A Leopard-Skin Hat may be Anne Serre’s most moving novel yet. A masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance, it is the story of an intense friendship between the Narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders.

A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the Narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel. Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell.

Translated from French by Mark Hutchinson.

What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.

What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.

Anna has been living happily for twenty years with loving, sturdy, outgoing Guillaume when she suddenly (truly at first sight) falls in love with Thomas. Intelligent and handsome, but apparently scarred by a terrible early emotional wound, he reminds Anna of Jude the Obscure. Adrift and lovelorn, she tries unsuccessfully to fend off her attraction, torn between the two men. "How strange it is to leave someone you love for someone you love. You cross a footbridge that has no name, that's not named in any poem. No, nowhere is a name given to this bridge, and that is why Anna found it so difficult to cross." Anne Serre offers here, in her third book in English, her most direct novel to date. The Beginners is unpredictable, sensual, exhilarating, oddly moral, perverse, absurd-and unforgettable.

A quintessential early novel about an intense friendship, by the winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

A Leopard-Skin Hat may be the French writer Anne Serre’s most moving novel yet. Hailed in Le Point as a “masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance,” it is the story of an intense friendship between “the Narrator” and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Anne Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel.

Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell, written in Anne Serre’s signature style.

From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre - author of the celebrated Governesses - come three bewitching, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales. 'To make a pact with the thing that threatens you is arguably the smartest trick of all.' 'The Fool' may have stepped out of a tarot pack - to walk a mountain trail or worm his way into a writer's mind. 'The Narrator' proposes his mirror image, a storyteller in sheep's clothing, who has a bone to pick with language. In 'The Wishing Table', the orgiastic antics of an incestuous family are recounted by one of three daughters. A dream logic rules each of these unpredictable, sensual and surreal stories: romps no doubt, yet deeply moral, and entirely unforgettable ones.

Now in paperback, Rene Char's Hypnos is both a remarkable work of literature and a document of unique significance in the history of the French Resistance. Hailed by the poet Paul Eluard as an "absolute masterpiece" upon its first appearance in 1946, Rene Char's Hypnos is both a remarkable work of literature and a document of unique significance in the history of the French Resistance. Based on a journal Char kept during his time in the Maquis, it ranges in style from abrupt and sometimes enigmatic reflections, in which the poet seeks to establish compass bearings in the darkness of Occupied France, to narrative descriptions that throw into vivid relief the dramatic and often tragic nature of the issues he had to confront as the head of his Resistance network. A tribute to the individual men and women who fought at his side, this volume is also a meditation on the white magic of poetry and a celebration of the power of beauty to combat terror and transform our lives. Translated into German by Paul Celan and into Italian by Vittorio Sereni, the book has never been carried over into English with the attention to style and detail that it deserves. Published in full here for the first time, this long-awaited new translation does justice at last to the incandescence and pathos of the original French.

One of the foremost poets of the French Resistance, Rene Char has been hailed by Donald Revell as "the conscience of modern French poetry." Translated by Mark Hutchinson, The Inventors is a companion volume to Char's critically acclaimed Hypnos. It gathers more than forty poems that represent a cross-section of Char's mature work, spanning from 1936 to 1988. All three genres of Char's work are represented here: verse poems, prose poems, and the abrupt, lapidary propositions for which he is best known. These maxima sententia combine the terseness of La Rochefoucauld with the probing and sometimes riddling character of the fragments of Heraclitus. The Inventors includes a brief introduction to Char's life and work, as well as a series of notes on the backstories of the works, which explain allusions that may not be immediately familiar to the English-speaking reader. These new translations stay true to the originals, while at the same time conveying much of the music and beauty of the French poems. Praise for Rene Char "Char, I believe, is a poet who will tower over twentieth-century French poetry."-George Steiner

This book offers an authoritative overview of the history of evangelicalism as a global movement, from its origins in Europe and North America in the first half of the eighteenth century to its present-day dynamic growth in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. Starting with a definition of the movement within the context of the history of Protestantism, it follows the history of evangelicalism from its early North Atlantic revivals to the great expansion in the Victorian era, through to its fracturing and reorientation in response to the stresses of modernity and total war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It describes the movement's indigenization and expansion toward becoming a multicentered and diverse movement at home in the non-Western world that nevertheless retains continuity with its historic roots. The book concludes with an analysis of contemporary worldwide evangelicalism's current trajectory and the movement's adaptability to changing historical and geographical circumstances.

This book offers an authoritative overview of the history of evangelicalism as a global movement, from its origins in Europe and North America in the first half of the eighteenth century to its present-day dynamic growth in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. Starting with a definition of the movement within the context of the history of Protestantism, it follows the history of evangelicalism from its early North Atlantic revivals to the great expansion in the Victorian era, through to its fracturing and reorientation in response to the stresses of modernity and total war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It describes the movement's indigenization and expansion toward becoming a multicentered and diverse movement at home in the non-Western world that nevertheless retains continuity with its historic roots. The book concludes with an analysis of contemporary worldwide evangelicalism's current trajectory and the movement's adaptability to changing historical and geographical circumstances.

In this stimulating collection of essays, John Roberts draws together a wide range of work on some of the most important artists of the post-war period. Written by leading art historians and artist-writers, the essays take a sharply critical look at the construction of modern art history. The artists discussed include Francis Picabia, Robert Smithson, Ad Reinhardt, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Mary Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Victor Burgin and Laurie Anderson. The extensive influence of post-structuralism on all schools of art history has brought about a widespread derogation of questions around intentionality and social agency. Free-ranging textual interpretation has come to outweigh causal analysis. Art Has No History! reverses this bias. Putting the artist back into art history, the essays reinstate the claims for historical materialism as a theory of the conflictual socialization of individuals. Acknowledging the dissemblances involved in the representations of artistic invention, the book challenges the self-image of traditional art history and the radical New Art History alike. In his introduction, John Roberts gives a fascinating account of the vicissitudes of Marxist writing on art, from Max Raphael and Arnold Hauser to T.J. Clark and Griselda Pollock. Placing the debates on intention and agency in their wider political context, he refers to what he calls "the continuing influence of historical materialism on the best Anglophone art writing today." Art Has No History! is a lively and iconoclastic contribution to that tradition.