'Beautiful and deep ... a sumptuous treat for any book lover' The Independent'Food for short story lovers everywhere' Irish Times*A major celebration of the French short story and Spectator Book of the Year*The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. The first volume spans four hundred years, taking the reader from the sixteenth century to the 'golden age' of the fin de siècle. Its pages are populated by lovers, phantoms, cardinals, labourers, enchanted statues, gentleman burglars, retired bureaucrats, panthers and parrots, in a cacophony of styles and voices. From the affairs of Madame de Lafayette to the polemic realism of Victor Hugo, the supernatural mystery of Guy de Maupassant to the dark sensuality of Rachilde, this is the place to start for lovers of French...

"A significant literary achievement that also happens to be a terrific page-turner."- Jonathan Lee"Elegantly written, darkly entertaining."- John Banville"An extraordinary writer of great compassion . . . Stunning."- Denise MinaIn the aftermath of Brexit, the body of a young woman is found by the river Thames, and a neighbor, a retired teacher from Chapleton College, is arrested. An eccentric loner-intellectual, shy, a fastidious dresser with expensive tastes-he is the perfect candidate for a media monstering.In custody he is interviewed by two detectives: the circumspect Ander, and his workaday foil, Gary. Ander is particularly watchful now, because the man across the table is someone he knows-someone he hasn't seen in nearly thirty years. Determined to salvage the truth as ex-pupils and colleagues line up against the accused, he must face a story from decades back, from his own time as a Chapleton student, at...

Winner of the 2014 Duff Cooper Prize. Winner of the 2015 Welsh Book of the Year Award. Shortlisted for the 2015 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Ackerley prize. Longlisted for the 2014 Thwaites Wainwright Prize. Disarming, eloquent and illuminating, this meditation on place, time and memory, could only have been written by a poet, or a novelist, or a professor. Happily, Patrick McGuinness is all three, and Other People's Countries is a marvel: a stunning piece of lyrical writing, rich in narrative and character - full of fresh ways of looking at how we grow up, how we start to make sense of the world. This book evolved out of stories the author told his children: stories about the Belgian border town of Bouillon, where his mother came from, and where he has been going three times a year since he was a child - first with his parents and now with his son and daughter. This town of eccentrics, of charm, menace and wonder, is re-created beautifully - 'Most of my childhood,' he says, 'feels more real to me now than it did then'. For all its sharp specifics, though, this is a book about the common, universal concerns of childhood and the slowly developing deep sense of place that is the bedrock for our memories. Alert and affectionate, full of great curiosity and humour, Other People's Countries has all the depth and complexity of its own subject - memory - and is an unfashionably distilled, resonant book: unusual and exquisite.**