Not All Bastards Are From Vienna

Download or read book Not All Bastards Are from Vienna written by Andrea Molesini and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The international bestseller and winner of the Campiello Prize for Literature—“Moving and lyrical writing . . . Belongs in the canon of great war fiction” (Paste Magazine). Andrea Molesini’s exquisite debut novel portrays the depths of heroism and horror within a Northern Italian village toward the end of World War I. While a family’s villa is requisitioned by enemy troops, they are forced to intimately confront war’s injustice as their involvement with its sinister underpinnings grows more and more complex. In the autumn of 1917, Refrontolo—a small community north of Venice—is invaded by Austrian soldiers as the Italian army is pushed to the Piave River. The Spada family owns the largest estate in the area, where orphaned seventeen-year-old Paolo lives with his eccentric grandparents, headstrong aunt, and a loyal staff. With the battlefront nearby, the Spada home becomes a bastion of resistance, both clashing and cooperating with the military members imposing on their household. When Paolo is recruited to help with a covert operation, his life is put in irrevocable jeopardy. As he bears witness to violence and hostility between enemies, he grows to understand the value of courage, dignity, family bonds, and patriotism during wartime. “Wonderfully alive—often terribly so—as a wartime adventure and story of youth arriving at manhood.” —The New York Times Book Review “War and Peace meets The Leopard in a novel set among Italian aristocrats during the Great War . . . Rich and moving.” —The Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Between Enemies written by Andrea Molesini and published by Atlantic Books Ltd. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: November 1917. When Austrian forces advance into Northern Italy, the aristocratic Spada family find their estate requisitioned by enemy soldiers. A cruel act of violence against a group of local village girls sparks their desire for revenge. The whole family - from the eccentric grandparents to the secretive servants - have their own ideas about how to fight the enemy, but their courage is soon put to the test and it seems that some are willing to compromise. Seventeen-year-old Paolo Spada, the youngest member of the family, is forced to bear witness as his once proud family succumbs to acts of love and hate, jealousy and betrayal.

Download or read book History Without the Boring Bits written by Ian Crofton and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional chronologies of world history concentrate on the reigns of kings and queens, the dates of battles and treaties, the publication dates of great books, the completion of famous buildings, the deaths of iconic figures, and the years of major discoveries. But there are other more interesting stories to tell--stories that don't usually get into the history books, but which can nevertheless bring the past vividly and excitingly to life. Imagine a history lesson that spares you the details of such seminal events as the 11th-century papal-imperial conflict, that fails to say much at all about the 1815 Congress of Vienna--and that neglects entirely to mention the world-changing moment that was the 1521 Diet of Worms. Imagine instead a book that tells you the date of the ancient Roman law that made it legal to break wind at banquets; the name of the defunct medieval pope whose putrefying corpse was subjected to the humiliation of a trial before a court of law; the identity of the priapic monarch who sired more bastards than any other king of England; and last but not least the date of the demise in London of the first goat to have circumnavigated the globe twice. Imagine a book crammed with such deliciously disposable information, and you have History without the Boring Bits. By turns bizarre, surprising, trivial, and enlightening, History without the Boring Bits offers rich pickings for the browser, and entertainment and inspiration aplenty for those who have grown weary of more conventional works of history.

Download or read book Daughter of Smoke & Bone written by Laini Taylor and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Download or read book Italian Literature since 1900 in English Translation written by Robin Healey and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-03-14 with total page 1104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing the most complete record possible of texts by Italian writers active after 1900, this annotated bibliography covers over 4,800 distinct editions of writings by some 1,700 Italian authors. Many entries are accompanied by useful notes that provide information on the authors, works, translators, and the reception of the translations. This book includes the works of Pirandello, Calvino, Eco, and more recently, Andrea Camilleri and Valerio Manfredi. Together with Robin Healey’s Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation, also published by University of Toronto Press in 2011, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations from Italian accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature.

Download or read book My Prizes written by Thomas Bernhard and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles. Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety. Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.

Download or read book The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley written by Jeremy Massey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark and unexpected novel about a Dublin undertaker who finds himself on the wrong side of the Irish mob. Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher's, a long-established--some say the best--funeral home in Dublin. One night driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It's Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he's dead. Shocked and scared, Paddy jumps back in his car and drives away before anyone notices what's happened. The next morning, the Cullen family calls Gallagher's to oversee the funeral arrangements. Paddy, to his dismay, is given the task of meeting with the grieving Vincent Cullen, Dublin's crime boss, and Cullen's entourage. When events go awry, Paddy is plunged into an unexpected eddy of intrigue, deceit, and treachery. By turns a thriller, a love story, and a black comedy of ill manners, The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley is a surprising, compulsively readable debut novel.