Bøger udgivet af BATISCAFO

The works that elevated Theodor Kallifatides as one of the great European writers of the second half of the 20th century were his three novels Peasants and Gentlemen (1973), The Plow and the Sword (1975) and A Cruel Peace (1977). They are translated for the first time into Spanish. With them, Kallifatides portrayed his childhood and adolescence and at the same time the most tragic period in the contemporary history of Greece, which runs from the Nazis invaded country in 1941 to the end of the Greek civil war in 1949, and the misery of the postwar period in a devastated country. In Peasants and Gentlemen, everything begins in a small town in the south of the Peloponnese, Yalós. Mussolini's troops arrive first, soon replaced by the much more brutal and cruel Nazi army. But the invasions barely appear like a distant storm. The novelist's gaze, tender, compassionate and full of humor, focuses on the inhabitants of Yalós, who try to survive, between fear, hunger, acceptance and resistance: the heterodox priest, the collaborationist mayor, the baker, the peasants, the socialist teacher, the village fool and above all the mothers and grandmothers, true protagonists of Kallifatides' books.

Year 2063. Earth's resources are running out. All space expeditions in search of new fuels have failed, China is a global power, the United States is dying in the hands of the mafia, and people are freezing to death in downtown Manhattan. American tycoon Ben Belson is one of the richest men in the universe, an immature and presumptuous guy who needs to prove to the world that his father was wrong for underestimating him. In a moment of crisis, he decides to stockpile the little uranium that remains on Earth, buys a ship and sets course for a planet that he immediately baptizes with his own name and on which a type of intelligent grass grows whose song enervates the senses. Sidereal missions have been prohibited for a long time, but he has gotten used to getting his way and, with the excuse of finding an answer to the energy crisis, he throws himself into the void of space to overcome his existential void. Thus, what begins as just another eccentricity ends up becoming the expedition of the century. Suddenly, the future of humanity is in his hands, although, in reality, he just wanted to clear his head a little.

This is the story of Milena Jesenská, who many know as Kafka's friend. And yes, the months of loving and intellectual relationship with Franz Kafka marked the lives of both. Nothing was the same for Milena, she transformed. She gained confidence in herself, in her writing, in her political stance in defense of feminism and democracy, and in her daring opposition to Adolf Hitler's regime. But Milena was much more than one of Franz Kafka's most important friends. She was also a mother, journalist, translator, writer, part of the intellectual elite that met in the cafes of Vienna, along with Musil, Karl Kraus, Werfel and Hermann Broch, a member of the resistance when Nazi troops invaded her country, Czechoslovakia. Milena rebelled against the traditional order that her father wanted to impose on her, against what her husband demanded of her in her marriage, against the secondary role that was assigned to women in newspaper editorial offices and in the world. labor. She was a generous lover of men and women in rebellion against the limits imposed on love. Based on the writings, articles and letters that have been preserved from Milena and the testimonies of those who knew her, Monika Zgustova reconstructs the life of that brave and fascinating woman who was Milena Jesenská. She erects a tribute to the women who, in the turbulent and tragic years of the 1920s and 1930s, dedicated their lives to fighting for the dignity of women and victims of injustice.

After studying a master's degree in Clinical Psychology, Dasha Kiper worked as a caregiver for a Holocaust survivor suffering from Alzheimer's. Based on that experience and her subsequent work with caregivers of patients with dementia, Kiper proposes a new way of seeing and understanding the symbiotic relationship that is established between Alzheimer's and dementia patients and those who have to care for them. In the moving stories that Kiper collects in the book, she explores the dilemmas that these patients pose to those who have to live with them: a man's late and sudden Catholic devotion irritates his wife, a man believes that his partner is an imposter, a woman's imaginary friendships drive a wedge between her and her husband, a mother's childhood trauma emerges to torment her son... Combining neuroscience and literature, psychology and philosophy, with the teachings of a series of specific cases, Kiper illuminates the particular mental mechanisms of these patients and the difficulties they pose to those who they have to care for them, offering them comfort and understanding while debunking the myth of the perfect caregiver.

Written in 1857 and 1858, these two stories are a tribute to Tolstoy's passion for music and are inspired by episodes from his life. In "Lucerne" he offers evocative descriptions of the city by the lake and recreates in first person the conflicts of his protagonist, Prince Nekhludov, who is briefly taken out of his sadness by a charming melody and restored to his pure love of life: What more is needed? Everything is yours, everything is good..." In "Albert" he elaborates the story of a very talented violinist whom he actually had the opportunity to listen to in Saint Petersburg and whose miserable fate moved him deeply, judging by an entry in his diaries where he referred to him as a "genius maniac." Two stories in which the great Russian writer's prodigious talent for observation and detail shines.

Although his parents are convinced that Valentino will become a great man, his sisters believe that he is nothing more than a vain, selfish and frivolous young man, more concerned with his conquests than with his medical studies. Valentino's sudden engagement to a rich but unattractive woman ten years older will end the dreams of his parents, who, scandalized by such an unfortunate choice, suspect his girlfriend. With her prodigious psychological acuity, Natalia Ginzburg explores in Valentino social and gender expectations, class differences, wealth and marriage as prisons that suffocate the desires of her characters and turn even the most modest illusions into pure chimeras.

A young couple with a daughter settles in a town in the interior of Spain that languishes next to a swamp among the remains of their dreams: a dismantled nuclear power plant, unfinished housing estates, faded advertisements for a city of leisure that never came to be. They intend to rebuild their life there, but the girl feels increasingly attracted to the mysteries that the swamp hides, while the father tries to understand a strange vibration that seems to unite the past and the present, the memory and the restlessness of those who still remain in it. the village. And the mother, while she tries to keep her life afloat, feels that there is something, beyond the visible, that is escaping her. With these characters and those who live in the town, José Ovejero weaves together in Vibration confrontations and violence that, imperceptibly, are transmitted from generation to generation. What connects a necropolis submerged in the swamp with a cemetery in which three teenagers fight their disenchantment and loneliness? Or a prison camp with the burning of an uninhabited house? What unites that young man and that girl who meet at night in the deserted town? What at first seem like unconnected stories become a mystery novel, which condenses, in a single place, not only a series of particular stories, but also the history of a country.

I am not alone on this platform... Voices surround me, hundreds of voices, they are always with me. Since I was a child. She lived in a town. We children liked to play in the street, but in the afternoons we were attracted, like magnets, to the benches next to the houses, or jatas, as they say in our land, where the exhausted women gathered. None of them had a husband, father or brothers; I don't remember that there were men in the village after the war: during the Second World War, in Belarus, on the front and in partisan operations, one in four Belarusians perished. Our childhood world after the war was a world of women.

Hatoko Amemiya has just returned to Kamakura, the coastal town where she grew up in the care of her grandmother, to resume the family business of a stationery store. Theirs is a lineage of scribes, an ancient profession that Hatoko is determined to honor and keep over time through the small tasks that clients entrust to her: how to say goodbye to someone, greet a newcomer or remember the sweetness of a first love, everything has a place within the margins of a letter, which Hatoko takes care of crafting with delicacy, choosing the appropriate stamp, the words, the ink and the exact weight for each one of them. Ito Ogawa weaves a moving story about the details that fill the daily life of any community, all of this held in the background with the landscapes, gastronomy and Japanese festivities that accompany and celebrate the passing of the seasons of the year, the relief of affections and teachings that we inherited like open letters from generation to generation.

Margaret Laurence's most celebrated novel introduced readers to one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. Hagar Shipley is stubborn, querulous, self-reliant, and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her, she makes a bold last step towards freedom and independence. As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a young girl growing up in a black prairie town. Then as the wife of a virile but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy, as a mother who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from her pioneer ancestors.

An unexpected event tarnishes the routine of Saint-Louis: an influential lawyer in the city has died in an accident on the A-35. Inspector Gorski, in charge of the investigation, will have to deal not only with his Strasbourg counterpart, but also with a young amateur willing to compete with him: Raymond Barthelme, teenage son of the deceased. Meanwhile, his private life falters and the inspector searches, despite himself, for answers and refuge in the bars of Saint-Louis, where the entire cast of "The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau" awaits him. But his demons lurk in every corner, and in this case of the A-35, each new clue hides a trap...

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a famous German writer, arrives in Venice at a mature stage of his life seeking to renew lost inspiration. From the quiet beach next to his hotel, he spends hours admiring the charm of young Tadzio, a Polish teenager who leads him into an internal struggle between desire and the forbidden that will make him renounce everything, including himself. Death in Venice is a subtle representation of the decadence of a Europe besieged by war and cholera, and, at the same time, an ode to beauty through the eyes of a mature man in the midst of a sexual identity crisis.

Journey to the highest peaks and plateaus of planet Earth... but make sure to bring your climbing gear! Take a closer look at the mountains of the world, from the Alps to the Andes to the peaks of the Himalayas. Meet the animals and people who make their homes on rocky peaks, as well as the adventurers and athletes who challenge these great heights. This richly illustrated book is packed with history and facts about the mountains of the world and all their wonders.

Early Jazz is one of the seminal books on American jazz, ranging from the beginnings of jazz as a distinct musical style at the turn of the century to its first great flowering in the 1930s. Schuller explores the music of the great jazz soloists of the twenties--Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and others--and the big bands and arrangers--Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, and especially Duke Ellington--placing their music in the context of the other musical cultures of the twentieth century and offering analyses of many great jazz recordings.

A poor and desperate fisherman travels the kingdom in search of an honest man who will agree to be the godfather of his newborn son. He rejects God (too unfair), rejects the Devil (too cruel), and is about to give up when a shadowy figure approaches him on horseback along the road. It is Death. Perfect! She is honest, fair and very powerful. The perfect godmother, unless... you dare to disobey her.

Winter is coming, the nights are longer. There are those who gather under the mistletoe with their family and friends while others advocate the abolition of the Christmas spirit under the slogan "Ban Christmas or Die." Among the pages of this collection of stories lurk ghosts and haunted houses, but also everyday problems that are much more recognizable and no less terrifying. They all have one thing in common: the cold. That cold that runs down our spine when we open the window on a winter afternoon, either because a cold breeze is blowing outside or because who knows what is hidden in that darkness?

Set in the southern Appalachian mountains, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a trailer, with no assets other than his late father's good looks and copper hair, and a caustic wit.

Ten days after calling off their wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, they realized they'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. What if you released yourself from traditional narratives of happiness? What if you looked for ways to leave room for the unexpected? In Hauser's case, this meant dissecting pop culture touchstone, from The Philadelphia Story to The X Files, to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. They attended a robot convention, contemplated grief at John Belushi's gravesite, and officiated a wedding. Most importantly, they mapped the difference between the stories we're asked to hold versus those we choose to carry. Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most bighearted friend, The Crane Wife is a book for everyone whose path doesn't look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing and to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home to live in.

"Admunsen, el alter ego de Vâazquez Montalbâan y protagonista de la novela, es un joven intelectual frustrado entre las demandas alienantes de la sociedad de consumo, la realizaciâon personal y la concienciaciâon polâitica. Tras pasar un par de aänos en la câarcel, su vida transcurre en una serie de intentos fallidos de desarrollarse como escritor, reconstruir su relaciâon de pareja y de evitar las presiones por integrarse en el sistema, hasta que, desencantado, tendrâa que decidir si implicarse en la causa o renunciar a sus principios y poner en peligro su integridad moral. Los papeles de Admunsen ofrece un retrato mordaz y despiadado de los aänos sesenta en Barcelona, donde se visibiliza por primera vez en la literatura de Vâazquez Montalbâan la represiâon de la dictadura, el desarrollo de una sociedad de consumo, las nuevas ideas, y los cambios en la moralidad y las costumbres, asâi como el exilio interior del propio autor. Esta ediciâon, revisada y comentada por Jose Colmeiro, experto en la obra de Montalbâan, supone una fascinante 'caja negra' del escritor que da algunas claves hasta ahora desconocidas sobre su propia vida y anticipa ya su estilo maduro e inconfundible, su âacida ironâia y su insobornable crâitica social; caracterâisticas que han convertido a Manuel Vâazquez Montalbâan en una de las grandes voces de la literatura espaänola y europea del pasado siglo y que confirman que Los papeles de Admunsen es un hallazgo de mâaxima trascendencia." --

"A boy is born who will be called Johannes. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, crudely compressed. Beginning with the thoughts of Johannes' father as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes' own thoughts as he embarks on a day in his life in which everything is exactly the same, but totally different, Morning and Evening is a works on the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning. The moments throughout the novel are simple, everyday, but Fosse's rhythmic, winding, clipped prose deftly guides readers through the past and present."--Publisher description.

At twenty, Lilja falls in love with a bright and attractive young university student who quotes Derrida and prepares vegetarian meals. Very soon she finds herself trapped in a dynamic of manipulation and psychological abuse, and enters a whirlwind of personal degradation and obsession with pleasing him -sexually, intellectually and culinary-, a self-destructive drift of which she is aware but before which, isolated and humiliated, she, can't react.

Fear and violence are not enough for any dictator to govern: these strategies may be essential to achieve power and even to maintain it for a time, but they are not usually effective in the long term. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support, since only a tyrant whose government is capable of inspiring idolatry in the people will be able to perpetuate himself. In Dictators, Frank Dikötter examines eight of the most effective personality cults of the 20th century: those that, through strategies ranging from carefully choreographed military parades to the establishment of strict censorship, were fully aware of the image they wanted to project and encourage.

La primera novela éblica del autor de 'Vida y destino', por fin publicada sin los recortes de la censura. Hasta ahora se haíba incluido dentro del volumen 'ñAos de guerra'. Vasili Grossman escribói tres novelas sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial, cada una de las cuales ofrece una visóin distinta de lo que puede ser una novela éblica, y todas ellas extraordinarias. 'Stalingrado' y 'Vida y destino' esátn unidas por un conjunto de personajes comunes, pero 'Stalingrado' no es óslo una historia conmovedora y emocionante de la defensa desesperada de la ciudad y del cambio de rumbo de la guerra, sino tambéin un monumento a la memoria de los innumerables muertos en aquella batalla. 'Vida y destino', por el contrario, es una obra de filosoífa moral y poíltica adeáms de una novela, y la cuestóin profunda que explora es si es posible o no comportarseé ticamente ante una violencia abrumadora. 'El pueblo es inmortal' es algo totalmente distinto. Escrita en 1942 y ambientada en los catastórficos primeros meses de la invasóin alemana de la Unóin Sovéitica, es la historia de un batalóln del eéjrcito sovéitico enviado para frenar el avance enemigo a cualquier precio, con el cerco y la aniquilacóin como final inevitable. Una apasionante historia de resistencia y humanidad llena una vez áms de escenas y personas inolvidables.

'If you listen carefully to a story, you will never be the same again, since that story will enter your heart and, like a worm, it will end up gnawing away at all the obstacles that oppose the divine. So even if you read the stories in this book just to pass the time, there's no guarantee that one of them won't end up breaking down your defenses and exploding when you least expect it. You're warned!" With as much humor as lyricism, with as much lightness as depth, this book addresses the great questions of self-knowledge and personal growth: the body, emptiness, shadow, contemplation, identity, forgiveness and everyday life. A narrative treatise on spirituality with extraordinary potential for transformation. A literary artifact that, with the unmistakable personal mark of Pablo d'Ors, inaugurates what could well be called a literature of light.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a short story of horror and romance, written by Washington Irving in 1820, in his collection of essays and short stories The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. The story is set in 1784, around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded valley called Sleepy Hollow known for its ghost stories and the haunted atmosphere that permeates the imagination of its inhabitants and visitors. The most infamous specter of the place is the Headless Horseman, said to be the ghost of a former Hessian soldier who was struck in the head by a cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War.

A modern classic that inaugurates one of the most brilliant and unclassifiable cycles of European literature in recent decades: the Giochi dell'eternità trilogy. The Beginnings is the big bang of Antonio Moresco's narrative universe, a modern classic that established him as one of the great contemporary writers in the Italian language and that has earned him deserved comparisons with authors of the stature of Joyce, Proust and Cartarescu. In a dizzying succession of glimpsed places and events, in a metamorphosis that never ends, the protagonist lives at the same time one and three lives: he is, although never completely, a seminarian, a revolutionary and a writer. In this hypnotic masterpiece, poetry, comedy and tragedy intermingle in a maelstrom that assimilates the absurdity of existence to vindicate its beauty. A literary event: an intellectual journey to hell where the protagonist faces the times in which he lives without a compass or map.

The new novel by one of the most outstanding authors of the last decades. Ali Smith dazzles us with Fragua, a book that closes the famous seasonal Quartet. One day, in post-Brexit Britain and in the midst of the pandemic, artist Sandy Gray receives an unexpected phone call from a college acquaintance, Martina Pelf. Martina is calling Sandy for help with a mysterious question she's been asked after spending half a day locked in a room by border control officers for no reason she can understand... Jumping back in time, Fragua features the story of a blacksmith who made beautiful pieces centuries ago and who was persecuted and marked. A story of restrictions and a fight for freedom that is intertwined with the story of Sandy thanks to an exceptional lock created by the blacksmith and which comes into the hands of Martina Pelf. A hopeful novel, which can be read as a coda to the famous Seasonal Quartet, in which Ali Smith brings us again an intelligent and moving novel, thoughtful and playful.

"In this "murder mystery memoir," a Dutch billionaire and Holocaust survivor named Joseph Hortha hires writer "Ariel" to investigate Salvador Allende's mysterious death in the 1973 coup in Chile, in the hopes of discovering whether Allende committed suicide or was murdered. Dorfman takes us along a spectacular journey, from Washington, DC and New York City, to Santiago and Valparaâiso, and finally to London. Along the way, we witness a midnight gravedigging scene, are tracked by stealthy stalkers, and interview sources of varying credibility to discover what transpired at La Moneda. Through this gripping investigation, Joseph and Ariel attempt to redeem themselves, as they are both plagued by guilt. While Joseph grapples with how he has made his fortune unwittingly destroying his beloved planet, Ariel is haunted by the fact that his absence at the coup led to the disappearance of his friend. What begins as a puzzling quest unwinds into a fabulous saga about our duties to the world, one another, and ourselves." --

Koko won't do what is expected of her. Defying her family's wishes, she has brought up her eleven-year-old daughter alone in her apartment. Now, after a casual affair, she is unexpectedly pregnant again. What will this mean for her already troubled relationship with her daughter? As she faces the future, memories of her own childhood loss flood into her consciousness, threatening to overwhelm her. Combining the beauty and unease of a dream, this haunting novel is an unflinching portrayal of a woman's innermost fears and desires of her.