A.S. Byatt

Uno de los textos más apasionantes, lúcidos e inquietantes que nos ha brindado la literatura inglesa de las últimas décadas. Inmensa en más de un sentido, paradójicamente amada por críticos eruditos y por lectores de romances y novelas policiacas, galardonada con el Booker, el mas prestigioso premio literario britanico, Posesion, contaba su autora, tiene su remoto origen en las reflexiones que le inspiro una biografa americana de Coleridge que habia dedicado toda su vida al estudio del poeta.Era como un caso de posesion demoniaca, y me pregunte si era ella quien se habia apoderado de el, sabiendolo todo sobre su vida, o el de ella.En la novela, todo empieza con unas cartas robadas. Roland Michell, un oscuro graduado en literatura inglesa, descubre azarosamente entre los libros de Randolph Henry Ash, victoriano eminente, dos cartas inconclusas y nunca enviadas a una desconocida mujer. Roland se guarda las cartas y decide investigar la identidad de la misteriosa Christabel LaMotte, ambigua poeta de la epoca y reivindicada en la actualidad por feministas y lesbianas. Si realmente existio una relacion entre ambos, Roland ha hecho un descubrimiento que puede lanzarle a una brillante carrera academica y constituir un hito en el estudio de la poesia victoriana.Acompañado por Maud Bailey, especialista en la obra de Christabel, seguiran un rastro de poemas, diarios y cartas y, gradualmente poseidos por aquellos que buscaban poseer, reconstruiran una historia de pasiones alli donde nunca se supo que las hubiera, historia que encontrara su peculiar espejo en el presente, un tiempo en el que se creia ya disipada toda pasion.

Novela sobre la relación entre niños y adultos, homenaje a la grandeza de la imaginación y elegía por el final de una era, El libro de los niños es una sinfonía narrativa de inagotable lectura, una obra que ya figura entre los grandes clasicos de nuestro tiempo. A. S. Byatt es una de las grandes escritoras de nuestro tiempo. Esta novela, que fue internacionalmente aclamada por la critica y finalista del Premio Booker en 2009, es el destilado de toda su experiencia como narradora: una obra capital de extraordinaria belleza, hondura y emocion. El libro de los niños transcurre durante el lento y destellante crepusculo victoriano, esa apasionante epoca que va desde el final del siglo xix hasta la Primera Guerra Mundial. La protagonista es Olive Wellwood, una celebre escritora de libros infantiles que vive con su numerosa familia en una casa de campo formando una especie de sociedad dedicada al culto del arte, la conversacion y la politica. Cuando el hijo mayor de Olive sorprende a otro niño de origen humilde dibujando un famoso candelabro en una sala del Museo Victoria and Albert de Londres, sus vidas empezaran a cambiar. El niño sera adoptado por los Wellwood y accedera asi a un mundo deslumbrante, lleno de inquietantes misterios. Novela sobre la relacion entre niños y adultos, homenaje a la grandeza de la imaginacion y elegia por el final de una era, El libro de los niños es una sinfonia narrativa de inagotable lectura que ya figura entre los clasicos de la literatura.La critica ha dicho...Una de las grandes maestras de la escritura de nuestro tiempo. A. S. Byatt pertenece a la regia estirpe de Jane Austen y George Eliot, de Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark y Doris Lessing...Mercedes Monmany, ABC Para los fans de Byatt es mejor que Posesion. Una magnifica novela.Daily ExpressUn regreso soberbio e insuperable.Que leer En mi opinion la mejor narradora britanica viva, una vez que nos dejo Iris Murdoch.Pilar Adon A. S. Byatt es una observadora dotada con un talento especial para identificar los detalles precisos que dan sentido a universos enteros.Jay Parini, The New York TimesBrillante, imponente y evocador, El libro de los niños es soberbio.Daily Mail Completamente absorbente y muy conmovedora.Daily Telegraph Su escritura tiene la majestuosidad de un glaciar: pura, bella, monumental.The Globe and MailCautivadora []. Tremendamente enriquecedora. Un cuento intrincado, energicamente tejido por [] una narradora incansable.Irish Times Llena de ideas y deenergia imaginativa []. La novela mas emotiva que A. S. Byatt ha escrito desde Posesion.The Sunday Times Un poder y una relevancia asombrosos.Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph El colorido y las sensaciones inundan la escritura de Byatt [...]. Una maestra, una titiritera que hace magia.Boyd Tonkin, The IndependentUna de las autoras fundamentales de la novela britanica contemporanea.Zenda Siempre he admirado a los escritores cuyo alcance sobrepasa su comprension, y la extraordinariamente dotada novelista britanica Antonia Susan Byatt perten...

In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland's state newspaper. From the early days of independence in Ghana to the ongoing ethnic genocide in Rwanda, Kapuscinski has crisscrossed vast distances pursuing the swift, and often violent, events that followed liberation. Kapuscinski hitchhikes with caravans, wanders the Sahara with nomads, and lives in the poverty-stricken slums of Nigeria. He wrestles a king cobra to the death and suffers through a bout of malaria. What emerges is an extraordinary depiction of Africa--not as a group of nations or geographic locations--but as a vibrant and frequently joyous montage of peoples, cultures, and encounters. Kapuscinski's trenchant observations, wry analysis and overwhelming humanity paint a remarkable portrait of the continent and its people. His unorthodox approach and profound respect for the people he meets challenge conventional understandings of the modern problems faced by Africa at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok - is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world's truly great writers.

Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world _ but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery.

Uno de los textos más apasionantes, lúcidos e inquietantes que nos ha brindado la literatura inglesa de las últimas décadas. Inmensa en más de un sentido, paradójicamente amada por críticos eruditos y por candidos lectores de romances y novelas policiacas, galardonada con el Booker, el mas prestigioso premio literario britanico, Posesion, cuenta su autora, tiene su remoto origen en las reflexiones que le inspiro una biografa americana de Coleridge que habia dedicado toda su vida al estudio del poeta. Era como un caso de posesion demoniaca, y me pregunte si era ella quien se habia apoderado de el, sabiendolo todo sobre su vida, o el de ella. En la novela, todo empieza con unas cartas robadas. Roland Mitchell, un oscuro graduado en literatura inglesa, descubre azarosamente entre los libros de Randolph Henry Ash, victoriano eminente, dos cartas inconclusas y nunca enviadas a una desconocida mujer. Roland se guarda las cartas y decide investigar la identidad de la misteriosa corresponsal y posible amante de Ash. Descubrira que esta es Christabel LaMotte, oscura, ambigua poeta de la epoca, reivindicada en la actualidad por feministas y lesbianas. Si realmente existio una relacion entre ambos, Roland ha hecho un descubrimiento que puede lanzarle a una brillante carrera academica y constituir un hito en el estudio de la poesia victoriana.Y acompañado por Maud Bailey, una mas que atractiva especialista en la obra de Christabel, seguiran un rastro de poemas, diarios y cartas y, gradualmente poseidos por aquellos que buscaban poseer, reconstruiran una historia de pasiones alli donde nunca se supo que las hubiera, historia que encontrara su peculiar espejo en el presente, un tiempo en el que se creia ya disipada toda pasion.

Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets. Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum''s treasures. And in midsummer a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany. The sons rebel against their parents'' plans; the girls dream of independent futures, becoming doctors or fighting for the vote. This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead. In their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children''s book.

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems, they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.

Olive Wellwood is a famous writer. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their cousins, children of a city stockbroker, are already inscribed with mystery. This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead. In their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children's book.

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness." Possession , for which Byatt won England''s prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession--the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject--she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics--Roland Michell and Maud Bailey--as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.

El libro reúne dos magníficas novelas cortas de ambientación victoriana. En la primera, un joven naturalista empieza a trabajar para un misterioso noble y acaba casándose con su hija; pero tal vez su destino conyugal sea el de los machos de ciertas especies de insectos que el ha estudiado... En la segunda, la esposa del desaparecido capitan que años atras llevo al naturalista al Amazonas organiza en su casa sesiones de espiritismo para comunicarse con los seres amados supuestamente perdidos.

Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent', plunges into Cambridge University life greedy for knowledge, sex and love. In Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. In this sequel to her much praised The Virgin in the Garden, and the second in a magnificent quartet, A. S. Byatt illuminates the inevitable conflicts between ambition and domesticity, confinement and self-fulfilment, while providing a subtle yet incisive observation of the intellectual and cultural life in England during the 1950s.