Tales of upheaval and confusion, longing and love in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake.
For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away.
Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. 'When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,' says Frog. 'And right now he is very, very angry.
'In a dance with the delights of Murakami's imagination we experience the limitless possibilities of fiction. With these stories Murakami expands our hearts and minds yet again' The Times
Six months ago, something happened that changed everything for Hattie. The next morning, she came up with The Plan. It was time for a whole new life. That's how Hattie ends up in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere, where the woodland stretches for miles and stars light up the night sky. Here, Hattie can be whoever she wants to be.
At two years old, Hattie was diagnosed with a condition that would alter the course of her life. Ever since then she's had to constantly explain herself and pretend that the pitying looks don't bother her.
If she wants The Plan to work, nobody back home can know why she really left, and nobody in her new life can know the truth about her.
But it's not long before she's caught in her lies - trapped between who she really is, and who she so desperately wants to be. When everything falls apart, can she piece herself back together?
Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, 'Beloved'. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece and best-known work.
After a childhood in foster care, Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the town of Lucille. Bitter’s instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus – but her friends aren’t willing to settle for a world that the adults say is ‘just the way things are’. Pulled between old friendships, her creative passion, and a new a romance, Bitter isn’t sure where she belongs – in the art studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost?
Conserve and Control is written from the margins. Characters who are non-binary, working class, disabled and trans take central place as we are transported to a queer and green paradise that, like all utopias, is not to be trusted.
As a working-class activist and (former) s3x worker, Otter Lieffe brings nuance to the ethics of work, kink, sex and activism. In this, her second novel, she explores what it might mean to really create political change and asks who gets left behind in the process. She invites us to step up and take our place in the struggle and bring our fabulous complexity with us to the front-lines.
Crossing the River is a story about three black people during different time periods and in different continents as they struggle with the separation from their native Africa. The novel follows Nash, who travels from America to Africa to educate natives about Christ; Martha, an old woman who attempts to travel from Virginia to California to escape the injustices of being a slave; and Travis, a member of the U.S. military who goes to England during World War II.
A non-white family in a small town in South Africa in the 1950s is affected by that country's segregation laws when the area in which they have their home and their small business is declared `white.' The two daughters of the household, Meena and Yasmin, are at the same time treading hackneyed paths through the tangles of pubescence and adolescence respectively, while their parents--their father classified `Indian' and their mother `Coloured' under the complexities of Pretoria's system of racial classifications--attempt to cope with this disruption to their otherwise comfortable lives.
Desire Caught by the Tail is a farcical play written by the painter Pablo Picasso.