A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the streets he walks
- & is in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. Acclaimed writer Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the avenues & along the quays, into parts of the city virtually unknown to visitors & indeed to many locals, luring the reader into the fascinating & seductive backstreets of his personal Paris.
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A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through city streets in search of adventure & fulfillment. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets & avenues & along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors & indeed to many Parisians. In the hands of the learned White, a walk through Paris is both a tour of its lush, sometimes prurient history, & an evocation of the city`s spirit. The Flaneur leads us to bookshops & boutiques, monuments & palaces, giving us a glimpse the inner human drama. Along the way we learn everything from the latest debates among French lawmakers to the juicy details of Colette`s life. ...

Forget the mass-produced tortilla chips & E-flavoured salsa dips. Discover the taste of real Latin American food, as diverse as its beautiful landscapes, drawing on age-old indigenous recipes with influences from Spain, Portugal & Africa. From the snow-capped mountains of the Andes there is drunken chicken, potatoes with walnut, cheese, & chilli sauce & corn arepas stuffed with cream cheese; from the palm-fringed Caribbean, avocado & codfish appetizer, & Trinidadian callaloo; from the dusky hills of Mexico, red chicken with almonds, chopped courgettes & cream. The recipes are interspersed with stories about the origins of Latin American foods & the cooks who introduced the author to this cuisine. Poems, diaries & extracts from Latin American novels are also included. ...

Winner of the 1992 Glenfiddich Award for Food Book of the Year, this is a cookery book with a strong travel bias, dealing with each of Andalucia`s eight provinces in turn to provide a personal, geographical & culinary survey of the area. It shows how the land itself & historical events have influenced the culinary tradition of the region, with its intriguing combination of hearty peasant fare & the delicate seasonings that are a legacy of the Moorish invasions. Each province draws on its own magnificent natural larder, & the recipes, such as hot gazpacho from Huelva, salt cod with potatoes & peppers from Jaen, pork & beans with chard from Seville & chickpea & wheat soup from Almeria, reflect this diversity. The author lived in the area for several years. Her personal reminiscences are interwoven with a wealth of cultural & historical information, & the text is accompanied by the author`s own watercolours of dishes, places & scenes of Andalucian life. ...

Far more than just a cook book, this richly illustrated volume not only features more than eighty recipes, but also provides a survey of the culinary customs, traditions & history of eight Islamic countries. Insights into everyday eating habits, the use of spices & herbs, coffee houses, restaurants & bazaars, & the famous hospitality of Arabia make this book both pleasurable & practical. ...

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak`s The Flea Palace is a moving & highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building & who together become embroiled in a mystery. By turns comic & tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals & their families. There`s a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a `clean freak` & her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; & a charmingly naive mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. ” Picaresque.” (Guardian). ” Hyperactive & hilarious.” (Independent). ...

This is a new translation of this chilling novel, set on the Belgian border. Book fourteen in the new Penguin Maigret series. She wasn`t an ordinary supplicant. She didn`t lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. ` If you don`t agree to look at our case, my parents & I will be lost, & it will be the most hateful legal error...` Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder. But their well-kept shop, the sleepy community & its raging river all hide their own mysteries. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels. ” Compelling, remorseless, brilliant”. (John Gray). ” One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century... Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories”. (Guardian). ”A supreme writer.. .unforgettable vividness”. (Independent). Georges Simenon was born in Liege, Belgium, in 1903. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of over 400 novels & short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerl&, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. ...

First English translation of this novel by the author of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf While summering on the French Riviera, the young Seryozha secretly becomes the lover of the much older Liza
- who is also his father`s mistress. As autumn approaches, they reluctantly part: Liza to return to Paris, Seryozha to take up his studies at university in London. When he finds out about their affair, Seryozha`s father attempts to convince Liza to leave his son, for the sake of the boy`s own happiness. She finally gives in
- but a sudden, fatal catastrophe changes everything... Gazdanov`s second novel is proof of his wide-ranging talents: originally written before his celebrated noir experiments The Spectre of Alexander Wolf & The Buddha`s Return, The Flight blends psychological drama, illicit romance & moments of both comedy & lyricism into a modernist take on the traditional Russian nineteenth-century realist novel epitomised by Tolstoy.

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It is the bitterly cold winter of 1944/45. The Red Army is advancing on Eastern Prussia, the easternmost province of Germany, at the start of its inexorable advance towards Berlin. Millions of East Prussians are desperate to flee, but the Nazis order them to stay & fight. Finally, with the Russian guns in earshot, they are allowed to leave. They soon realise that they are surrounded, cut of f from the rest of Germany. Many of them take the perilous route over a frozen lagoon, the only route left open. With them are thousands of the most superb horses in the world, the Trakehner, bred over the past two centuries in East Prussia. They flee in large herds or are harnessed to wagons or sleighs & face the same dangers as their guardians & owners. With little to eat, the target of Soviet bombers & tanks, many of them die on the way. Only a few hundred reached the West. They had saved their owners, & their owners had saved them rarely has there been such a bond between men & horses. But the story is not over. Given the harsh conditions, the hunger, deprivation & poverty of the immediate post-war years, can the breed be built up again? ...

Mr Finch leads a quiet life with his best friend, a small red bird. Nothing very exciting ever happens to them & that suits Mr Finch very well. Until one day, when his one & only friend disappears! Terribly worried Mr Finch heads off in search of the bird into the heart of a jungle that has recently invaded the city... Suddenly, Mr Finch finds himself on an extraordinary journey that teaches him far more than he realised about himself. Will this journey allow the two friends to take flight & finally find true happiness?A tender & magical picture book that shows happiness is sometimes very close at hand just waiting to be found! ...