The Silent Cry

by Kenzaburo Oe

  Ahdaf Soueif

  ‘This is a wonderful book. It makes The Alexandria Quartet look like the travel brochure it is’ Gabriel Josipovici

  THE PIANO TEACHER

  Elfriede Jelinek

  A haunting tale of morbid voyeurism and masochism, The Piano Teacher is one of the greatest contemporary European novels. Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. But by night she trawls the porn shows of Vienna while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies’ man, Walter Klemmer. With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstacy of self-destruction. First published in 1983, The Piano Teacher is Elfriede Jelinek’s masterpiece. Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. In 2004 Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Michael Haneke’s

  film won the three major prizes at Cannes in 2000.

  ‘In this demented love story the hunter is the hunted, pain is pleasure, and spite and self-contempt seep from every pore’ Guardian

  ‘With extraordinary linguistic zeal The Piano Teacher reveals the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power’ The Nobel

  Prize Academy

  A LESSON BEFORE DYING

  Ernest. J. Gaines

  In the tradition of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, A Lesson Before Dying is a richly compassionate and deeply moving novel. In a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson witnesses a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is accused of murder and sentenced to death. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it is now published as a

  Serpent’s Tail Classic, with a new introduction by Attica Locke.

  Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His novels include The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Of Love and Dust, Catherine Carmier, Bloodline, A Gathering of Old Men and In My Father’s House. He lives in Louisiana.

  ‘Ernest J. Gaines has created a powerful and loving portrait…

  A transcendent and heartfelt novel of redemption’ Guardian

  ‘Like the best country songs, straight and true, unafraid of sentiment’

  Independent