• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (17 April 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0224084445
• ISBN-13: 978-0224084444

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The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

Set in the 1950s, "The Broken Word" is an extraordinary poetic sequence that animates and illuminates a dark, terrifying period in British colonial history. The combination here of language and imagery that feel utterly contemporary, and subject matter - tribal violence and subsequent retribution - that seems almost Homeric, gives the narrative all the febrile energy of classical drama, re-charged and re-imagined. Tom has returned to his family's farm in Kenya for the summer vacation between school and university when he is swept up by the events of the Mau Mau uprising. Beginning with sporadic, brutal attacks by dispossessed Kikuyu on the British now occupying their land - attacks often executed with nothing more than traditional panga knives - the conflict escalates as the terrified British stop at nothing to re-impose order, eventually driving most of the Kikuyu population into the prison camps of what has become known as 'Britain's Gulag'.As Tom is propelled into violence and horror the poem mutates into a meditation on the inheritance of conflict, the destruction of innocence and the impossibility of afterwards saying what one has seen. Written with rigour, intelligence, and a fierce, unsparing clarity, this is profound, lyrical work with that rare confidence and thrilling originality that announce the arrival of a significant new voice.

About the Author
Adam Foulds was born in 1974 and lives in south London. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia and his poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines. His first nov

Scotland on Sunday
'Foulds' linguistic pearls are dispensed liberally and casually. Poetry cannot beautify a situation such as this yet Foulds has created something beautiful'

Financial Times Magazine
`an impressive debut... written in gripping cinematic vignettes'

The Guardian
`The dramatic force of the broken word comes from its skilful juxtapositions: knowledge and ignorance, innocence and guilt...a moving and pitiless depiction of the world as it is'

The Sunday Times
'dazzling... an exhilarating tour de force. Place and period are conjured up as confidently as if he had been there... violence and terror.. elegance of accuracy... emotional power... imaginative finesse... concise and precise, attentive and inventive - a superlative achievement'


Sunday Times
`a dark vivid, extraordinarily accomplished narrative poem.... the arrival of a significant literary talent'


The Independent
`Foulds has genuine talent'


Daily Telegraph, Nick Laird
'...It is rare to find such capacious lyricism, combining irony and terror, political scope and domestic detail'

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The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

Review
'Hitching's excavation are a treat. He presents the best gleanings of academia in a winning, conversational style. Almost every spadeful yields an etymological nugget ... elegantly and entertainingly written' -- Financial Times 'A fascinating exploration of the rich borrowings, exchanges and couplings of the language' -- Ben Macintyre, The Times 'Hitchings has teased out the stories lurking behind the language to provide a most satisfying whole' -- Publishing News 'Much more than a collage of etymological trivia, this is a dense and thorough excavation of the stories that lie behind the words we say' -- Metro 'Quite how Hitchings has managed to wrestle this dizzying mountain of dense information into such an elegant narrative ... is a feat almost as admirable as that of the great lexicographer. His book is painstakingly detailed, closely argued and suffused with a contagious enthusiasm for the secrets woven into the fabric of our words -- Daily Telegraph 'This clever, persuasive, delightful book is studded with entertaining observations' -- Independent on Sunday 'Wearing his learning lightly, Hitchings has produced an impressive successor to his acclaimed account of Johnson's dictionary' -- Independent 'A wonderfully detailed history of the English language' -- Good Book Guide

Hitchings, who wrote earlier about Samuel Johnson's dictionary (Defining the World, 2005), again displays his astonishing knowledge of the English language's myriad roots.English has been and no doubt always will be a salmagundi, the author declares, blending words from many other tongues into one splendid, ever-changing linguistic dish. It's vocabulary that interests him here - grammar is far more resistant to change, he notes - and after some factual table-setting (approximately 350 languages have contributed to English) he serves his main courses one century at a time. Hitchings effortlessly blends world history with linguistic history, helping us see that we appropriate words for numerous reasons: trade, conquest, fashion, food, art and so on. The Anglo-Saxons, we learn, had more than 30 words for warrior. From Arabic we gained words for alchemy that then migrated into math and science, such as zero and cipher. Chaucer, the author writes, was "a literary magpie" who liberated the language. The rise of the printing press ignited another vocabulary explosion. In the 16th century, English conflicts with Spain brought an influx of Spanish words, among them armada, hammock and mosquito. Shakespeare is the first known user of some 1,700 words. From the New World came potato and tobacco; Capt. John Smith was the first to use adrift and roomy. Greek, avers Hitchings, has remained a source of high-culture (even highfalutin) words like deipnosophist and pathos. Many French words deal with culture, leisure and food (no surprise there); soiree first appeared in the fiction of Fanny Burney. The British occupation of India brought the words teapot, curry and pajamas. In later days, advertising, mass media, the Internet and the "global village" have all accelerated the growth and spread of English. Hitchings notes in several places the impossibility and undesirability of attempting to close and bar the doors of this eternally flexible and omnivorous tongue.Learned, wise and educative, though a bit weighty for the average nightstand. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review

'Hitching’s excavation are a treat. He presents the best gleanings of academia in a winning, conversational style. Almost every spadeful yields an etymological nugget . . . elegantly and entertainingly written'

'A fascinating exploration of the rich borrowings, exchanges and couplings of the language'

'Hitchings has teased out the stories lurking behind the language to provide a most satisfying whole'

'Much more than a collage of etymological trivia, this is a dense and thorough excavation of the stories that lie behind the words we say'

'Quite how Hitchings has managed to wrestle this dizzying mountain of dense information into such an elegant narrative . . . is a feat almost as admirable as that of the great lexicographer. His book is painstakingly detailed, closely argued and suffused with a contagious enthusiasm for the secrets woven into the fabric of our words

'This clever, persuasive, delightful book is studded with entertaining observations'

'Wearing his learning lightly, Hitchings has produced an impressive successor to his acclaimed account of Johnson’s dictionary'

'A wonderfully detailed history of the English language'

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• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Faber and Faber (20 Mar 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0571230237
• ISBN-13: 978-0571230235

The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer

Synopsis
Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat, a violent, headstrong youth posted to the wilds of Siberia and Mongolia before the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron - now in command of a lethally effective rabble of cavalrymen - conquered Mongolia, the last time in history a country was seized by an army mounted on horses. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering everyone he suspected of irreligion or of being a Jew. And his is a story that rehearses later horrors in Russia and elsewhere. James Palmer's book is an epic recreation of a forgotten episode and will establish him as a brilliant popular historian.

Author

James Palmer was born in 1981, lives in Beijing and has travelled extensively in East and Central Asia. This is his first book. He brings to it knowledge of comparative religion as well as a deep fascination with the cultures and history of China and Mongoli

Reviews

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking (6 Mar 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0670917346
• ISBN-13: 978-0670917341

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God's Own Country by Ross Raisin

'Ramblers. Daft sods in pink and green hats. It wasn't even cold. They moved down the field swing-swaying like a line of drunks, addled with the air and the land, and the smell of manure' This is the voice of our narrator, Sam Marsdyke, the teenage son of a farmer up on the Yorkshire Moors. He spends his days working the sheep, mending fences, trying to dodge the eye of his brutal, silent father, and most of all, watching the transformation of the farms and villages around him. From the top of the moors he watches the goofy ramblers and the earnest 'towns', the families from York, who are feverishly buying up the farmhouses left empty by bankrupt farmers. And as he watches, one young daughter of a new family catches his eye. As he falls for the young, sophisticated girl from London, she begins to see him as a means to escape. She wants to rebel against her parents and he wants to fulfil the fantasy he harbours about her and so they run away together. But this journey across the moors will take a terrifying menacing turn which, for him, will prove his terrible undoing. Sam Marsdyke is an unforgettable character at the heart of this extraordinary novel, a novel that is hugely funny, darkly menacing and will resonate long after you have finished the last page.

Review comments... Colm Tόibín 'A compelling, disturbing and often very funny novel'... J.M. Coetzee Chilling in its effect and convincing in its execution.... Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End Utterly frightening and electrifying at once ...The Sunday Times Mature, taut and beautifully written ...Book Description
An extraordinary debut novel reminiscent of The Butcher Boy ..Guardian
'Compelling, remarkable, entirely original. Marsdyke is like no other character in contemporary fiction. Both very funny and very disturbing' ..Telegraph
'Marsdyke's paranoid world is utterly compelling. A wonderfully unique novel' Financial Times 'A few pages with Marsdyke are unforgettable. Rare are the writers who can create such a funny yet terrifying narrator' Independent 'Bleak and beautiful ... A richly distinctive narrative voice' Observer 'Controlled, mature and compelling, this is a masterful debut'

About the Author
Ross Raisin was born in Yorkshire and lives in London. He is twenty-seven years old. Before university he spent time working in the hotel trade, working in hotels in France and Ireland. When he graduated, he began working in a wine bar in London, eventually becoming co-manager. Ross has continued to work as a waiter while writing the novel, and still does so now as he begins his second, a novel about a Glaswegian ex-shipyard worker, whose life unravels after the death of his wife.

Ross Raisin on BookAwardTV (click On Demand Guardian First Novel)

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• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: HarperPress (7 Jul 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0007242921
• ISBN-13: 978-0007242924

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Selling Your Father's Bones by Brian Schofield

Part historical narrative, part travelogue through the wilds of the West and part environmental polemic, 'Selling Your Father's Bones' is a thrilling journey through the history and wilderness of the stunning area of landscape that is Continental USA. In the summer of 1877, around seven hundred members of the Nez Perce Native American tribe set out on one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of the American West, a 1,700-mile exodus through the mountains, forests, badlands and prairies of modern-day Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. They had been forced from their homes by the great wave of settlement that crashed over the West as the American nation was born. Led by their charismatic chiefs, the Nez Perce used their unerring knowledge of the landscapes they passed through to survive six battles and many more skirmishes with the pursuing United States Army, as they raced, with women, children and village elders in their care, towards the safety of the Canadian border.But all Chief Joseph, the young pastoral leader of the exodus, wanted was to return home - to his beloved Wallowa valley, which his dying father had ordered him never to abandon: 'Never sell the bones of your father and your mother. ' Now, Brian Schofield retraces the steps of that epic exodus, to tell the full dramatic story of the Nez Perce's fight for survival - and to examine the forces that drove them to take flight. The white settlement of the West had been largely motivated by patriotic fervour and religious zeal, a faith that the American continent had been laid out by God to fuel the creation of a mighty empire. But as he travels through the lands that the Nez Perce knew so well, Schofield reveals that the great project of the Western Empire has gone badly awry, as the mythology of the settlers opened the door to ecological vandalism, unthinking corporations and negligent leadership, which have lest scarred landscapes, battered communities and toxic environments.

Review
'Brian Schofield's heart-rending account is interwoven with contemporary scenes from his researches, in a second-hand van, in the hardscrabble ex-lumber towns of 21st-century Idaho. A quiet fury burns through his careful prose, not least in his exquisite footnotes.' The Times 'Schofield's book, which is admirably ambitious in scope, could well turn out to be a classic.' Geographical Magazine 'Schofield...listens respectfully to Native voices and emphasizes their resilience then and now.' TLS

The Times
"Brian Schofield's heart-rending account is interwoven with contemporary scenes from his researches, in a second-hand van, in the hardscrabble ex-lumber towns of 21st-century Idaho..."

The Sunday Times
"his visits to the tough frontier towns of the northwest are illuminating."

TLS
"he listened respectfully to Native voices and emphasizes their resilience then and now."

Geographical Magazine
" Schofield's book, which is admirably ambitious in scope, could well turn out to be a future classic."

Daily Telegraph
'Thoroughly researched...driven by obsessive passion...in a vivid travelogue woven into his historical text.'

New Statesman
'On a tourist highway in Yellowstone's 'wilderness', Brian Schofield discovers America's nature dilemma.'

Traveller Magazine
'This is a book that screams to be made into a film... a cinematic page-turner'

HarperCollins

In the summer of 1877, around seven hundred members of the Nez Perce Native American tribe set out on one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of the American West, a 1,700-mile exodus through the mountains, forests, badlands and prairies of modern-day Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. They had been forced from their homes by the great wave of settlement that crashed over the West as the American nation was born.

Led by their charismatic chiefs, the Nez Perce used their unerring knowledge of the landscapes they passed through to survive six battles and many more skirmishes with the pursuing United States Army, as they raced, with women, children and village elders in their care, towards the safety of the Canadian border. But all Chief Joseph, the young pastoral leader of the exodus, wanted was to return home – to his beloved Wallowa valley, which his dying father had ordered him never to abandon: ‘Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.’

Now, Brian Schofield retraces the steps of that epic exodus, to tell the full dramatic story of the Nez Perce’s fight for survival – and to examine the forces that drove them to take flight. The white settlement of the West had been largely motivated by patriotic fervour and religious zeal, a faith that the American continent had been laid out by God to fuel the creation of a mighty empire. But as he travels through the lands that the Nez Perce knew so well, Schofield reveals that the great project of the Western Empire has gone badly awry, as the mythology of the settlers opened the door to ecological vandalism, unthinking corporations and negligent leadership, which have lest scarred landscapes, battered communities and toxic environments.

About the Author
Brian is only 32 years old and in 2003 he won the best British Travel Writer covering North America.He's spent the last eight years writing for GQ, FHM, 'Arena' and the 'Sunday Times'. He's currently employed as assistant travel editor, culture and news review writer at the 'Sunday Times'. This is his first book

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