UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · TRAVEL · FICTION
Michael Palin
Also known as: Monty Python, The Pythons
FROM SPACE, the Sahara is a brilliant band of caramel and beige, stretching from the dried-blood-red cliffs of Mauritania on the Atlantic Ocean to the bleached bone of Egypt's Eastern Desert hard by the Red Sea.
— from Sahara, 1935
Most acclaimed
Brazil
2001
John Updike's sixteenth novel takes place in a stylized Brazil where almost anything is possible, if you are young and in love. Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year-old black child of the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach; their flight into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them; his mother curses them, her father harries them with hirelings, and neither lover is absolutely faithful. Yet Tristao and Isabel hold to the faith that each is the other's fate for life, as they pass - in Shakespeare's phrase - "through nature to eternity." Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-Sixties to the late Eighties, Brazil surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.
Sahara
1935
La guerra que enfrento a Espana y Marruecos en 1957 y 1958 se desarrollo en dos escenarios bien diferentes, Ifni y el Sahara Occidental. Fue una contienda oscura, ocultada en su desarrollo y consecuencias a la callada y sufrida opinion publica de la Espana de los anos cincuenta del siglo pasado. Cuando comenzaron los combates las fuerzas armadas no estaban en realidad en condiciones de librar una guerra moderna, ni siquiera contra un ejercito irregular y a poca distancia de la metropoli. A pesar de ello, a base de coraje y sacrificio, se detuvo el ataque marroqui y se expulso a los invasores de territorio espanol. La presente obra es un pequeno intento para acercar a todo tipo de publico los hechos mas significativos de una guerra silenciada, olvidada y casi borrada de la memoria y de los libros de historia. En ella, centenares de espanoles dieron la vida defendiendo a su pais; muchos de ellos soldados de reemplazo que abandonaron su pacifica y tranquila vida para hacer el servicio militar y fueron llevados en avion o barco a defender unos territorios de los que, la mayor parte, no sabian absolutamente nada. Sesenta anos despues del fin de la guerra, su recuerdo y lo que hicieron no debe de olvidarse, aunque asi lo hayan hecho desde entonces los ingratos gobiernos espanoles y la falta de memoria de sus compatriotas.
Full Circle
History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of twelve years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend—Jack—telling him that another friend—Andy—is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend’s bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.Growing up together through the restrictive 1950’s and confusing ‘60’s, Jackson “Jack” Grace and Ned Brummel took solace in their love for each other. But once they arrive at college in 1969 and meet handsome farm boy Andy Kowalski, everything changes. Despite Andy’s apparent heterosexuality, both Jack and Ned fall hard for him, straining their close friendship. Soon, the three men will become involved in a series of intense liaisons and bitter betrayals, coming together and flying apart, as they alternately hurt, love, shape, and heal one another over the course of years. From the heady, drug- and sex-fueled days of San Francisco in the wild seventies to the haunting spectre of AIDS in the eighties and the righteous activism of the nineties, their relationship transforms and grows, reflecting the changes going on around them. Now, together again in the most crucial and intimate of settings, Ned, Jack, and Andy have another chance to confront the damage of the past and embrace the bonds of friendship and love that have stood the test of time