At the centre of this epic novel, overshadowing the lives of its huge cast of Russian & German characters, looms the battle of Stalingrad. Within a world torn apart by ideological tyranny & war, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies.
Completed in 1960 but confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society rejected the compromises of a lifetime & earned its author denunciation & disgrace. It remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece.
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THIS ORANGE INHERITANCE EDITION OF Life & Fate IS PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION



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Brilliantly entertaining, enlightening & inspiring, Robin Skynner & John Cleese take on the big issue: life, & the challenge of living, in all its myriad forms. This book is an essential guide to surviving life's ups & downs
- at home or in the workplace, as a member of a family or society.

Presented in the same lively style as the best-selling Families & How to Survive Them, Life extends Skynner's & Cleese's study beyond the family to relationships & group interaction in life outside it. The book deals with such pithy issues as:

-Why life gives you all the lessons you need
-How grief can be good for you
-Why work is essential to our psychological health
-What mid-life crisis means for you

We are all searching for healthier, happier, more satisfying lives, but it's the journey that matters, not the destination. Skynner & Cleese are the perfect travelling companions.









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In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement & escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life & Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience
- the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, & for purity of vision.
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As Britain's leading psychic medium, perhaps it's not surprising that more than 200, 000 people buy tickets every year to see Colin Fry's theatre tour up & down the country (and in New Zealand). It's also not surprising that his top-rating TV show, 6ixth Sense, is now in its 7th series & continues to hold an average of 100, 000 viewers per month. With such an enormous fan base, there is therefore huge interest in Colin Fry's first book, Life Before Death.

A compelling read, full of extraordinary stories from his life & work, it also investigates a theme which comes up time & again in his conversations with people who come to him for readings: how do you make the most of your time in this world. Colin Fry has a gift for being able to receive messages from souls in the spirit world. Remarkable, & fascinating as this is he feels strongly that the messages he receives should be used to help us maximise our life's potential. Life Before Death explains how he was able to develop his gift, & what being a psychic medium actually means. But it also gives advice on how to make better connections with your friends & family, how to be open to new things in life, how to both forgive & give more readily, & how to accept all that happens to you.

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In this wonderful gardening journal, which accompanies the BBC2 series of the same name, Carol Klein, with characteristic warmth & eloquence, tells us the story of a year in her beautiful garden at Glebe Cottage. With superb photography throughout, she takes us on a procession through the seasons, as she plans & plants, sows seeds & nurtures cuttings, tends the borders, & harvests her crops.

Her energy, knowledge & enthusiasm are an inspiration in every month of the year.

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'I wake to the sun striking gold on a stone wall. If I lean out of the window I can see Mount Canigou newly iced with snow. It is wonderful to live in a building with windows all around, to see both sunrise & sunset, to be constantly aware of the passage of the sun & moon.'

In 1988, Rosemary Bailey & her husband were travelling in the French Pyrenees when they fell in love with, & subsequently bought, a ruined medieval monastery, surrounded by peach orchards & snow-capped peaks. Traces of the monks were everywhere, in the frescoed 13th century chapel, the buried crypt, the stone arches of the cloister.

For the next few years the couple visited Corbiac whenever they could, until in 1997, they took the plunge & moved from central London to rural France with their six-year-old son. Entirely reliant on their earnings as freelance writers, they put their Apple Macs in the room with the fewest leaks & sent Theo to the village school. With vision & determination they have restored the monastery to its former glory, testing their relationship & resolve to the limit, & finding unexpected inspiration in the place.

Life in a Postcard is not just Rosemary Bailey





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Reptiles & amphibians ruled the world for nearly 200 million years & today there are still over 12, 500 of them. Some are huge, the deadliest creatures on earth. Some are tiny, among the strangest to be found anywhere. Together they not only outnumber mammals or birds but in their colourful variety & extraordinary behaviour, they far surpass them.

So where did these ancient creatures come from? How have they transformed themselves into the bizarre & beautiful forms that are alive today? & what

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David Attenborough reveals a secret universe it is teeming with life & is all around us, yet we never see it. It is the world of the very small, & it is a world of sex, drugs & violence. Here David shows us not just bugs, beetles & creepy-crawlies, but scorpions & centipedes, mites & mantids, spiders & dragonflies. & not just life in the undergrowth, but the dramatic battles between predator & prey that are happening in the corner of your living room & in your larder. See magnificent spectacles: swarming antler moths; millions of desert locusts; a mountain of locusts. For every pound of humans on Earth, there are 300 pounds of insects. ...

Douglas Rushkoff was mugged outside his apartment on Christmas Eve, but when he posted a friendly warning on his community website, the responses castigated him for potentially harming the local real-estate market. When did these corporate values overtake civic responsibilites?

Rushkoff examines how corporatism has become an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, choices & opinions. He demonstrates how this system created a world where everything can be commodified, where communities have dissolved into consumer groups, where fiction & reality have become fundamentally blurred. &, with this system on the verge of collapse, Rushkoff shows how the simple pleasures that make us human can also point the way to freedom.

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