Literary Realism

Mi era stata chiesta una scelta dei racconti contenuti nei miei due volumi "Le Cosmicomiche" e "Ti con zero". Li organizzai in un libro costruito con un ciclo di storie sulla Luna, uno sulla Terra, uno su Sole Stelle Galassie, uno sull'Evoluzione, uno sullo Spazio e sul Tempo. Mi accorsi che il libro che avevo messo insieme, e che s'intitolò "La memoria del mondo", più che una rielaborazione di cose già pubblicate per avvicinare un pubblico di lettori nuovi, era il vero libro che avevo voluto scrivere fin da principio, o almeno era ciò che più vi si avvicinava.

Lauren Pailing is born in the '60s, and a child of the '70s. She is 13 years old the first time she dies. Lauren Pailing is a teenager in the '80s, becomes a Londoner in the '90s. And each time she dies, new lives begin for the people who loved her - while Lauren enters a brand new life, too. But in each of Lauren’s lives, a man called Peter Stanning disappears. And, in each of her lives, Lauren sets out to find him. And so it is that every ending is also a beginning. And so it is that, with each new beginning, Peter Stanning inches closer to finally being found....

On a streetcar, on Christmas Day, 1950, clutching the chrome rail in front of him, Martin Radey looks at the woman seated beside him, a stranger, and utters his last words: "I can't breathe." Like millions, billions before him, it is his turn to die. But death is not what he expected. The journey has only begun. From 1880 to 1950, time happens to the world around him, not to memory, because memory, he discovers, is beyond time, traveling forward with him, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

Neil Narayan’s parents moved to America for a better life, and his perfect older sister is now headed to an elite university. Neil is funny and smart, but he is not living up to his parents’ dream. While he tries to want their version of success, mostly, Neil just wants his neighbour across the street, Anita Dayal. Once a lot like Neil, Anita is truly thriving academically, athletically and socially. Anita has a secret: she and her mother Anjali have been brewing an ancient alchemical potion from stolen gold that harnesses the ambition of the jewellery's original owner.

Seventeen years after falling from a stolen car into a remote northern town, Billie Jean Fontaine is still an outsider. She may follow the stifling rules of this odd place, but no one will forget that she came from elsewhere. When Billie Jean vanishes one cold October night in her bare feet and track suit with only her truck keys, those closest to her begin a frantic search. Her daughter, Pony, a girl struggling against being a teen in the middle of nowhere; her killer dog to whom she cannot tell a lie; her husband, The Heavy, a man haunted by his past; and more....

Nobody in the family talks about Ellen's grandmother Lola, who was swallowed up by the circus and emerged as a woman who tamed tigers and got away scot-free for killing her husband. When Ellen's husband Wayne beats her nearly to death, she runs to the only place she knows where a woman can completely disappear - the same Big Top that once sheltered her grandmother. Though the circus moves from one town to the next, Wayne tracks it, and Ellen, relentlessly.

Hanna has never been outside her secluded community of Clearhaven. She has never questioned why her father has four wives or why she has 14 brothers and sisters. And in only one week, on her 18th birthday, Hanna will follow tradition and become the fifth wife of a man more than twice her age. But just days before the wedding, Hanna meets Daniel, an enigmatic stranger who challenges her to question her fate and to follow her own will.

'I have gone to look for a lion.' In a world where lions have become extinct, the map-maker Jachin-Boaz nevertheless abandons his wife and son to find one, leaving just this note. But his decision has unexpected consequences. He will be pursued by his son, Boaz-Jachin, and by something else: a tawny-skinned, amber-eyed beast from another place and time, a bringer of life and death.

Dopo il successo ottenuto come spettacolo teatrale sul tema dei desaparecidos, "L'ultima madre" diventa un romanzo, sospeso fra indagine storica, realismo magico e studio sociologico. Ambientato nella Buenos Aires degli anni Settanta, al culmine di quella "guerra sporca" che sarebbe costata la vita a innumerevoli attivisti politici, esso mette a confronto le vicende di due personaggi apparentemente contrapposti: da un lato María, madre di due gemelli rapiti dai soldati e scomparsi nel nulla, dall'altro Mercedes, figlia e moglie di militari, a sua volta madre dei due gemelli Nacho e Mari.

An enchanting collection of 12 evocative and macabre stories delving into the magical, ordinary, and darker aspects of love in all its powerful forms.

Delhi, 1997: It is India's fiftieth year of independence, the year of Hindu nationalists and atomic bombs. But twelve-year-old Adi has a bigger problem: his Ma has gone missing - again. Left with an ailing grandmother, a raging father and no answers, he finds an unlikely ally: a talking vulture who reveals itself to be a bureaucrat from the 'Department of Historical Adjustment'.

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.

Ayant fui Téhéran pour échapper à la Révolution Islamique de 1979, Hashang, Roza et leurs trois enfants tentent de reconstruire leur vie dans le petit village de Razan, au cœur de la région montagneuse de Mazandaran. Mais personne n'échappe longtemps à la violence et au chaos... et la répression finira fatalement par les rattraper.

August Chalmin feels the weather like no one else. A large awkward recluse, with bright orange hair and sun-shy eyes, August hides himself away behind the counter of a Shepherd's Bush deli. One winter's day, two things change his life forever: his mother's ex-lover, Cosmo, shambles back into his life, and he discovers a rash on his arm which looks like frost. A rash which is frost. As Cosmo raises questions about August's identity, August finds himself changing with the seasons, in a journey that takes him deep into his past and to the very centre of his soul.

Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn't mean she isn't still annoying to her older brother, and just because the Man of the Future's carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien abduction and network fame doesn't mean he can't still pine for his absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and longing.

It seems that the legendary composer Franz Schubert is alive—well, sort of—in the twenty-first century: His soul has taken up residence in the body of Brooklyn lawyer Liza Durbin. Even more astonishing, so has his prodigious gift. A mediocre pianist at best as a child, Liza can suddenly pound out concertos and compose masterly music out of the blue. But how can a brilliant male Austrian composer from the nineteenth century coexist in the everyday life of a modern American woman? And how can Liza explain what’s happened to her without everyone thinking she’s gone off the deep end?

In a world where aesthetics is simply an expression of the human soul and there is no differentiation between internal and external beauty, a kindhearted businessman struggling over a difficult breakup decides to join a unique beauty pageant, which will grant the beauty king the prize of a lifetime—tickets to the Beatles’ reunion concert. This is the story of a man who embarks on an adventure—a mental and emotional journey in pursuit of the concept of internal beauty, which will change the way he sees the world and his place in it forever.

The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo's mother, Rosemary, and Bo's younger sister Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned 18. Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia's life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And, now she must also care for her mother. Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously.

In northern India, an eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband, and then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention–including striking up a friendship with a transgender person–confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more ‘modern’ of the two.

When seven-year-old Jamie falls down a very long hill, he finds himself trapped in a world of strange creatures, harsh landscapes, and near-perpetual darkness. Lost and confused, Jamie is desperate to get home. The nightmares, fears, and all manner of what-ifs that inhabit this shadow world are unfamiliar to him - all except one: the Lairdbalor, Jamie's personal nightmare, once relegated to his dreams. In this fantastical land, however, the Lairdbalor and all the fears and nightmares of children are very real.