Rupert Thomson

One night in November 2002, PC Billy Tyler is called to a mortuary in Suffolk to guard the body of a notorious child-killer. But in the eerie silence of the hospital, the killer''s presence begins to assert itself. A vivid evocation of an extraordinary moment in crime history, "Death of a Murderer" is a dark and gripping meditation on the fears and temptations that haunt us all.

Towards the end of November 2002, Billy Tyler, a police constable in his mid-forties, is summoned to the mortuary of a hospital in Suffolk. For the next twelve hours, from seven in the evening till seven in the evening, he is responsible for guarding the body of the notorious child-killer, Myra Hindley. In the face of public hostility and media frenzy, Billy''s job, as his superior puts it, is to ''make sure nothing happens''. As a seasoned police officer, Billy''s approach is utterly professional, but as the night wears on, in the eerie silence of the hospital, Hindley''s presence begins to assert itself, and Billy''s own problems and anxieties - a stalled career, a fractious marriage, a disabled daughter - gradually acquire a new and unexpected significance. In this daring novel, Rupert Thomson takes on one of the most controversial subjects of our time and addresses the difficult questions that arise from it. Who do we love, and why? How do we protect our children? What separates us from the people we call monsters?A vivid evocation of an extraordinary moment in crime history, Death of a Murderer is one man''s dark night of the soul, a gripping meditation on the fears and temptations that haunt the lives of all of us.

Towards the end of November 2002, Billy Tyler, a police constable in his mid-forties, is summoned to the mortuary of a hospital in Suffolk. For the next twelve hours, from seven in the evening till seven in the morning, he is responsible for guarding the body of the notorious child-killer, Myra Hindley. In the face of public hostility and media frenzy, Billy''s job, as his superior puts it, is to ''make sure nothing happens''. As a seasoned police officer, Billy''s approach is utterly professional, but as the night wears on, in the eerie silence of the hospital, the dead woman''s presence begins to assert itself, and Billy''s own problems and anxieties - a stalled career, a fractious marriage, a disabled daughter - gradually acquire a new and unexpected significance. In this daring novel, Rupert Thomson takes on one of the most controversial subjects of our time and addresses the difficult questions that arise from it. Who do we love, and why? How do we protect our children? What separates us from the people we call monsters?A vivid evocation of an extraordinary moment in crime history, Death of a Murderer is one man''s dark night of the soul, a gripping meditation on the fears and temptations that haunt the lives of all of us.

Muerte de una asesina relata los pensamientos de Billy Tyler, un policía de mediana edad, que pasa la noche en un hospital de Suffolk, custodiando el cuerpo de Myra Hindley, una asesina famosa en la vida real. La eleccion de Rupert Thomson de una asesina real le permite explorar y analizar cuestiones complejas sobre el caracter ingles. Sin embargo, esta no es una novela sobre Hindley sino acerca del propio Billy Tyler, unos de los policias-personajes mas convincentes que ha dado la literatura.Billy Tyler no pasa por un buen momento. Su carrera profesional se ha visto limitada al ser incapaz de asumir nuevas responsabilidades. Ademas su vida sentimental y familiar esta deteriorada por la mala relacion con su suegro y su dificultad de tratar con su hija discapacitada. Haciendo gala de una gran habilidad, Rupert Thomson crea un drama que se desarrolla en las doce horas que Billy Tyler pasa con el cadaver de Myra Hindley. La diseccion que hace de la mente de un hombre vulgar es tan profunda e interesante que la presencia del cadaver de Hindley quede relegada a un segundo plano. Todo el misterio de esta novela gira entorno a los secretos de Billy, aquellos pensamientos tan intimos y -en ocasiones- oscuros, que solo se pueden explicar a un muerto en mitad de una noche.Pasadas las horas, y en un giro narrativo arriesgado pero magistral, el fantasma de la asesina se aparece ante Billy. Lejos de perder los nervios y dejarse llevar por el terror, Billy entabla una conversacion con el fantasma de la asesina.

Marcel Moore, nacida Suzanne, y Claude Cahun, nacida Lucie, fueron dos artistas que en las primeras décadas del siglo xx decidieron romper con muchos de los tabúes y limitaciones que encorsetaban especialmente a las mujeres. Tanto en su arte como en su vida llevaron al limite la fluidez entre los generos y la lucha contra una sociedad que impulsaba la superioridad de los hombres. Las dos mujeres vivieron una bellisima historia de amor desde su adolescencia hasta su muerte, se introdujeron en el Paris de las vanguardias, donde se relacionaron con Breton, Dali, Michaux o Desnos, entre otros, hasta que la Segunda Guerra Mundial las sorprende en su retiro de la Isla de Jersey, que se convierte en puesto clave para el ejercito nazi desde donde controlar la costa occidental europea y hostigar las islas britanicas. Entonces, Marcel y Claude, entregadas siempre a la causa de la libertad, deciden sin ayuda de nadie actuar ellas dos contra el invasor en acciones de sabotaje y propaganda para minar la moral de los soldados nazis, arriesgando la vida pues Claude era, ademas, de origen judio. Rupert Thomson, autor de mas de diez novelas, reconstruye, en esta su obra mas reciente, la vida y la obra de dos mujeres fascinantes que ejemplificaron con su vida grandes espacios de libertad. Narrada en primera persona por Marcel, y estrictamente fiel a los hechos historicos, Nadie mas que tu es, junto al retrato exquisitamente tierno de la pasion de Marcel por Claude, una mujer fragilizada por su autodestructiva e invencible obsesion por la muerte, un vivido retrato de la Europa de los años veinte y treinta y de las dos guerras mundiales, y nos interroga sobre una sociedad patriarcal que resuena cada vez mas indisimuladamente en nuestros dias.

Relatant la liaison entre deux femmes, Suzanne Malherbe et Lucie Schwob, plus connues sous les noms dartistes de Marcel Moore et Claude Cahun, Jamais dautre que toi convoque, dans toute son intimite et son incandescence, la scene surrealiste artistique et intellectuelle de lentre-deux guerres avant que lhorreur de lantisemitisme et du nazisme ne prenne possession du monde. Un roman a la croisee des chemins entre grande histoire, passion amoureuse et engagement artistique.

Relatant la liaison entre deux femmes, Suzanne Malherbe et Lucie Schwob, plus connues sous les noms dartistes de Marcel Moore et Claude Cahun, Jamais dautre que toi convoque, dans toute son intimite et son incandescence, la scene surrealiste artistique et intellectuelle de lentre-deux guerres avant que lhorreur de lantisemitisme et du nazisme ne prenne possession du monde. Un roman a la croisee des chemins entre grande histoire, passion amoureuse et engagement artistique.

In vitro fertilization is the trigger for a young woman whose identity crisis and misguided fantasies take her on a mysterious journey to the end of the world Katherine Carlye is an IVF baby. Stored as a frozen embryo for eight years, she is then implanted in her mother and given life. By the age of nineteen, Katherine has lost her mother to cancer, and feels her father to be an increasingly distant figure. Instead of going to college, she disappears, telling no one where she has gone. What begins as an attempt to punish her father for his absence gradually becomes a testing ground of his love for her, a coming-to-terms with the death of her mother, and finally the mise-en-scene for a courageous leap to true empowerment. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, "Katherine Carlyle"uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novelaboutwho we are, and how we are loved."

And then the night when my life began again A strange beginning. Soldiers, bright lights. The cold. And me being lifted, as if by surgeons, into a new world It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight year-old boy is removed from his home in the middle of the night. He soon learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary political experiment. A vision, a fable, a satire, a love story, a ghost story, Divided Kingdom is a remarkable, genre-defying novel and it confirms Rupert Thomson as that rare thing - a writer of sublime prose who also has a mesmerising tale to tell.

It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy.

A sorcerer in wax. A fugitive. Haunted by a past he cannot escape. Threatened by a future he cannot imagine. Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is summoned by Cosimo III to join the Medici court. Late seventeenth-century Florence is a hotbed of repression and hypocrisy. All forms of pleasure are brutally punished, and the Grand Duke himself, a man for whom marriage has been an exquisite torture, hides his pain beneath a show of excessive piety. The Grand Duke asks Zummo to produce a life-size woman out of wax, an antidote to the French wife who made him suffer so. As Zummo wrestles with this unique commission, he falls under the spell of a woman whose elusiveness mirrors his own, but whose secrets are far more explosive. Lurking in the wings is the poisonous Dominican priest, Stufa, who has it within his power to destroy Zummos livelihood, if not his life. In this highly charged novel, Thomson brings Florence to life in all its vibrant sensuality, while remaining entirely contemporary in his exploration of the tensions between love and solitude, beauty and decay. When reality becomes threatening, not to say unfathomable, survival strategies are tested to the limit. Redemption is a possibility, but only if the agonies of death and separation can be transcended.

An identity crisis leads a young womanconceived through IVFon a mysterious journey to the end of the world in this breathtakingly original novel about where we come from and how our origins shape us.A haunting family tale . . . a contemporary masterpiece. Guardian Unmoored by her mothers death and feeling her father to be an increasingly distant figure, Katherine Carlyle abandons the set course of her life and starts out on a mysterious journey to the ends of the world. Instead of going to college, she disappears, telling no one where she has gone. What begins as an attempt to punish her father for his absence gradually becomes a testing ground of his love for her, a coming-to-terms with the death of her mother, and finally the mise-en-scene for a courageous leap to true empowerment. Katherine Carlyle is Rupert Thomsons breakthrough novel. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, it uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novel about identity, the search for personal meaning, and how we are loved.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Observer, PopMatters, and Sydney Morning Herald. The true story of a love affair between two extraordinary women becomes a literary tour deforce in this novel that recreates the surrealist movement in Paris and the horrors of the two world wars with a singular incandescence and intimacy.In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As sisters they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail.Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dali to Andre Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitlers occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy.Brilliantly imagined, profoundly thought-provoking, and ultimately heartbreaking, Never Anyone But You infuses life into a forgotten history as only great literature can.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD PRIZE FOR FICTION WITH A SENSE OF PLACEHis confident, spellbinding prose is jewelled with uncanny details, gliding along in language that strikes, unsettles, and reawakens at every turn...This is a brilliant book Maya C. PopaCool and controlled...Electrifying...Reading Rupert Thomson novels can easily become an obsessionThe Times--------Set on the eve of the financial crash of 2008, Barcelona Dreaming is made up of three stories that are linked by time and place, and also by the moving, unexpected interactions of a rich cast of characters.The stories are narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.Exploring themes of addiction, racism, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, and fuelled by a longing for the unattainable and a nostalgia for what is about to be lost, Barcelona Dreaming is a love letter to one of the worlds most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times.

Un frío día de noviembre de 1701, un misterioso personaje llega a un convento cercano a París para visitar a una aristócrata. Tiene que contarle un asunto del máximo interés que afecta a su pasado. La historia se remonta a Florencia diez años antes, una ciudad que ya ha perdido el esplendor renacentista de antaño y en la que priman la hipocresia y la represion: cualquier placer se castiga con brutalidad en la via publica, mientras entre los muros de palacio todo puede pasar impunemente.Gaetano Zummo, un escultor siciliano que va huyendo de un pasado que le atormenta, es invitado a la corte de los Medici. Es un artista reputado por el realismo con el que reproduce sus figuras de cera. El Gran Duque Cosimo III, un hombre de honda devocion religiosa que esconde tras su compasion una dolorosa experiencia matrimonial, le encarga esculpir una Venus de cera de tamaño natural. Mientras recorre las calles de Florencia en busca de inspiracion femenina, cae hechizado por una enigmatica mujer, Faustina. Los importantes secretos que oculta van a poner en grave peligro su vida. La perfeccion de la imagen que esta esculpiendo puede ser su salvacion, pero tambien su perdicion.Basada en la vida del escultor Gaetano Zummo, "Secretos" es una novela de intriga historica, de misterio, de amor... Una obra emocionante, sensual y escalofriante en la que Thomson, a traves de una prosa extremadamente bella y rica en minuciosas descripciones, recrea una Florencia sumida en la corrupcion y la austeridad, la soledad y la decadencia. Pero en la que tambien se dan cita la esperanza y el amor; y, sobre todo, la belleza del arte y de la vida.