New Releases by ALI SMITH

De nieuwe roman van Ali Smith, Lente, is een zeldzaam meesterwerk, dat deel uitmaakt van de (los van elkaar te lezen) seizoenencyclus, een van de origineelste literaire series van onze tijd. Wat is de verbindende factor tussen Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, het heden, het verleden, het noorden, het zuiden, het oosten, het westen, een man die treurt om een verloren tijd, een vrouw die verstrikt zit in de moderne tijd? De lente. De grote koppelaar. Met oog voor de migratie van verhalen in de loop van de tijd en voortbordurend op Pericles, een van de meest resistente en speelse stukken van Shakespeare, vertelt Ali Smith het onmogelijke relaas van een onmogelijke tijd. In een tijd van muren en lockdown gooit Smith de deur open. De tijd waarin we leven verandert de natuur. Zal deze tijd ook de natuur van verhalen veranderen? Hoop doet leven. Ali Smith werd in 1962 geboren in Inverness, Schotland. Vier van haar romans, waaronder Herfst, werden genomineerd voor de Man Booker Prize. Ze woont in Cambridge. Over Lente: ''Een verhaal over onze tijd. (...) Geniet ervan, want er is nog maar één aflevering te gaan.'' Evening Standard ''Lente is een verbluffende prestatie en een boek voor alle seizoenen.'' Independent Over Ali Smith: ''De grote klasse van Ali Smith is dat ze over de acute, drukke, veranderende wereld schrijft, zonder ooit intellectualistisch abstract of gezocht politiek te worden.'' Joost de Vries, De Groene Amsterdammer

Now there''s a girl who understands things, the crow thought. When two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, die in a vicious battle over the crown of Thebes, the new ruler, King Creon, decides that Eteocles will be buried as a hero, while Polynices will be left outside as a feast for the dogs and crows. But the young Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, will defy the cruel tyrant and attempt to give her brother the burial he deserves. This simple act of love and bravery will set in motion a terrible course of events that will reverberate across the entire kingdom... Dave Eggers says, of the series: "I couldn''t be prouder to be a part of it. Ever since Alessandro conceived this idea I thought it was brilliant. The editions that they''ve complied have been lushly illustrated and elegantly designed."

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper''s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf''s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One''s Own. Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what''s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a "substitute for living" because she was "forbidden to scamper on the grass". Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES AND GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2017 From the 2015 Baileys Prize-winning author of How to Be Both: An unconventional love story playing across the boundaries of time and history. . . The first of four novels in a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories. Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art—via a bit of very contemporary skulduggery and skull-diggery—Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means. Autumn is part of the quartet Seasonal: four stand-alone novels, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are), exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take and in our ways with narrative.

Ein Mädchen entdeckt im Rotlichtviertel von Amsterdam ganz unerwartet das berauschende Gefühl sexueller Freiheit. Eine Kinokartenabreißerin träumt sich aus ihrem Leben heraus und in die unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten der Filme hinein. Ein Fotograf besucht seine alte schottische Heimat und lernt von einer Neunjährigen, auf Dächer zu klettern und Steine übers Wasser springen zu lassen ... Unbändige Lebenslust spricht aus den Erzählungen der schottischen Autorin Ali Smith, die Freude an der Entdeckung der Welt, die Begeisterung über Worte und ihre Kraft, der Rausch des Aufbruchs und der erwachenden Sehnsucht, das unglaubliche Glücksgefühl, Liebe zu finden. Und wie gut es ist, eine Frau zu sein.

Una adolescente descubre una libertad sexual inesperada durante un viaje a Ámsterdam. Una mujer atrapada en una cena se da de bruces con una obsesión desagradable. En los relatos de Ali Smith asoma el deseo, el recuerdo, la ambigüedad sexual y la imaginación. Bajo la desnuda luz del trastorno, las personas que los padecen siguen hallando conexiones, palabras que flotan en la calle, amor en sitios insospechados. Ali Smith nos muestra cómo las cosas toman forma y cómo se vienen abajo. Con toques levísimos, afilados y lúcidos, Ali Smith nos cuenta historias excelentes sobre la vida y el amor. Amor libre obtuvo el Saltire First Book Award, 1995.

Traduit de l''anglais par Laetitia Devaux. Georgia (dite George), une adolescente de seize ans qui vient de perdre sa mère, est en admiration devant un tableau d''un peintre méconnu : le San Vincenzo Ferreri de Francesco del Cossa, exposé à la National Gallery de Londres. Ce qu''elle ignore, c''est qu''elle est justement observée par le fantôme de ce peintre, catapulté en plein vingt-et-unième siècle. Mais le fantôme de Francesco del Cossa ne se contente pas d''observer George : il porte sur le monde contemporain son regard d''homme de la Renaissance tout en évoquant sa vie et les raisons qui l''ont conduit à tomber dans l''oubli. Francesco serait en réalité une femme déguisée en homme pour pouvoir vivre de son art... Construit comme un diptyque, Comment être double est le portrait original et émouvant de deux personnages marqués par l''amour et l''injustice. Dans ce jeu de miroir vertigineux, Ali Smith explore les fluctuations de l''identité.

Guanyadora del Whitbread Award i finalista del Man Booker Prize, L''accidental és l''espectacular novel·la que Ali Smith escriu sobre una nena de 12 anys, la seva família i els seus secrets. Una família s''instal·la a una casa de camp a Norfolk durant tres mesos perquè la dona i mare de la família pugui acabar la seva nova obra. Després arriba l''Amber, una dona de qui no saben res però que modifica les seves rutines i la seva realitat. L''Amber oferirà noves perspectives sobre les seves vides i els seus secrets però... Qui és ella? A qui han obert la porta de casa seva? Atrevidament intel·ligent i escrita amb una irresistible aroma de lirisme i saviesa, L''accidental explora la naturalesa de la veritat, el paper i la necessitat dels canvis i el transformador poder de saber explicar històries.

From the acclaimed, award-winning author: Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we’ve read over our lives—our own personal libraries—make of us? What does the unraveling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith’s new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Woven between the stories are conversations with writers and readers reflecting on the essential role that libraries have played in their lives. At a time when public libraries around the world face threats of cuts and closures, this collection stands as a work of literary activism—and as a wonderful read from one of our finest authors.

Escritas com paixão, as obras de Ali Smith são únicas. Aclamadas, discutidas e premiadas, renderam um séquito de leitores à escocesa, sensação literária da contemporaneidade. Como ser as duas coisas não é diferente. Na Inglaterra, o livro vendeu 150 mil exemplares no primeiro ano feito raro para um romance literário. A versatilidade da arte é o tema por trás das trajetórias de amor e injustiça que aqui se espelham dissolvendo gêneros, formas, tempos, realidades e ficções. Com técnica análoga à pintura de afrescos, Smith cria uma original história de duplos, protagonizada por um pintor renascentista dos anos 1460 e uma neta dos anos 1960.

In einem alten Hotel in einer schottischen Stadt treffen fünf sehr unterschiedliche Frauen aufeinander: die Journalistin Penny, die im Hotel übernachtet, die warmherzige Rezeptionistin Lise, die Obdachlose Else, die vor dem Hotel bettelt, und die junge Clare, die herausfinden will, was mit ihrer Schwester Sara wirklich passiert ist. Denn das fünfte weibliche Wesen, um das es hier geht, ist der Geist des Zimmermädchens Sara, das vor kurzem im Hotel verunglückt ist, und dieser Geist versucht starrsinnig, am Leben festzuhalten, was diese eine Nacht für alle fünf Frauen zu einer ganz besonderen macht ...

"A re-imagining of the wonderfully bonkers, truly innovative and still very much culturally relevant Don Quixote. With newly commissioned photography by Jacob Robinson and beautiful design by Fraser Muggeridge, here we champion the book for its progressive fantasy-laden story and collapsible narrative and celebrate Don Quixote as a contemporary classic cultural object." -- Publisher''s website.

A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in Free Love are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith shows how things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • A novel all about art''s versatility, borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take. "Cements Smith’s reputation as one of the finest and most innovative of our contemporary writers. By some divine alchemy, she is both funny and moving; she combines intellectual rigor with whimsy" —The Los Angeles Review of Books One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century How to be both is a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance. Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A NOTE TO THE READER: Who says stories reach everybody in the same order? This novel can be read in two ways, and the eBook provides you with both. You can choose which way to read the novel by simply clicking on one of two icons—CAMERA or EYES. The text is exactly the same in both versions; the narratives are just in a different order. The ebook is produced this way so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which icon you select, the book will read: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. (Your friend may be reading it the other way around.) Enjoy the adventure. (Having both versions in the same file is intentional.)

Medardo Fraile, born in Madrid in 1925, is considered to be one of Spain''s finest short-story writers. The collection Cuentos de verdad (on which this anthology is based), won him the 1965 Premio Nacional de la Crítica. While his stories have appeared in translation in other story collections, this is the first complete anthology of his work to appear in English Like Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, Medardo Fraile is a chronicler of the minor tragedies and triumphs of ordinary life, and each short tale opens up an entire exquisite world.

“A stimulating combination of literary criticism, essay, and fiction” (The New Yorker) from the incomparable Ali Smith Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world—it is about the things art can do, the things art is made of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. A magical hybrid that refuses to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. Ali Smith’s heady powers as a novelist and short story writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.

We live with the idea of sin every day – from the greatest transgressions to the tiniest misdemeanours. But surely the concept was invented for an age where divine retribution and eternal punishment dominated the collective consciousness? In this lively collection of new writing, Nicola Barker, Dylan Evans, David Flusfeder, Todd McEwen, Martin Rowson, John Sutherland and Ali Smith go head to head with the capital vices to explore what we really mean when we talk about sin. The resulting mixture of erudite and playful essays and startling new fiction might not make you a better person, but it will certainly give you pause for thought when you’ re next laying the law down or – heaven forfend – about to do something beyond the pale yourself.

Durante una cena in un’elegante casa di Greenwich un amico di un amico dei padroni di casa si alza da tavola e non torna più. Si scopre che si è chiuso nella stanza degli ospiti e non ha la minima intenzione di uscire. Perché ha preso questa decisione? Cosa spera di ottenere? E soprattutto chi è Miles Garth?Gen, la padrona di casa, si mette alla ricerca di amici e parenti del suo ospite indesiderato che possano convincerlo a desistere dal suo proposito inspiegabile.Comincia così una carrellata di personaggi, ricordi, situazioni buffe o commoventi che prendono spunto dalla presenza/assenza di Miles, ma in realtà sono un’occasione per la scrittrice di esplorare vari aspetti della vita quotidiana nell’Inghilterra di oggi.Una scrittura divertente e divertita, una girandola di giochi di parole e rimandi che vanno da Shakespeare al punk passando per i musical e le canzoni dell’Eurofestival.Il nuovo splendido romanzo di Ali Smith cerca di rispondere a una domanda semplicissima: perché siamo qui?

BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Forget room service: this is a riotous elegy, a deadpan celebration of colliding worlds, and a spirited defense of love. Blending incisive wit with surprising compassion, Hotel World is a wonderfully invigorating, life-affirming book. Five people: four are living; three are strangers; two are sisters; one, a teenage hotel chambermaid, has fallen to her death in a dumbwaiter. But her spirit lingers in the world, straining to recall things she never knew. And one night all five women find themselves in the smooth plush environs of the Global Hotel, where the intersection of their very different fates make for this playful, defiant, and richly inventive novel.

When Miles Garth locks himself in an upstairs room during a dinner party and communicates only through notes slipped under the door, his involuntary hosts beg help from childhood friend Anna, who is unwittingly thrust into the family''s surreal world. By the Whitbread Award-winning author of The Accidental.

Talking her way into the Norfolk cottage that the Smart family is renting for the summer, Amber, an enigmatic con artist, insinuates herself into the lives of Eve, her husband Michael, and their children.

“Tu non sei la prima persona che è stata ferita dall’amore. Non sei la prima persona che ha bussato alla mia porta. Non sei la prima persona che ho cercato di impressionare recitando brillantemente la parte della parte di quella che non si lascia impressionare. Non sei la prima persona che mi fa ridere. Non sei la prima persona che ho fatto ridere. Non sei la prima persona punto. Ma sei la persona in questo momento. E io sono la persona in questo momento. Noi siamo le persone in questo momento. E questo basta, no?”Una donna di mezz’età ha una straniante conversazione con la se stessa quattordicenne. Un’ignara cliente di un supermercato si trova nel carrello un neonato angelico e paffuto, che la investe con un fiume di insulti e oscenità. Coppie in perenne, precario equilibrio tra amore e disamore reinventano il proprio passato narrandosi primi incontri immaginari. In questi racconti, dove l''atto di raccontare è sempre più metafora di un gesto d''amore, Ali Smith riflette sulla natura stessa della short story come storia d’amore, con i suoi paradossi, le sue delicate verità, i suoi voli di fantasia. In un continuo rimescolamento del confine tra realtà e fantasia, La prima persona parla con grande naturalezza al cuore, alla testa, al corpo. Sempre giocosamente intellettuale, ma anche toccante e divertente, Ali Smith esplora le strade, le ragioni e i meccanismi universali della necessità di raccontare.Ali Smith ha un talento speciale per scoprire inaspettati lampi di bellezza e humour nella vita di tutti i giorni.“The Daily Telegraph”