The Uncannily Strange And Brief Life Of Amedeo Modigliani

The life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Consisting of a series of vignettes, mostly set in the painter's studio and peopled by his lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who ended her own life the day after Modigliani's death), the prostitutes who were his occasional models and several Bohemian visitors, the novel spans the last months of Modigliani's life, evoking the strange workings of the painter's troubled and often drug-fuelled mind and its expression in his paintings, ultimately succeeding in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century.

In 1917, Barcelona's infamous Raval district is alive with outlandish rumours. A monster is abducting and murdering young children. The police are either powerless to prevent his terrible crimes,or indifferent to them, since they concern only the sons and daughters of prostitutes. But Inspector Moisès Corvo is determined to stop the outrages, and punish their perpetrator. His inquiries take him on a tour of the Catalan capital,through slum, high-class brothel and casino, and end in a stomach-turning revelation.

The Struggle with the Daemon is a brilliant analysis of the European psyche by the great novelist and biographer Stefan Zweig. Zweig studies three giants of German literature and thought: Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Nietzsche – powerful minds whose ideas were at odds with the scientific positivism of their age; troubled spirits whose intoxicating passions drove them mad but inspired them to great works. In their struggle with their inner creative force, Zweig reflects the conflict at the heart of the European soul – between science and art, reason and inspiration. Both highly personal and philosophically wide-ranging, this is one of the most fascinating of Zweig’s renowned biographical studies.

Sinbad the Sailor is reborn as a young, adventurous man in modern day Algeria, who has joined the waves of North African immigration into Europe. Accompanied by a mysterious mongrel and his Senegalese friend Robinson, this lover of women and beauty embarks on a journey around the Mediterranean—from Algiers to Damascus, passing through Rome, Paris, Baghdad, through the refugee camps and the deceitful glimmer of the Western world—that takes him on a headlong pursuit of happiness and love. A tale of our times—sometimes cruel, often funny and always fascinating—this novel tells the story of a man coming to grips with the stark realities of war within the framework of legend. It is at once a reconciliation of East and West and a resounding judgement on the state of the modern world.

Happiness "is neither a privilege of the few, nor a fleeting state of mind: it is hidden behind a door that every person can open once they have found it, at the end of an arduous journey of self-discovery." The two Nobel Prize-winning writers Rabindranath Tagore and Hermann Hesse are arguably very different: one comes to us from the core of Indian culture, the other from the very heart of Old Europe; the former is an eternal wanderer, the latter a determined armchair traveller. Still, there are extraordinary affinities between their works, and they both understood that the path to happiness is paved with small acts and simple notions. Flavia Arzeni’s book offers us an oasis of stability and calm in which we can find the answers to our fundamental concerns about life and happiness.

Daniel Loew, a poet based in London, has been told since childhood that one day he would become his wealthy uncle’s only heir. When he learns of his uncle’s death, in Caracas, a few weeks have passed. A close friend of his uncle’s tells Loew that he alone has been named executor of the will and blocks Loew from receiving his inheritance. In a harrowing chase from Venezuela to Miami, via Hamburg and Panama City, against a background of political upheavals as Hugo Chàvez attempts and fails in his 1992 military coup, Loew leads a desperate fight to regain his considerable inheritance.

It was a memorable summer: with the broken-down old road that suddenly turned into a strip of gleaming asphalt, and the abandoned motorbike the three boys found as a rusty heap and built into a racer. But it was also more than that, more than a distraction from the boredom of their small Tuscan town, than a few weeks of racing and dodging the attentions of the local Marshal. For Jacopo and his two friends, it began their journeys out into the world, separated by thousands of miles, steered by something other than fate-helped on their way, and controlled... Tautly written and deeply moving, Enchantment is more than a simple coming-of-age story, it is a powerful, original novel from an important, compelling new author.

On 22 February 1942 Stefan Zweig, one of the most popular authors of his generation, committed suicide with his wife Lotte. The final, desperate gesture of this great writer has fascinated ever since. Zweig was an exile, driven from his home in Austria by the Nazis. Fleeing first to London, then New York, trying always to escape both those who demonised him and those who acclaimed him, he eventually took his young bride to Brazil, where they were haunted by the life they'd been forced to abandon and by accounts of the violence in Europe. Blending reality and fiction this novel tells the story of the great writer's final months. Laurent Seksik uncovers the man's hidden passions, his private suffering, and how he and his wife came to end their lives one peaceful February afternoon. "He looked long and deep into her eyes. 'I'll go first,' he said. 'You'll follow me... if that's what you want.'"