New Releases by Emma Donoghue

Per festeggiare i 200 anni della nascita di Charlotte Brontë, Tracy Chevalier ha chiesto alle migliori autrici in lingua inglese di scrivere una storia ispirata alla celebre battuta di Jane Eyre: «L’ho sposato, lettore mio». Questo racconto fa parte della raccolta dedicata a Charlotte Brontë: L’ho sposato, lettore mio a cura di TRACY CHEVALIER

Mossa azzardata, lasciarsi baciare da una strega. Ma alle popolari protagoniste delle storie di Emma Donoghue non manca certo il coraggio: il coraggio di perseguire il proprio destino, ma soprattutto di sovvertirlo. Tredici fiabe tradizionali rilette in chiave anticonvenzionale e magicamente intrecciate tra loro: donne (giovani e non) in cerca di un riparo, di potere o di una liberatoria risposta alla propria irrequietezza. Donne che si raccontano le loro storie, in un susseguirsi dal gusto arabeggiante, un gioco di scatole cinesi nel quale la narratrice della storia precedente diviene la destinataria della successiva. Una magica ragnatela di alleanze, a volte infide a volte erotiche, ma sempre imprevedibili. Una riflessione tutta al femminile, quella di Emma Donoghue, che, sulla scia di Anne Sexton e Angela Carter, sceglie la strada della rielaborazione di favole classiche. Ma la sua rilettura è prima di tutto una critica alla tradizione, laddove le fiabe tradizionali si portano dietro tutta una rete di sogni e desideri culturalmente prestabiliti. Così, di fronte a ogni principe azzurro, dovremmo cominciare a chiederci se lo vogliamo davvero, o se è semplicemente ciò che ci hanno insegnato a volere, ciò che gli altri vorrebbero per noi. Una poetica dichiarazione d’indipendenza dedicata a principesse ribelli di ogni età, capaci di riscrivere il proprio lieto fine, dove un bacio infrange l’incantesimo di un destino irreale.

Now a Major Motion Picture starring Brie Larson and William H. Macy #1 International Bestseller Winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean region) Winner of the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. It’s where he was born. It’s where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination-the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma’s clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held since she was nineteen-for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside her own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely . . . Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience-and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

The first collection of plays from Booker Prize and Orange Prize finalist and author of international bestseller Room, Emma Donoghue. Contains the plays Kissing the Witch, Don’t Die Wondering, Trespasses, Ladies and Gentlemen, and I Know My Own Heart KISSING THE WITCH Adapted from her book of thirteen revisionist fairy tales of the same name, this play interweaves four classic plots – Beauty and the Beast, Donkeyskin, the Goose Girl, the Little Mermaid – with an invented one about a desperate girl going to a witch for help. Kissing the Witch finds the gritty in the fantastical, and excavates magic to find what’s really going on. TRESPASSES Set over three days in 1661, Trespasses is inspired by the judge’s own account of one of the tiny handful of witch trials that ever took place in Ireland. It asks why a servant girl who fell into fits would have put the blame on an old beggarwoman – but also, more timeless questions about the clashing cultures that have to share a small island country. Trespasses is about faith and superstition, politics and class, sadism and love. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN This play with songs, set mostly in the dressing rooms of busy vaudeville theatres all over North America, was inspired by a real same-sex wedding that took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1886. It resurrects a ragtag troupe of emigrants - most notably, male impersonator Annie Hindle, ‘a man’s widow and a woman’s widower’, as the tabloids called her. With a light touch, Ladies and Gentleman explores the ways we perform our roles, both on and off stage. I KNOW MY OWN HEART Inspired by the secret coded diaries of Yorkshire gentlewoman Anne Lister, this play subverts all the conventions of Regency romance. Teasing out the entangled lives of mannish, arrogant Lister (nicknamed ''Gentleman Jack'') and three of her many lovers, I Know My Own Heart explores the different choices women made in a time of limits and prohibitions. DON’T DIE WONDERING When a restaurant cook loses her job because of a homophobic customer, she mounts a one-woman picket in protest. The police officer assigned to protect her is her nemesis from schooldays. This one-act comedy, set in a fictional small town, stages a battle between old and new elements of Irish culture.

Life Mask The Honourable Mrs. Damer is a young widow of eccentric tastes, the only female sculptor of her time. The Earl of Derby, inventor of the horse race that bears his name, is the richest man in the House of Lords—and the ugliest. Miss Eliza Farren, born a nobody, now reigns as the Queen of Comedy at Drury Lane Theatre. In a time of looming war and terrorism, of glittering spectacle and financial disasters, the wealthy liberals of the Whig Party work to topple a tyrannical prime minister and a lunatic king. Marriages and friendships stretch or break; political liaisons prove as dangerous as erotic ones; and everyone wears a mask. The Sealed Letter Miss Emily “Fido” Faithfull is a “woman of business” and a spinster pioneer of the British women’s movement, independent of mind but naively trusting of heart. Distracted from her beloved cause by the sudden return of her once-dear friend, the unhappily wed Helen Codrington, Fido is swept up in the intimate details of Helen’s failing marriage to the stodgy Admiral Harry Codrington. What begins as a loyal effort to help a friend explodes into a courtroom drama more sensational than any Hollywood tabloid could invent—with stained clothing, accusations of adultery, counterclaims of rape and a mysterious letter that could destroy more than one life. Based on the details of a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864, The Sealed Letter is a provocative historical drama that is strangely relevant to modern issues surrounding women, marriage, rights and roles.

Als een jonge Franse danseres in 1876 in San Francisco ziet hoe een vriendin van haar wordt doodgeschoten, gaat ze op onderzoek uit.

In this profile, Emma Donoghue tells the story of two eccentric Victorian spinsters: Katherine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913); poets and lovers, who wrote together under the name of Michael Field. They wrote eleven volumes of poetry and thirty historical tragedies, but perhaps their best work - richest in emotional honesty and wit - was the diary that the two women shared for a quarter of a century, and these unpublished journals and letters form the basis for the groundbreaking We are Michael Field. The Michaels lived in a contradictory world of inherited wealth and terrible illness, silly nicknames and religious crises. They preferred men to women, and yet their greatest devotion was saved for their dog. Snobbish, arrogant eccentrics who faced bereavement and death with great courage, the Michaels never lost their appetite for life or their passion for each other.

Sie begegnen sich auf einem Langstreckenflug nach London: Jude Turner und Síle O''Shaughnessy. Es ist Judes erster Flug überhaupt - Reiselust ist ihr fremd. Sie ist im beschaulichen Ireland, Ontario, verwurzelt und betreut dort ein kleines Heimatmuseum. Síle hingegen ist als Flugbegleiterin in ihrem Element. Sie lebt im quirligen Dublin und ist ständig auf Achse. Ihre Begegnung über den Wollken geht keiner der beiden Frauen aus dem Sinn. Sie schreiben sich E-Mails, führen Ferngespräche, treffen sich. Sie verlieben sich ineinander - zwei Frauen, deren Welten unterschiedlicher nicht sein könnten ... "Zarte Landung", die wunderschön erzählte transatlantische Liebesgeschichte, ist von Emma Donoghues persönlichen Erfahrungen inspiriert, die sie als "Zeitzonen-Tango" beschreibt. Es ist nach ihr vierter Roman, der auf Deutsch vorliegt. Unter den Top Ten 2014 der "Besten Bücher aus unabhängigen Verlagen"!

Inspired by a true unsolved crime, Frog Music is a gripping historical novel by Emma Donoghue, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller Room. San Francisco, 1876: a stifling heat wave and smallpox epidemic have engulfed the City. Deep in the streets of Chinatown live three former stars of the Parisian circus: Blanche, now an exotic dancer at the House of Mirrors, her lover Arthur and his companion Ernest. When an eccentric outsider joins their little circle, secrets unravel, changing everything – and leaving one of them dead. A New York Times bestseller, Frog Music is a dark and compelling story of intrigue and murder.

In the late ’70s, convent school teenagers Pen O’Grady and Cara Wall fall in love. They prove themselves to be up to the challenge of a relationship deemed unacceptable in Catholic Ireland—until Cara dies in a car accident. Hood is a bittersweet, complicated love story.

An ad in the students’ union—“2 females seek flatmate. No bigots”—leads Maria to a home with warm Ruth and wickedly funny Jael. But one day, something Maria glimpses by accident forces her to question everything she thought she knew.

Fairytales with a twist from the Man Booker and Orange prize-shortlisted author of Room. In Kissing the Witch, Emma Donoghue unwinds thirteen fairy tales and writes them anew: Cinderella forsakes the handsome prince and runs off with the fairy godmother, Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror, and Snow White is awakened from slumber by the bittersweet fruit of an unnamed desire. In these stories, Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances – sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.

The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue''s stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress. With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.

Égarés est un recueil de quatorze nouvelles structuré en trois parties qui marquent les étapes de l''errance: le départ, la route et l''arrivée. Avec force détails historiques, l''auteur de Room nous entraîne du Massachussetts puritain au New Jersey révolutionnaire, en passant par la Louisiane belliqueuse, jusqu''aux bas-fonds de Toronto. Par-delà les époques - les nouvelles courent du XVIIe au XXe siècle -, elle dresse le portrait de personnages fascinants et envoûtants: immigrés à la recherche d''une vie meilleure, voleurs de grands chemins, chercheurs d''or, esclaves en quète de liberté, gardiens de zoo, cow-girls, et mères célibataires obligées d''abandonner leur progéniture. Ces histoires extraordinairement vraies acquièrent sous la plume d''Emma Donoghue une dimension universelle, de vie et d''humanité. On croise ainsi l''éléphant Jumbo obligé de s''engager dans un cirque, le bien célèbre Morissey, bandit devenu agent double sur le point d''arrèter les plus grands faussaires de l''histoire, ou une fausse veuve éplorée qui réussit à faire croire que son mari est mort pour mieux s''enfuir avec son argent. Emma Donoghue montre la preuve de son talent d''écrivain: en évoquant la fuite de l''homme en quète d''une autre existence, et en livrant le portrait de générations obligées à l''exil, elle montre à quel point le voyage est le lieu de la découverte de soi.

In het 19e eeuwse Engeland doet een echtscheiding vol schandalen de vriendschap tussen twee heel verschillende vrouwen wankelen.

Para Jack, um esperto menino de 5 anos, o quarto é o único mundo que conhece. É onde ele nasceu e cresceu, e onde vive com sua mãe, enquanto eles aprendem, leem, comem, dormem e brincam. À noite, sua mãe o fecha em segurança no guarda-roupa, onde ele deve estar dormindo quando o velho Nick vem visitá-la. O quarto é a casa de Jack, mas, para sua mãe, é a prisão onde o velho Nick a mantém há sete anos. Com determinação, criatividade e um imenso amor maternal, a mãe criou ali uma vida para Jack. Mas ela sabe que isso não é suficiente, para nenhum dos dois. Então, ela elabora um ousado plano de fuga, que conta com a bravura de seu filho e com uma boa dose de sorte. O que ela não percebe, porém, é como está despreparada para fazer o plano funcionar.

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper''s yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

Una extraordinaria y cruda historia de amor y supervivencia. La novela en la que se basa la película ganadora del Óscar a la mejor actriz. «En parte libro de aventuras infantiles, en parte thriller adulto... Un libro que te romperá el corazón.» The Irish Times Para Jack, un niño de cinco años, la Habitación es el mundo entero, ellugar donde nació, donde come, juega y aprende. Por la noche, Mamá lo pone a dormir en el Armario, por si viene el Viejo Nick... Para su madre, la Habitación es el cubículo donde lleva siete años encerrada. Con gran tesón e ingenio, ha creado en ese reducido espacio una vida para su hijo, y su amor por él es lo único que le permite soportar lo insoportable. Pero la curiosidad de uno crece a la par que la desesperación de la otra. Solo queda urdir la huida, un plan más arriesgado de lo que ambos pueden llegar a imaginar. La habitación fue finalista del Premio Booker. La crítica ha dicho... «La Habitación es uno de los libros más profundamente conmovedores que he leído en mucho tiempo.» John Boyne, autor de El niño con el pijama de rayas «Una novela memorable... Una voz única para hablar acerca del amor y una mirada fresca y reveladora del mundo en que vivimos.» The New York Times Book Review «Donoghueha construido un relato que avanza con el suspense de un thriller... Difícil de abandonar e intensamente conmovedor.» The Sunday Times «Una obra de arte muy original... Una novela poderosa, de una belleza oscura y sumamente reveladora.» Michael Cunningham, autor de Las horas «La prosa de Emma Donoghue es pura alquimia, capaz de convertir la inocencia en horror y el horror en ternura. La Habitación se lee de un tirón y, cuando se acaba y levantas la vista, aunque el mundo parece el mismo, te sientes diferente, y esa sensación perdura durante días.» Audrey Niffenegger «Entendida como una fábula del amor madre-hijo, así como un antídoto a la lascivia que suele impregnar la novela negra, supone todo un triunfo y merece cosechar un gran éxito.» The Daily Telegraph «Una novela como ninguna otra... Un bello relato, absorbente y sincero.» The Observe

Het is Jacks verjaardag, hij wordt al vijf. Jack leeft met Mam in Kamer, waarvan de deur op slot zit. Kamer heeft alleen een dakraam en is elf vierkante meter groot. Jack is dol op televisiekijken; Dora de Explorer is zijn vriendin, maar hij weet dat wat hij op televisie ziet niet echt is. Alleen hijzelf is echt, en Mam, en de dingen in Kamer. En Ouwe Nick die ’s nachts vaak komt. Dan zit Jack in de kast en kraakt het bed. Op een dag vertelt Mam hem dat er buiten Kamer ook een echte wereld is. Een wereld waarmee Jack na hun ontsnapping zal kennismaken. Kamer is een beklemmende en fascinerende roman die je nooit meer vergeet. Verfilmd als ''Room''.

From a writer of astonishing versatility and erudition, the much-admired literary critic, novelist, short-story writer, and scholar (“Dazzling”—The Washington Post; “One of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any time, any atmosphere, and make it her own” —The Observer), a book that explores the little-known literary tradition of love between women in Western literature, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Agatha Christie, and many more. Emma Donoghue brings to bear all her knowledge and grasp to examine how desire between women in English literature has been portrayed, from schoolgirls and vampires to runaway wives, from cross-dressing knights to contemporary murder stories. Donoghue looks at the work of those writers who have addressed the “unspeakable subject,” examining whether such desire between women is freakish or omnipresent, holy or evil, heartwarming or ridiculous as she excavates a long-obscured tradition of (inseparable) friendship between women, one that is surprisingly central to our cultural history. Donoghue writes about the half-dozen contrasting girl-girl plots that have been told and retold over the centuries, metamorphosing from generation to generation. What interests the author are the twists and turns of the plots themselves and how these stories have changed—or haven’t—over the centuries, rather than how they reflect their time and society. Donoghue explores the writing of Sade, Diderot, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, H. Rider Haggard, Elizabeth Bowen, and others and the ways in which the woman who desires women has been cast as not quite human, as ghost or vampire. She writes about the ever-present triangle, found in novels and plays from the last three centuries, in which a woman and man compete for the heroine’s love . . . about how—and why—same-sex attraction is surprisingly ubiquitous in crime fiction, from the work of Wilkie Collins and Dorothy L. Sayers to P. D. James. Finally, Donoghue looks at the plotline that has dominated writings about desire between women since the late nineteenth century: how a woman’s life is turned upside down by the realization that she desires another woman, whether she comes to terms with this discovery privately, “comes out of the closet,” or is publicly “outed.” She shows how this narrative pattern has remained popular and how it has taken many forms, in the works of George Moore, Radclyffe Hall, Patricia Highsmith, and Rita Mae Brown, from case-history-style stories and dramas, in and out of the courtroom, to schoolgirl love stories and rebellious picaresques. A revelation of a centuries-old literary tradition—brilliant, amusing, and until now, deliberately overlooked.

A girl thought to be a boy steals her sister''s skirt, while a boy thought to be a girl refuses to wear a cornflower blue dress. One boy''s love of a soldier leads to the death of a stranger. The present takes a bittersweet journey into the past when a man revisits the summer school where he had "an accidental romance." And a forgotten mother writes a poignant letter to the teenage daughter she hasn''t seen for fourteen years. Poised between the past and the future are the stories of now. In nontraditional narratives, short stories, and brief graphics, tales of anticipation and regret, eagerness and confusion present distinctively modern views of love, sexuality, and gender identification. Together, they reflect the vibrant possibilities available for young people learning to love others—and themselves—in today''s multifaceted and quickly changing world.

An “engaging . . . entertaining journey,” Landing explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance love in the digital age (The New York Times Book Review). Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who’s traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to Ireland, Ontario, the tiny town in which she was born and raised. When Jude meets Síle on her first transatlantic plane trip, the spark between them is instant. After a coffee shared at Heathrow Airport, both women return to their lives—but neither can forget their encounter. Over the next year, Jude and Síle connect through emails, phone calls, letters, and the occasional visit. But no matter how passionate, every long-distance relationship comes to a crossroads, because you can’t have a happily ever after when the one you love is a world apart . . . “[Donoghue] explores with a light, sure touch the subject of desire across distances of various kinds: generational, cultural, even spiritual.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] charming tale.” —Kirkus Reviews

Based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864, "The Sealed Letter" is a riveting, provocative drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, Victorian style.

A fire-eater, a voluptuous masseuse, and a naked game of tag in a forest at twilight — it could only be Best Lesbian Erotica 2007, the latest, boldest edition of the hottest lesbian erotica series in America. In Andrea Miller’s “Heavenly Bodies,” an adventurous woman sleeps her way through the zodiac, her twelve lovers including romantic Cancer, exhibitionist Leo, and an unforgettably raw, dominant Scorpio. Peggy Munson twists and teases the canon in “Subtexts,” a hardcore butch-femme re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood, Moby-Dick, and other tales that already sound dirty. Edited by award-winning author, adult film director, and sex educator Tristan Taormino, and selected and introduced by Emma Donoghue, these fearless stories will stir your senses and test your erotic boundaries.

In this sparkling collection of 19 stories, the bestselling author of Slammerkin returns to contemporary affairs, exposing the private dilemmas that result from public controversies.