Literary Realism

La casa de Piranesi no es un edificio cualquiera: sus habitaciones son monumentales, con paredes llenas de miles de estatuas, y sus pasillos, interminables. Dentro del dédalo de corredores hay un océano aprisionado en el que las olas retumban y las mareas inundan los aposentos.

El coronel no tiene quien le escriba fue escrita por Gabriel García Márquez durante su estancia en París, adonde había llegado, a mediados de los cincuenta, como corresponsal de prensa y con la secreta intención de estudiar cine. El cierre del periódico para el que trabajaba le sumió en la pobreza mientras redactaba en tres versiones distintas esta excepcional novela, que luego fue rechazada por varios editores antes de su publicación.

The novel follows the adolescent Arturo through his days on the isolated Neapolitan island of Procida, where - his mother long deceased, his father often absent, and a dog as his sole companion - he roams the countryside and the beaches or reads in his family's lonely, dilapidated mansion. This quiet, meandering existence is upended when his father brings home a beautiful 16-year-old bride, Nunziatella.

One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, 17-year-old Luisa does not return home from school. Instead, she boards a bus to the Pacific coast with Tomás, a boy she barely knows. He seems to represent everything her life is lacking - recklessness, impulse, independence. Tomás may also help Luisa fulfill an unusual obsession: She wants to track down a traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs. According to newspaper reports, the dwarfs recently escaped a Soviet circus touring Mexico. The imagined fates of these performers fill Luisa's surreal dreams.

Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient - frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism.

In the wake of World War I in the small, Southern town of Bellhaven, South Carolina, the town folk believe they've found a little slice of heaven in a mysterious chapel in the woods. But they soon realize that evil can come in the most beautiful of forms. The people of Bellhaven have always looked to Ellsworth Newberry for guidance, but after losing his wife and his future as a professional pitcher, he is moments away from testing his mortality once and for all. Until he finally takes notice of the changes in his town...and the cardinals that have returned.

Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can't, and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned, she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful, the townspeople start to feel better about their lives.

A glittering landscape of twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and envision new futures for America - from N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, and more.

As Tony follows his own path toward adulthood, he relies on the wisdom of Ultima, a magical healer, to forge his unique identity. With hundreds of thousands of copies in print, Bless Me, Ultima has been called the most widely read Mexican-American novel in the English language. Richly evocative, it has earned its place among the classics of modern literature, even drawing favorable comparisons to Herman Melville's legendary Moby Dick.

Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock is trying to make sense of the world. Living alone in an old house, he spends his time reading comic books, collecting birds’ eggs, and playing with marbles. When one day a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears on a horse and cart, offering a cure-all medicine, a mysterious friendship develops and the young boy is introduced to a world beyond his wildest imagination.

A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is funny and smart but struggles to bear the weight of expectations of his family and their Asian American enclave. He tries to want their version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbor across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal.

Érase una vez un pueblo donde las noches eran largas y la muerte contaba su propia historia. En el pueblo vivía una niña que quería leer, un hombre que tocaba el acordeón y un joven judío que escribía bellos cuentos para escapar del horror de la guerra. Al cabo de un tiempo, la niña se convirtió en una ladrona que robaba libros y regalaba palabras. Con estas palabras comienza una historia hermosa y cruel que ahora ya es una novela inolvidable.

At the crossroads of his life, Lipsha Morrissey is summoned by his grandmother to return to the reservation. There, he falls in love for the very first time—with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who’s already considering a marriage proposal from Lipsha’s wealthy entrepreneurial boss, Lyman Lamartine. But when all efforts to win Shawnee’s affections go hopelessly awry, Lipsha seeks out his great-grandmother for a magical solution to his romantic dilemma—on sacred ground where a federally sanctioned bingo palace is slated for construction.

In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures. In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bissected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution.

Under Cancún’s hard blue sky, a beach boy provides a canvas for tourists’ desires, seeing deep into the world’s underbelly. An enigmatic encounter in Copenhagen takes an IT consultant down a rabbit hole of speculation that proves more seductive than sex. The collapse of a love triangle in London leads to a dangerous, hypnotic addiction. In the Nevada desert, a grieving man tries to merge with an unearthly machine.

Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier.

At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger.

Parents comblés à qui tout sourit, le ciel d'Éric et Barbara s'assombrit le jour où un drame emporte leur univers et fait basculer leur vie. Lorsqu'arrive le temps de la reconstruction, ils sont alors confrontés au comportement étrange de l'un de leurs fils. Pour tenter de le comprendre, ils vont s'efforcer de regarder le monde à travers ses yeux d'enfant et se lancent dès lors dans des recherches qui ne cesseront de les surprendre autant que les bouleverser. Par amour pour leur petit garçon, ils abandonneront peu à peu leurs repères.

Ein unzufriedener Mann von dreißig Jahren, gerade ohne Arbeit und von seiner tüchtigen Frau zur Selbsterforschung ermutigt, so einer ist Murakamis Held Toru Okada in diesem schillernden Roman. Wenn er fliegen kann, dann eher wie ein Spielzeugvogel, von wer weiß wem aufgezogen. Vor diesem Herrn Aufziehvogel tun sich plötzlich Wirklichkeiten auf, von denen er bisher nichts ahnte. Erotische, ökonomische und politische.