New Releases by Jim Crace

eden opens with a summons. The gardeners of eden are called by their masters, the angels, to see a dead body. It is that of a bird, a creature who has strayed beyond the garden walls. The garden''s inhabitants live an eternal and unblemished life - surrounded by bountiful fields, orchards and lakes, a place where the lord''s bidding is done. But outside, where there is poverty and sickness and death, this bird has met a fate that is beyond their imagining.For the gardeners, this summons is a warning. Because something is wrong in eden. Years after the fall of Adam and Eve, a woman called Tabi has escaped, and the angels fear further rebellion. They know gardener Ebon and Jamin, the angel with the broken wing, would both follow Tabi anywhere, would risk the world outside if only they could find her. Perhaps another fall is coming . . .Deliciously intriguing and utterly propulsive, eden by Jim Crace is both a love story and a song to freedom, a novel that toys with creation myth and asks, where does authority lie? Who commands fear? And what - outside of hallowed ground - is an angel but a bird?''One of our most original and inventive novelists'' - Observer

Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is viciously attacked by an intruder in his own courtyard—bitten and scratched. He insists his assailant was neither man nor animal. Soon, Busi’s account of what happened is being embellished to fan the flames of old rumor—of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest. It is also used to spark new controversy, inspiring claims that something must finally be done about the town’s poor, whose numbers have been growing. In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change.

As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. A trio of outsiders - two men and a dangerously magnetic woman - arrives on the woodland borders triggering a series of events that will see Walter Thirsk''s village unmade in just seven days: the harvest blackened by smoke and fear, cruel punishment meted out to the innocent, and allegations of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of Walter''s story, and he will be the only man left to tell it ...

Victor, an eighty-year-old multimillionaire, surveys his empire from the remoteness of his cloud-capped penthouse. Expensively insulated from the outside world, he nonetheless finds that memories of his impoverished childhood will not be kept so easily at bay. Focusing on the one area of vitality and chaos that remains in the streets below him, he formulates a plan to leave a mark on the city – one as indelible and disruptive as the mark the city left on him.

November, 1836. A fierce gale beaches an American steamer off the English coast, injuring an African slave below decks and eventually disgorging 300 head of cattle and an inn-ful of rowdy American sailors into a hardscrabble fishing village. The same storm drives into port a ship from London, bearing one Aymer Smith, the foolish well-intentioned prig who will deprive the town of its livelihood, free the American slave, and set into motion a whole series of unforeseeable, tragicomic events. Chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1995, Signals of Distress, Jim Crace''s fourth novel, once again displays the author''s gift for inventing richly strange and believable worlds that uncannily foretell our own.

Set in Texas and the suburbs of England, All That Follows is a novel in which tender, unheroic moments triumph over the more strident and aggressive facets of our age. British jazzman Leonard Lessing spent a memorable yet unsuccessful few days in Austin, Texas, trying to seduce a woman he fancied. During his stay, he became caught up in her messy life, which included a new lover, a charismatic but carelessly violent man named Maxie. Eighteen years later, Maxie enters Leonard''s life again, but this time in England, where he is armed and holding hostages. Leonard must decide whether to sit silently by as the standoff unfolds or find the courage to go to the crime scene where he could potentially save lives, as only someone who knows Maxie can. The lives of two mothers and two daughters - all strikingly independent and spirited - hang in the balance. All That Follows provides moving and surprising insights into the conflict between our private and public lives and redefines heroism in this new century. It is a masterful work one of England''s brightest literary lights.

«Jim Crace es un escritor que habla de cosas livianas, pero lo hace de forma siempre sutil y sorprendente, una superficie titilante sobre quietas profundidades» (Washington Post).Jim Crace es uno de los grandes autores británicos contemporáneos que todavía quedan por descubrir en España. Lennie sopla es una novela cuya acción se sitúa en el año 2024, en un mundo en el que las clases medias conducen coches eléctricos de propiedad comunitaria. En vísperas de su 50 cumpleaños, el saxofonista Leonard Lessing es testimonio de un acontecimiento mediático: un secuestro se emite en directo por televisión y él reconoce inmediatamente al secuestrador, Maxie Lermontov, un anarquista ruso-canadiense con quien había congeniado a principios del siglo XXI. Leonard se ve en una encrucijada, debe escoger entre ser un simple espectador, un socialista de sofá, como le recrimina siempre su esposa, o pasar a la acción y revelar a la policía la identidad de su antiguo amigo.

Crace’s second novel confirmed his status as a writer of great imagination and skill. Set at the twilight of the Stone Age, a young man elects himself the village storyteller, and hunts restlessly, far and wide, for inspiration. But the information he finds and the people he meets warn of the advent of a new age and the coming of a metal that will change their community’s life irrevocably.

On its first publication over twenty years ago, this captivating novel marked the arrival of one of the most imaginative minds at work: a writer capable of transporting his readers to a strange and wonderful landscape while revealing the humanity within the mirage.

During the years of America’s ascendancy, the great ships brought waves of immigrants to the promised land. In sight of the Statute of Liberty, the huddled masses disembarked in search of the American dream. In the imagined future, the great ships play a different role. In a work of outstanding originality, Jim Crace’s The Pesthouse envisions a future America in ruins and a reversal of history: desperate Americans seeking passage to the promised land of Europe. Crace’s future United States is a lawless wasteland. The economy collapses, industry ceases, and the remaining populace returns to subsistence farming. The only hope rests with reaching the east coast and obtaining passage by ship to Europe. Like many Americans, Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, leave their farm to begin the long trek east. Within sight of their goal, Franklin is forced, by an enflamed knee, to stop. While Jackson continues forward, Franklin seeks rest in a seemingly abandoned stone building in a forest. Inside, Jackson discovers Margaret. Margaret is feverish with a deadly illness and is confined to the Pesthouse with little hope of recovery. Franklin should flee. Instead, he is drawn to Margaret and stays by her side while she sweats out the fever. After her recovery, Margaret joins Franklin on the journey east. This journey is fraught with danger. Rule-of-law no longer exists and the land is plagued by roaming bandits and slave traders. The threat of danger slowly draws Margaret and Franklin closer to each other. A bond of love begins to form. They also draw comfort from joining a group of like-minded pilgrims. The illusion of safety is soon shattered. While resting from a day of travel, the group is taken captive by mounted bandits. Franklin is taken as a slave. On account of her recent illness, Margaret is spared along with an elderly couple and a baby. Margaret must continue on without Franklin. A bewildered Margaret slowly pushes eastward with the elderly couple and the baby. She is eventually separated from them and must take sole responsibility for the baby. With hope fading, Margaret stumbles upon the refuge of the Ark; a religious community which provides food and shelter in exchange for denouncing all metal technologies. Margaret accepts the laws of the Ark and is allowed to enter with her baby. While safe, Margaret secretly hopes to be reunited with Franklin. Their paths cross again under tragic circumstances. The Ark is attacked by the same mounted bandits that enslaved Franklin. While the Ark is looted and the community massacred, Margaret and her baby escape. They are reunited with Franklin by chance following a slave uprising in the vicinity of the Ark. Narrowly escaping their pursuers, Franklin, Margaret and the baby continue the journey to the East coast. Upon finally reaching their destination, the dream is shattered. Margaret discovers there is no room for women with young children on the ships bound to Europe. There is no choice but to turn back. With the end of one dream a new one is born. Inspired by their growing love, Franklin and Margaret decide to return west, with the baby, as a family. Jim Crace concludes “going westward, they would go free.”

Jim Crace''s novel is the brilliantly imagined story of Christ''s forty days in the wilderness, a tale of three men, two women, and a curious wanderer whose peculiar fate is transformed into legend. Dazzling, gritty, and utterly compelling, Quarantine is a work at once timeless and timely - a parable for the ages.

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The winner of the National Book Critics'' Circle Award and the Whitbread Novel of the Year charts the sexual history of a loving, baffled man, the sexual emancipation of a city, and the sexual ambiguities of humankind.

In the theatres and the restaurants of the celebrated City of Kisses, timid actor Felix Dern is famous and admired... for his looks... for his voice... and for his unblemished private life. But ''Lix'' feels besieged. His perfect life has been blighted since his teens... for every woman that he sleeps with bears his child. So, now it is Mouetta''s turn. Their baby''s due in May. Another child? To be so fertile is a curse... Raunchy, revelatory and beautifully refined, Six charts the sexual history of a loving, baffled man, the sexual emancipation of a city, and the sexual ambiguities of humankind.

Winner of the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for "Being Dead, " Crace is known for his finely honed style. Here he gets to work really close to the bone, producing 60 brief flights of fantasy on appetite, food and objects of desire.

Dans les dunes où, trente ans plus tôt, ils ont fait l''amour pour la première fois, Joseph et Celice, un couple de zoologistes marins, vont trouver la mort. L''endroit est isolé, les corps, avant d''être découverts, resteront plusieurs jours exposés aux intempéries. Abandonnés aux assauts des cohortes d''insectes, vers, crabes et mouettes qui peuplent la plage, les cadavres se décomposent et subissent des dégradations successives. Et tandis que la mort opère ses ravages, Jim Crace retrace l''existence des deux scientifiques et livre une réflexion sur le vieillissement, l''usure des tissus, le relâchement des muscles, l''érosion des sentiments. Il en résulte une magnifique célébration de la vie et de l''amour, tantôt lyrique, tantôt hyperréaliste, qui nous renvoie à chaque instant à nous-mêmes et à notre propre vulnérabilité.

A National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner From the author of Quarantine comes Being Dead, Jim Crace''s haunting novel about love, death, and the afterlife. Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon. A couple, naked, married almost thirty years, are lying murdered in the dunes. "Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell--just look at them--that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."