Country - A Novel

Michael Hughes

Sinossi

Published to ravishing acclaim in the UK, a fierce and suspenseful reimagining of Homer’s Iliad set in mid-1990s Northern Ireland—a heart pounding tale of honor and revenge that “explodes with verbal invention, rapid juxtaposition, brutality and fun” (Times Literary Supplement). 
Northern Ireland, 1996. 
After twenty-five years of vicious conflict, the IRA and the British have agreed to an uneasy ceasefire as a first step towards lasting peace. But, faced with the prospect that decades of savage violence and loss have led only to smiles and handshakes, those on the ground in the border country question whether it really is time to pull back—or quite the opposite. 
When an IRA man’s wife turns informer, he and his brother gather their comrades for an assault on the local army base. But old grudges boil over, and the squad's feared sniper, Achill, refuses to risk his life to defend another man’s pride. As the gang plots without him, the British SAS are sent to crush the rogue terror cell before it can wreck the fragile truce and drag the region back to the darkest days of the Troubles. Meanwhile, Achill’s young protégé grabs his chance to join the fray in his place… 
Inspired by the oldest war story of them all, Michael Hughes’s virtuoso novel explores the brutal glory of armed conflict, the cost of Ireland’s most uncivil war, and the bitter tragedy of those on both sides who offer their lives to defend the dream of country.

Disponibile da: 30/09/2020.

Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

Tell-Tale Heart The (Unabridged)

Edgar Allan Poe

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is relayed by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity while simultaneously describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, and he hides the body by dismembering it, and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's feelings of guilt, or a mental disturbance, result in him hearing a thumping sound, which he interprets as the dead man's beating heart.

Mostra libro

By the Rule of Contrary...

L. M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 - April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.By the Rule of Contrary: "Look here, Burton," said old John Ellis in an ominous tone of voice, "I want to know if what that old busybody of a Mary Keane came here today gossiping about is true. If it is well, I've something to say about the matter!

Mostra libro

Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.
Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra", now part of Chile, which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.
Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade.
Famous works of the author Daniel Defoe:
Robinson Crusoe, Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress.

Mostra libro

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids...

Rainer Maria Rilke

This remarkable book is the only novel by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the greatest German-language poet of his time. It is, in a sense, a true curiosity - dark and intense - and possesses, not surprisingly, strong elements of autobiography.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has even been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing. He saw the sick, the vagrants, the beggars and those descending into mental and emotional confusion and despair. And he worried that he, too, might become like them.

This is the theme he explores in The Notebooks in a first-person torrent of observation and reflection. Malte, a young Dane with little money but with the aspiration to be a poet, expresses a continuing uncertainty and unease, in the form of a diary, without obvious timeline or direction, except for its increasing intensity. Published in 1910, The Notebooks is a striking contrast to the crafted, polished poetry for which Rilke was better known. It has affected and been admired by many writers since, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Jamie Parker's reading underpins the fear and the tension of the work.

Translation William Needham.

Mostra libro

Von Kempelen and his Discovery

Sampi Books, Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe's "Von Kempelen and his Discovery" tells of the fictional discovery of a way to turn lead into gold. The protagonist, a scientist, deceives the public and challenges concepts of credibility and greed, until his secret is tragically revealed.

Mostra libro

Fair Exchange and No Robbery...

L. M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 - April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.Fair Exchange and No Robbery: Katherine Rangely was packing up. Her chum and roommate, Edith Wilmer, was sitting on the bed watching her in that calm disinterested fashion peculiarly maddening to a bewildered packer.

Mostra libro