Philip Henshers Schriften zeichnen sich durch eine ironische, wissende Distanz und eine eiskalt präzise Sezierung von Prätention und Heuchelei aus, wobei er oft menschliche Beziehungen und gesellschaftliche Schichten erforscht. Seine historischen Romane hallen im Rhythmus und der Sprache von Volksmärchen wider und spielen spielerisch mit Erzählformen. Henshers unverwechselbare Stimme und seine scharfen Beobachtungen machen sein Werk zu einem bedeutenden Beitrag zur zeitgenössischen britischen Literatur. Neben seiner Fiktion ist er ein angesehener Kritiker und Essayist, der seinen scharfen Intellekt in den literarischen Diskurs einbringt.
Als in Berlin die Uhren anders gingen: Friedrich will das Abenteuer - in Kreuzberg, weit weg von westdeutscher Spießigkeit. Mr. Picker, der eigenwillige Engländer, will die DDR zum Träumen bringen - und plant einen Drogenschmuggel der besonderen Art. Eindringlich schildert Philip Hensher das Lebensgefühl Berlins vor und nach dem Fall der Mauer. 'Mit Leichtfüßigkeit, aber auch mit der Präzision des fremden Blicks ist Hensher einer der bislang originellsten Romane über das Berlin im Ausnahmezustand gelungen.' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
In "Als in Berlin die Uhren anders gingen" schildert Philip Hensher das Lebensgefühl in Berlin vor und nach dem Mauerfall. Friedrich sucht Abenteuer in Kreuzberg, während der Engländer Mr. Picker die DDR mit einem besonderen Drogenschmuggel zum Träumen bringen will.
Published to accompany the exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 15 June - 25 September 2005, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, Sunderland, 6 October - 27 November 2005, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 17 December 2005 - 12 March 2006.
This is a novel that explores music, lying, marriage and cooking against the backdrop of contemporary Vienna. Fledgling singer Friederike marries English music-tender Archy who claims to have discovered the lost last act of Alban Berg's opera Lulu.
'It's the book you should give someone who thinks they don't like novels ... Here is surely a future prizewinner that is easy to read and impossible to forget' Melissa Katsoulis, The Times The things history will do at the bidding of love
'Excellent, entertaining and ingenious ... from Oscar Wilde to Arthur Conan Doyle, this fine anthology celebrates one of the richest moments in Britain's literary history' Sunday Times The quarter century or so before the outbreak of the First World War saw an extraordinary boom in the popularity and quality of short stories in Britain. Fuelled by a large new magazine readership and vigorous competition to acquire new stories and develop the careers of some of our greatest writers, these years were ones where the normal rule-of-thumb (novels sell, short stories don't) was inverted. This was the era of Sherlock Holmes, of Kipling's most famous stories, of M. R. James, Katherine Mansfield and Joyce's Dubliners. Some of the greatest writers of the period - particularly Conrad and James - found that the effort that went into their shorter works was more rewarded during their lifetimes than their now famous novels. Writers such as Mansfield, Chesterton, Beerbohm, Lawrence and Saki produced some of their greatest work. Short stories also provided a brilliant medium for experiment, and this generous and endlessly entertaining anthology includes fascinating examples of writers as varied as Rebecca West, James Joyce, H.G. Wells and Wyndham Lewis experimenting with what it was acceptable to write and how you could write it.
Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, this is the new
novel from the author of King of the Badgers' and the Man Booker-shortlisted
The Northern Clemency'.
'Sometimes - not often - a book comes along that feels like Christmas. Philip Hensher's timely, but timeless, selection of the best short stories from the past 20 years is that kind of book. His introduction is as enriching as anything that has been published this year' Sunday Times A spectacular treasury of the best British short stories published in the last twenty years We are living in a particularly rich period for British short stories. Despite the relative lack of places in which they can be published, the challenge the medium represents has attracted a host of remarkable, subversive, entertaining and innovative writers. Philip Hensher, following the success of his definitive Penguin Book of British Short Stories, has scoured a vast trove of material and chosen thirty great stories for this new volume of works written between 1997 and the present day. Includes short stories by A.L. Kennedy, Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jackie Kay, Graham Swift, Jane Gardam, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman, Martin Amis, China Miéville, Peter Hobbs, Thomas Morris, David Rose, David Szalay, Irvine Welsh, Lucy Caldwell, Rose Tremain, Helen Oyeyemi, Leone Ross, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Will Self, Gerard Woodward, James Kelman, Lucy Wood, Hilary Mantel, Eley Williams, Sarah Hall, Mark Haddon and Helen Dunmore.
Die Geschichte, die die englische Autorin Antonia Byatt erzählt, beginnt im Jahr 1987 und führt zurück in die viktorianische Zeit. Es geht um ein Bündel Liebesbriefe, gefunden im Sterbezimmer einer bekannten Dichterin, Briefe, die kompromittieren und einige Personen in Verlegenheit bringen könnten. "Ein Buch wie 'Besessen' ist eine Seltenheit in seiner Mischung aus Kriminalstory und Liebesgeschichte - atmosphärisch dicht und kunstvoll dargeboten..."
