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The spectacular new thriller from the author of bestselling Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, featuring an unstoppable female scientist.SUSAN SVENDSEN HAS AN UNUSUAL TALENT. She is an expert in other people’s secrets. People feel compelled to confide in her, and they unwittingly confess their innermost thoughts. Her whole life, she has exploited this talent, but now her family is in jeopardy and there is a prison sentence hanging over her head.Then Susan gets a timely offer from a former government official: to use her power one more time and have all charges dropped. To get her life back in order, she must track down the last surviving members of a secret think tank, the Future Committee, and find out the details in this committee’s mysterious final report. But there are some powerful people determined that the report is never revealed.

Lucan has been orphaned and Zosine has been deserted, and London is a hostile place for two young girls without a home. Bound together by poverty, grief and their shared years at school, they set out to make a future for themselves in new surroundings. They are adopted by the austere, puritanical Reverend Pennhallow and his wife, and in their large, gloomy house they become immersed in study. But, after a chain of disturbing events, it does not take long before they realize that the cleric and his wife are not all they seem to be ...

In the classic "Babette's Feast," a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares a sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In "The Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories read and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams" (The New York Times).

The heroine of this love story is Madelene Burden. Lonely and disillusioned despite her upper-crust London existence, she's a modern-day sleeping beauty drowsing gently in an alcoholic stupor. But the prince whose kiss brings her to life is not tall, dark, and handsome. He's a short, dark, 300-pound ape named Erasmus. The victim of a smuggling attempt gone awry, Erasmus is brought to Madelene's home; her husband, Adam, a distinguished behavioral scientist, believes the ape's sophisticated intelligence renders him more human than animal. If he is right, Erasmus would be a most lucrative addition to Adam's new zoo. But Madelene is determined to save Erasmus from a series of inhumane tests that would rob the ape of the very qualities that makes him so un-apelike. Pursuing this goal with all the energy she had previously reserved for her drinking, Madelene's compassion turns to passion and woman and beast escape and fall in love. But Erasmus has come to England with a purpose that eventually forces the couple to face the world they have sought to flee.Enthralling readers with the same taut prose, enigmatic characters, thrilling suspense, and satirical humor that drove Smilla to the top of bestseller lists across the country, Peter Hoeg offers a daring and imaginative fable that poses searching questions about the nature of romance, freedom and humanity. Above all, it is a love story as erotically charged and emotionally powerful as any you will ever read.

Libertad es la novela que cierra la Trilogía Africana de Ejersbo.Christian es hijo de una pareja danesa que vive y trabaja en Tanzania. Pasa mucho tiempo solo, pero acaba por hacerse amigo de Marcus, un niño negro pobre cuya familia trabaja para blancos.La amistad de los dos chicos se hace fuerte y los dos amigos vivirán experiencias intensas y violentas. Su vida cotidiana transcurre en un mundo lleno de contrastes y conflictos, un mundo en que la enfermedad y la muerte están continuamente presentes y el alcohol fluye sin control.Continuarán su amistad confundiendo los límites entre lo que significa ser blanco o negro, mientras el conflicto entre sus situaciones y su identidad en un país como Tanzania no haga más que intensificarse año a año.Con Libertad, basada en las propias experiencias infantiles del autor en África, se cierra la trilogía tanzana de Jakob Ejersbo, una obra maestra literaria, una visión cruda y realista sobre la vida de los expatriados europeos en el corazón del continente negro y una crítica feroz al tiempo que una tierna reconstrucción de los recuerdos más personales del autor.

These stories, which vary in theme but all bear the mark of Peter Hoeg's graceful and thoughtful prose, are set in eight separate corners of the world. On this fateful night, a young mathematician encounters Joseph Conrad during a train ride through the war-torn Congo in "Journey into a Dark Heart; " a pair of star-crossed lovers in Lisbon dance through their memories of the Danish ballet in "Hommage to Bournonville; " a seaside community struggles with the threat of a smallpox epidemic in "Pity for the Children of Vaden Town; " and in "The Verdict of Ignatio Lanstad Rasker", an idealistic young writer is prosecuted for his homosexuality by the conservative Lord Chief Justice of Denmark.Illuminating, acrobatic, and enriched with historical fact and foreshadowing, the stories in Tales of the Night should "consolidate Hoeg's reputation as one of the world's most versatile authors" (Seattle Times).

Chiuso nella sua stanza polverosa, in un “castello di giorni sprecati, con una bottiglia come microscopio in cui scrutare il mondo e un bicchiere come finestra”, Just Helled cerca l’oblio. Per lui, come per la figlia, la piccola Simone Maga che ha deciso di fermare il tempo conservando tutti i quotidiani che ormai tappezzano i muri fino al soffitto, la vita ha perso senso dopo la precoce scomparsa della bellissima Helena, la donna conosciuta per un errore telefonico, amata al primo incontro, inseguita, rievocata e ritrovata, unico grande amore e fonte ispiratrice delle geniali intuizioni avute nelle sue ricerche. A strapparli dalla disperazione è Krystofiles, l’inquietante collega che compare, avvolto nel fumo della sua eterna sigaretta, rivelando che di Helena esistono in realtà quattro cloni di età diverse realizzati dal padre, il grande scienziato Simone Løv, e proponendo il suo patto: Just potrà riavere una nuova Helena se torna agli studi e continua con lui le ricerche per isolare quell’infinitesimale sequenza del dna che determina l’autocoscienza, la caratteristica che distingue l’uomo dall’animale. Non vendere l’anima, ma acquisirne una doppia, non l’alchimia, ma la manipolazione genetica è la tentazione di questo Faust dei nostri tempi, apprendista stregone davanti alle illimitate possibilità della scienza, che arriva a inseguire il sogno di un’umanità liberata dal dolore e dall’assillo dell’inquietudine. Un romanzo d’amore che si interroga sui problemi dell’indagine scientifica, dell’etica e dell’identità, con Pirandello e Borges come numi tutelari, che gioca con la matematica e la filosofia, la letteratura e la musica, smascherando la faustiana temerarietà dello scrittore demiurgo di un mondo che, come il nostro, è creato dalla parola. Con il divertimento di una gioiosa intelligenza, affronta i temi che Simone Maga, la narratrice, annuncia con paradossale ironia nella sua premessa: “Questo libro si propone di spiegare il senso della vita”, la relazione tra bene e male, cercando anche di risolvere “diversi enigmi secondari che hanno solleticato la curiosità di molti e attendono da tempo una risposta”: Chi siamo? Esiste un Dio? C’è vita dopo la morte? Cos’è la verità?

A novel of Iceland -- a queer, repellant sort of Iceland at that. The story of a prostitute and her child, victim of her passions, her selfishness, and her ill-fame -- and of their attempt to find a place for themselves in a new community which is unfriendly, critical, and unforgiving. Chiefly the story of the daughter -- her obsessions with and revulsions from sex, and her relations with two men, the one by morbid fascination and hate and love of a queer sort -- the other by appeal to her better nature. Glimpses of effects of industrial unrest in a distant part of the world. A difficult style -- not easy reading. (Kirkus review)

In Isak Dinesen's universe, the magical enchantment of the fairy tale and the moral resonance of myth coexist with an unflinching grasp of the most obscure human strengths and weaknesses. A despairing author abandons his wife, but in the course of a long night's wandering, he learns love's true value and returns to her, only to find her a different woman than the one he left. A landowner, seeking to prove a principle, inadvertently exposes the ferocity of mother love. A wealthy young traveler melts the hauteur of a lovely woman by masquerading as her aged and loyal servant.Shimmering and haunting, Dinesen's Winter's Tales transport us, through their author's deft guidance of our desire to imagine, to the mysterious place where all stories are born.

Scherfigs Det forsømte forår er selv i dag, med snart 75 års jubilæum, lige så aktuel som den var i 1940'erne, da den udkom for første gang. Selvom den såkaldte sorte skole for længst er afskaffet, er temaerne og budskaberne almengyldige, hvorfor det stadig i dag er muligt at identificere sig med eleverne og deres frygt for foråret, som betyder eksamenstid:Man læser og læser med rødrandede øjne" [...] "Man spiser i tavshed, mens man tænker efter og repeterer. Og så læser man igen. Man har nervøs mave og kvalme og klamme hænder. Man har hjertebanken og trækninger og ømheder. Og man læser og læser [...] Det er forår. Men man har ikke tid til at tage sig af foråret. Man har forsømt hvert eneste forår i sit liv.En ting er i hvert fald sikkert: Jeg forsømmer ikke en lejlighed til at læse Det forsømte forår. Det er nærmest blevet en tradition at læse den, inden eksamenerne begynder.

Complete edition (Parts I to IV): I. Boyhood; II. Apprenticeship; III. The Great Struggle; IV. Daybreak. Martin Andersen Nexo (1869-1954) was born in the slums of Copenhagen into extreme poverty. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father, a stone mason, was an alcoholic and his mother was a daughter of a blacksmith. When he was eight, the family moved to the town of Nexo on the island of Bornholm, whose name he adopted in 1894 as his own. His breakthrough work, the Danish classic Pelle the Conqueror, appeared between 1906 (Part I) and 1910 (Part IV). It tells the story of Pelle, a poor boy, whose life in Part I shares much similarities with Nexo's. "The great charm of the book lies in the fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied them as an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at once a participant and a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist, and so rich is his imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene to the next, sketching often in a few pages what another novelist would be content to work out into long chapters or whole volumes. His sympathy is of the widest, and he makes us see tragedies behind the little comedies, and comedies behind the little tragedies, of the seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves." (Otto Jespersen) "Pelle" has conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark and of the world. The first part of the book was filmed by Bille August; in 1989 the film won the Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film."

Back in my undergraduate days I was lucky enough to hear Ray Bradbury speak in person. (He was a keynote speaker at a conference for college newspaper staffers). He was so funny and so inspirational that decades later I still have the notes I took during his speech and during the workshop the next day. This dynamic and imaginative man has given us loads of fascinating and creepy books and stories (and inspired me to write a few lesser efforts of my own). I loved The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine, and always looked forward to reading Fahrenheit 451, especially since I knew it was made into a 1966 movie. Now, admittedly, the burned-out future described in this book still has the look and feel of cheezy, 1960s pop culture. Nevertheless, the whole idea of a society that bans and burns books because they are the source of ideas and individuality is sobering in any time period. Bradbury's book is a quick read, but it has a lot of thought-provoking ideas and downright scary points of view about to what extremes a dictatorial society may evolve and how ordinary people can rise to the seemingly impossible task of combatting the hysteria and preserving the literature of the present and of centuries past.

The first English-language biography of Astrid Lindgren provides a moving and revealing portrait of the beloved Scandinavian literary icon whose adventures of Pippi Longstocking have influenced generations of young readers all over the world. Lindgren’s sometimes turbulent life as an unwed teenage mother, outspoken advocate for the rights of women and children, and celebrated editor and author is chronicled in fascinating detail by Jens Andersen, one of Denmark’s most popular biographers. Based on extensive research and access to primary sources and letters, this highly readable account describes Lindgren’s battles with depression and her personal struggles through war, poverty, motherhood, and fame. Andersen examines the writer’s oeuvre as well to uncover the secrets to the books' universal appeal and why they have resonated so strongly with young readers for more than seventy years.

Dea Trier Morch depicts with uncommon skill an experienec that pays no attention to language differences or national boundaries: childbirth. Set in a maternity ward for difficult cases, her novel is unique in focusing on the weeks immediately before and after delivery. While December gives way to the new year the women enocunter the private anxieties and mysteries of motherhood, sharing a profound sense of solidarity and warmth in the midst of winter.Joan Tate's superb translation of the European best-seller introduces Dea Trier Morch to American readers. Morch, the author of five other books and the mother of three children, has illustrated her novel with striking block prints.