerebral palsy on Pietro Lombardo. 
 
Join Diogo Mainardi and his son Tito in a journey of 424 steps, starting with Tito’s disastrous birth in Venice, in Lombardo’s Renaissance hospital. 
 
It’s a journey full of joy and reflection, and an honest exploration of fatherhood. It’s a journey that follows the arc of Western culture, from Dante Alighieri, Rembrandt van Rijn and Claude Monet to Marcel Proust, Neil Young and Assassin’s Creed, to show how one boy’s fate has been shaped by history. 
 
Above all, it’s a celebration of love and courage, and of the hope and faith we place in our children.

The Fall

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