James Buchan

1974. Eighteen-year-old drifter John Pitt leaves England with nothing more than his wits and a desire to see the world. When he reaches Iran, despite a poorly forged university degree, he lands a job teaching English. On his first day, he is struck by a veiled woman with luminous black eyes and lovely feet - the headstrong Shirin. The two fall naively and fiercely in love, without considering the consequences of a love like theirs in the Shahs Iran. As the forces of revolution begin to rip through the country, John and Shirin are brutally separated, and John finds himself alone amid a vicious and devastating conflict in a region he barely understands. Pulse-thumping and lyrical, A Good Place to Die evokes the history of a vastly complicated land and the lengths to which well go for those we love, even when faced with the truly unthinkable. Lyrical in the intensity of its writing, A Good Place to Die tells of the love of a callow British youth for a Persian girl and for her tortured, beautiful country. Its a must-read. - Donna Leon James Buchan writes like a dream . . . This novel is a rare achievement. - The Times Airy, graceful and big with truth . . . There is really no word for it but "masterpiece". - Spectator Sooner or later James Buchan will be recognised as the top adventure writer of his time. - Evening Standard

When mysterious loner Jim Smith moves into remote Paradise Farmhouse, he experiences some strange but wonderful midnight visits from an ethereal woman. He soon discovers that this dream-like figure is the incarnation of a 1960s beauty, immortalized in a famous nude portrait that belongs to his neighbour. Intrigued, Jim abandons his customary aloofness to find out more, and accepts a dinner invitation from his landlords - a billionaire-thug and his beautiful but mistreated wife.The dinner party - a chance for a brilliantly satirical sketch of the braying upper class hunting set - is disastrous and, soon after, Jim''s pastoral idyll disintegrates. His lambs die, cows give no milk, bees swarm. Sensing his ghostly lover has turned malevolent, Jim knows he must placate her before the circle of decay reaches those he loves - even if that means making the ultimate sacrifice. Both unsettling ghost story and intense love story, "The Gate of Air" is by turns poetic, learned, satirical and allegorical. This is a beautifully crafted novel about love and loneliness, life and death, and the indelible traces we leave behind us when we die.

A stunning historical novel of adventure romance and skulduggery the second volume in the William Nielson series

In the early 18th century, Edinburgh was a filthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by centurys end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to the finest minds of the day and their breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts, and economies - all of which continues to echo loudly today. Adam Smith penned "The Wealth of Nations". James Boswell produced "The Life of Samuel Johnson". Alongside them, pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence.James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of an historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision brought it into being.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a turning-point in modern history. The destruction of the Iranian monarchy not only upset the political order in the Middle East and brought on a quarter-century of warfare, but introduced a new way to look at history. In Days of God James Buchan lives each moment of the revolution through the eyes of ordinary people as he tries to answer his own troubling question: why did his friends, with their peculiar Iranian dreaminess and charm, act the way they did?

A concisely rich reading experience like no other . . . immensely, continuously exciting to boot. Highly, highly recommendedFrancis SpuffordAn epic voyage well worth takingTelegraphThere is nothing quite like a James Buchan novelFinancial TimesAutumn, 1785. Two young boys, in the uniform of officer cadets of the Royal Military College, are standing outside the porters gate of a house in the faubourg Saint-Germain of Paris.One of the boys is William Neilson, the third of that name. The other is Napoleon Buonaparte. They are the best of friends.As the monarchy in France disintegrates, the boys take different paths, one towards military success, supreme power and immortal fame, the other into shame, disgrace, imprisonment and misery.They meet, twenty-seven years later, each at the limit of his strength, equals once again, beside a frozen river in Russia.The gripping and adventure-packed new instalment of the story of the Neilsons, a Scottish family in French service, over five generations and four continents. Delightful . . . The nearest series to this I can think of is Patrick OBrians Aubrey-Maturin cycleFrancis Spufford, winner of the Costa First novel awardA tight and bright romp of a read His rollicking romp ranges widely across the world, taking in the French Revolution, the Jacobite rebellion, love affairs, duels, general skullduggery and much else besides, in prose as elegant as it is witty

One of our finest writersThe TimesNew Years Eve, 1746 and William Neilson is on the move...William Neilson is a Scottish soldier and a reluctant Jacobite agent. His mission is to transport an exquisite and precious jewel to the exiled James Stuart, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, now residing in Italy. Before he leaves though, he has a more personal ambition - to see, for one last time, the woman he has loved for more than half his life.As he travels from the wastes and marshes of the Sologne, to the disorderly houses and prisons of Venice and the desolate court-in-exile of the King in Rome, William Nielson meets adventure from sword fights to kidnappings, and love stories to music, while facing sinister threats to his life from those determined to thwart him at every turn. Full of colour, and with rich and detailed research, the tales of William Nielson are hugely entertaining and a must for readers of swashbuckling fiction.An epic voyage well worth takingTelegraphThere is nothing quite like a James Buchan novel Financial TimesWhat readers say about A STREET SHAKEN BY LIGHT, the first William Nielson novel:A tight and bright romp of a read His rollicking romp ranges widely across the world, taking in the French Revolution, the Jacobite rebellion, love affairs, duels, general skullduggery and much else besides, in prose as elegant as it is witty

In seventeenth century Scotland, Edinburgh was a filthy backwater synonymous with poverty, disease, and religious fanaticism. A century later, it was an intellectual hotbed, producing groundbreaking books like Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations and James Boswells The Life of Samuel Johnson. Other luminaries like David Hume, Robert Burns, the chemist James Black, and the geologist James Hutton added to Edinburghs reputation as a center of creativity and innovation. In his remarkable work Crowded with Genius, James Buchan reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual world of Enlightenment Edinburgh. The history of the towns transformation and most glorious era is recounted here with Buchans trademark intellectual elegance and his novelists flair for vividly bringing a place to life.James Buchan is an acclaimed novelist and critic. He is the author of The Persian Bride, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Frozen Desire, an examination of money that received the Duff Cooper Prize in 1998. He has also won the Whitbread Prize and the Guardian Fiction Award. He is a contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Observer, and a former foreign correspondent for The Financial Times. He lives in Norfolk, England.A vivacious and erudite celebration of the flowering of Scottish intellectual life in the eighteenth century. The New Yorker

An epic voyage well worth taking ... Exhilarating Marianka Swain, TelegraphOne of Britains outstanding historical writers delivers a romantic and picaresque masterpiece that tells the fascinating story of William Neilson. In 1720, the young William Neilson leaves Edinburgh to make his fortune in Europe, first sailing to Rotterdam and then on foot to Paris, where he meets and is immediately employed by the banker John Law. A day later he is in the Bastille, but not before he has encountered a young woman of surpassing beauty to whom Neilson will be devoted for the rest of his life.Imprisoned in the Bastille, he has no possibility of seeing or communicating with his beloved. When at last he recovers his freedom, he is despatched at once to sea, bound for the Indies. He will be shipwrecked, become an equerry on the Ile-de-France, anon command a disorderly legion in Persia, become a linguist able to hold his own in diplomatic and mercantile circles, all the while anticipating a summons from the Stuart king in exile in Rome, until he is sent back to France, and thence to Scotland in the service of the Young Pretender.This is brilliant, irresistibly entertaining fiction. A whole world of adventure and romance comes alive in the hands of one of our most ingenious storytellers, one of our finest writers.

At the summit of his power, John Law was the most famous man in Europe. Born in Scotland in 1671, he was convicted of murder in London and, after his escape from prison, fled Scotland for the mainland when Union with England brought with it a warrant for his arrest. On the continent he lurched from one money-making scheme to the next - selling insurance against losing lottery tickets in Holland, advising the Duke of Savoy - amassing a fortune of some 80,000.But for his next trick he had grander ambitions. When Louis XIV died, leaving a thoroughly bankrupt France to his five-year-old heir, Law gained the ear of the Regent, Philippe DOrleans. In the years that followed, Laws financial wizardry transformed the fortunes of France, enriching speculators and investors across the continent, and he was made Controller-General of Finances, effectively becoming the French Prime Minister. But the fall from grace that was to follow was every bit as spectacular as his meteoric rise.John Law, by a biographer of Adam Smith and the author of Frozen Desire and Capital of the Mind, dramatises the life of one of the most inventive financiers in history, a man who was born before his time and in whose day the word millionaire came to be coined.

James Buchan aparece no sólo por primera vez en nuestro catálogo, sino también en lengua española. Autor inglés ya valorado y premiado en Gran Bretaña, se ha dado a conocer en el mundo entero con El Arado de Oro, que obtuvo el Guardian Fiction Award en 1995. Apreciado y riguroso periodista, reportero y analista especializado en asuntos financieros, Buchan se inicio tambien brillantemente como novelista en 1984 con A Parish of Rich Women, que gano el Whitbread Prize de ficcion y otros cuatro importantes premios literarios. En Bonn, una mañana de abril de 1983 aparece muerto de un disparo el profesor Frank Lightner, un teorico e ideologo de la izquierda alemana y jefe de filas de los Verdes, a quien, sin embargo, algunos tachan de espia de la KGB. Richard Fisher, un agente del gobierno ingles afincado en aquella ciudad y que ejerce aparentemente de historiador y conferenciante, intenta averiguar que y quien hay detras de esa muerte. Su investigacion le conduce hasta El Arado de Oro, una peligrosa estrategia politica relacionada con el desarme, y en la que estan involucrados los gobiernos de la Union Sovietica, Gran Bretaña, Alemania y Estados Unidos. Todo se complica cuando Fisher se enamora de Polina Mertz, una enigmatica joven que parece poseer todas las claves de El Arado de Oro, y a quien alguien esta dispuesto a asesinar El Arado de Oro es mucho mas que una simple novela de espias, pues, como todas las grandes novelas, desborda el genero al que en principio podria ser adscrita. Encierra, ademas de una tragicomica historia de amor, una honda y melancolica reflexion sobre la historia y la cultura de un pais condenado a vivir en la frontera de dos mundos ideologicos.