Beside the Sea

Véronique Olmi

A single mother takes her two young sons on a trip to the seaside. They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate and go to the funfair. She wants to protect them from an uncomprehending and cold world. She knows that it will be the last trip for her boys.
A haunting and thought-provoking story about how a mother’s love for her children can be more dangerous than the dark world she is seeking to keep at bay.

"This is a mesmerising portrait ... it should be read." Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

The French bestseller, first published in 2001, has been translated into all major European languages - now for the first time available in English.

120pp, Paperback, £8.99
February 2010
ISBN 978-0-9562840-2-0
English World Rights

Stone in a Landslide

Maria Barbal

The beginning of the 20th century: 13-year-old Conxa leaves her home village in the Pyrenees to work for her childless aunt. After years of hardship she finds love with Jaume – a love that will be thwarted by the Spanish Civil War. Approaching her own death, Conxa looks back on a life in which she has lost everything except her own indomitable spirit.

"This book possesses such force and overpowering beauty, I haven’t read something like this for a long time.” Elke Heidenreich (Germany’s Judy from Richard & Judy) in her TV show “lesen”

The Catalan modern classic, first published in 1985, now in its 50th edition, with over 50 000 copies sold in the last two years in Germany alone, for the first time in English.

126pp, Paperack, £8.99
June 2010
ISBN 978-0-9562840-1-3
English World Rights

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman

Friedrich Christian Delius

Rome one January afternoon in 1943. A young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. Innocent and naïve, the war is for her little more than a day-dream, until she realizes that her husband might never return.
This is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost - even at the risk of excluding reality.

A literary masterpiece by one of Germany's most renowned contemporary writers.

"What a superb translation. This extraordinary and eloquent novella, a true tour de force, has made me long to find more of Delius's work straightway." Miranda Seymour, author

"A slim text. Huge literature." Observer, Vienna

125pp, Paperback, £8.99
September 2010
ISBN 978-0-9562840-0-6
English World Rights