A new translation of one of the classics of Spanish literature. This story of lovers, Calisto and Melibea, and their go-between, Celestina, became the first-ever Spanish bestseller after its publication in Burgos in 1499.

Intertwining journalistic precision with the casual tone of joyful conversation, WENLING'S brings together friendship, gender and migration. A female space par excellence, Wenling's nail salon becomes the crossroad for a myriad of women's stories. From the unique perspective of a female documentary producer, we learn about the history of nail salons in the US and Europe, migration waves from the East to the West and gender relationships across cultures.Originally from China, Wenling arrived in Barcelona looking for a better life. She was six months pregnant at the time. With no knowledge of the local languages, she managed to open a salon. Our unnamed narrator is one of Wenling's frequent customers. As time passes by, a friendship grows between the two women. Through their conversations, Wenling's story unfolds at the salon, where we also discover the many similarities amongst women of different generations and cultures. Gemma Ruiz Pala immerses the reader in a story of gender and migration through an uncompromising, lighthearted narrative.

While worship is the primary purpose of all churches, worship in the small church is distinctive. Whether a house church, a new church plant, a rural church along a country road, or a city church whose neighborhood demographics have shifted, these small faith communities present unique opportunities and challenges for worship leaders. Peter Bush and Christine O'Reilly draw on their passion and experience equipping lay people to plan and lead worship to answer the question, what makes for effective worship

Over the last two decades, interest in translation around the world has increased beyond any predictions. International bestseller lists now contain large numbers of translated works, and writers from Latin America, Africa, India and China have joined the lists of eminent, bestselling European writers and those from the global English-speaking world. Despite this, translators tend to be invisible, as are the processes they follow and the strategies they employ when translating. The Translator as Writer bridges the divide between those who study translation and those who produce translations, through essays written by well-known translators talking about their own work as distinctive creative literary practice. The book emphasises this creativity, arguing that translators are effectively writers, or rewriters who produce works that can be read and enjoyed by an entirely new audience. The aim of the book is to give a proper prominence to the role of translators and in so doing to move attention back to the act of translating, away from more abstract speculation about what translation might involve.

A NEW YORK TIMES NEW & NOTEWORTHY BOOK Good bookshops are questions without answers. They are places that provoke you intellectually, encode riddles, surprise and offer challenges ... A pleasing labyrinth where you can't get lost: that comes later, at home, when you immerse yourself in the books you have bought; lose yourself in new questions, knowing you will find answers. Picking up where the widely praised Bookshops: A Reader's History left off, Against Amazon and Other Essays explores the increasing pressures of Amazon and other new technologies on bookshops and libraries. In essays on these vital social, cultural, and intellectual spaces, Jorge Carrion travels from London to Geneva, from Miami's Little Havana to Argentina, from his own well-loved childhood library to the rosewood shelves of Jules Verne's Nautilus and the innovative spaces that characterize South Korea's bookshop renaissance. Including interviews with writers and librarians-including Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Luigi Amara, and Han Kang, among others-Against Amazon is equal parts a celebration of books and bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter-and, most urgently, a manifesto against the corrosive influence of late capitalism.

This hand-picked selection from The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories celebrates the best literature to emerge from Spain since the twentieth century. From a poignant personal betrayal to a darkly humorous exchange between two wedding guests, this sparkling collection provides unique cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners. Includes works from beloved authors such as Javier Marías, Carmen Laforet and more.

'A small masterpiece' Colm Toibin, Daily Telegraph 'I don't know how many times I have reread the book, including several times in Catalan, with such effort that speaks volumes to my devotion to the novel' Gabriel Garcia Marquez 'The fierce beauty of Rodoreda's writing makes it one of the masterpieces of modern European literature' Independent First published in 1962 as 'La Placa del Diamant', this is considered the most important Catalan novel of all time. This is a new English translation. It has previously been published in English as The Time of the Doves. Barcelona, early 1930s: Natalia, a pretty shop-girl from the working-class quarter of Gracia, is hesitant when a stranger asks her to dance at the fiesta in Diamond Square. But Joe is charming and forceful, and she takes his hand. They marry and soon have two children; for Natalia it is an awakening, both good and bad. When Joe decides to breed pigeons, the birds delight his son and daughter - and infuriate his wife. Then the Spanish Civil War erupts, and lays waste to the city and to their simple existence. Natalia remains in Barcelona, struggling to feed her family, while Joe goes to fight the fascists, and one by one his beloved birds fly away. A highly acclaimed classic that has been translated into more twenty-eight languages, In Diamond Square is the moving, vivid and powerful story of a woman caught up in a convulsive period of history. 'An extremely moving love story translated from the Catalan, which reveals much about the Spanish civil war as ordinary, non-political people had to live it' Diana Athill 'Go along with Natalia on her night out and you'll soon find you'd follow her anywhere. Rodoreda's writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be' Helen Oyeyemi

This exciting collection celebrates the richness and variety of the Spanish short story, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Featuring over fifty stories selected by revered translator Margaret Jull Costa, it blends old favourites and hidden gems - many of which have never before been translated into English - and introduces readers to surprising new voices as well as giants of Spanish literary culture, from Emilia Pardo Bazan and Leopoldo Alas, through Merce Rodoreda and Manuel Rivas, to Ana Maria Matute and Javier Marias. Brimming with romance, horror, history, farce, strangeness and beauty, and showcasing alluring hairdressers, war defectors, vampiric mothers, and talismanic mandrake roots, the daring and entertaining assortment of tales in The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories will be a treasure trove for readers.

In the rough hill country of rural Catalonia, the Spanish Civil War is over and the villagers live under occupation by the fascist Civil Guard. With his father in jail, facing possible execution as a subversive, and his mother working long hours in a factory, eleven-year-old Andreu is sent to live with his grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins in a farmhouse in a remote valley. His inquisitive, self-taught grandmother encourages him to study, but who will Andreu become? He doesn't want to be a farmhand, or work in a factory, or flee into exile in France like his uncle and aunt. His cousin Nuria invites him to play sex games with her in the woods, but Andreu cannot stop thinking about a young man he sees lying naked in a monastery garden. Confronted on all sides by the need to define himself, Andreu must make a difficult decision. One of the major novels of contemporary Spain, and the inspiration for the first film in the Catalan language to be nominated by Spain for an Academy Award, Black Bread brings to life a rural world of mythical force as it traces with piercing psychological insight, in gorgeous prose, the movements of a boy's psyche as he contemplates growing into an adult. Born in 1933, Emili Teixidor's first novel, Retrato de un asesino de pajaros, was published to tremendous acclaim in 1988, followed by several more which established him as one of Spain's greatest contemporary authors. Teixidor died in 2012.

* On assignment Eduard and Borja check out an exclusive meditation centre in the ritziest part of Barcelona, only to discover the director murdered, whacked in the head with a statuette of the Buddha. The violent death of a neighbour - who happens to be a CIA agent - simultaneously drags them into an international conspiracy complicated by Borja's attempt to smuggle a priceless Assyrian figurine, the 'Lioness of Baghdad'.

A road-trip novel that takes us on a journey of love and escape through the vast and magical landscape of Patagonia, where nothing and no-one are what they seem. Parker is an enigmatic lorry driver who spends his days travelling up and down the infinite roads of a mythical Patagonia: an empty yet wildly beautiful landscape where people are brought together and separated by the shifting, omnipresent wind. Patagonia is a land populated by legends, adventures, and exotic characters, including a journalist on the hunt for Nazi submarines, cannibalistic Trinitarians who have given up eating meat, and a pair of evangelical Bolivian twins who dutifully guard a ghost train. Happiest behind the wheel, or playing his saxophone, Parker crosses these strange plains to escape a mysterious past he left behind long ago. Parker finally finds a sense of direction when he meets Maytén, a strong and beautiful woman who works at a travelling fair. Soon, they are separated, but how will he find her in a land where directions change like the wind? Eduardo Varela creates and reinvents, out of an inhospitable territory where nothing grows, an oceanic and extraordinary landscape. Patagonia Route 203 is an ode to liberty, to movement and to the beauty of creation.

These Catalan plays can perhaps best be seen in contrast to the British tradition of 'state of the nation' and 'in yer face' playwrighting. The plays are somewhat enigmatic and even elliptical. They represent elements of a more 'European' less 'UK' playwrighting style with echoes of early Pinter, maybe David Mercer. There is just a hint of Mark Ravenhill/Sarah Kane but any potential violence is purely implied.The Sales Complete is an apparently non-political work concerned with three characters involved in the selling and buying of an apartment - solitary souls who are lost in the desert of the modern world, seeking an arm to cling on to so that they may be saved. It has a social context but this is subservient to the characters' stilted emotional interaction. A collision between the personal and the political; a past affair that might just rekindle and present corruption in 'the party'. Can he persuade her not to cause trouble for the party leadership or will she ignore the feelings she still has for him to bring the leadership down? "Black Beach" is more naturalistic but even here we are not really told exactly what the politics of 'the party' is.

Civilian control of the armed forces is crucial for any country hoping to achieve a successful democratic transition. In this remarkable book, Narcis Serra, Spanish Minister of Defence between 1982 and 1991, explains the steps necessary to reduce the powers of armed forces during the process of a democratic transition. Spain's military reform proved a fundamental and necessary element for the consolidation of Spanish democracy and is often viewed as a paradigm case for the transition to democracy. Drawing on this example, Serra outlines a simple model of the process and conditions necessary to any democratic military reform. He argues that progress in military transition must include legal and institutional reforms, changes to the military career structure and doctrine, and control of conflict levels.

Cuban writer Ivan Cardenas Maturell meets a mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. Ivan quickly names him "the man who loved dogs". The man eventually confesses that he is actually Ramon Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in a secret exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico. Moving seamlessly between Ivan's life in Cuba, Mercader's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men's political convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power.

The renowned French philosopher's "ode to love's power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain" (Publishers Weekly). In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud's famous line "love needs reinventing," In Praise of Love is the celebrated French intellectual's passionate treatise in defense of love. For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them "to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one." This, Badiou believes, is love's most essential transforming power. Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou's "paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love" urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (Publishers Weekly). "Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love." -Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless

Lieutenant Mario Conde is suffering from a terrible New Year's Eve hangover. Though it's the middle of a weekend, he is asked to urgently investigate the mysterious disappearance of Rafael Morin, a high-level business manager in the Cuban nomenklatura. Conde remembered Morin from their student days: good-looking, brilliant, a "reliable comrade'' who always got what he wanted, including Tamara the girl Conde was after. But Rafael Morin's exemplary rise from a poor barrio and picture perfect life hide more than one suspicious episode worthy of investigation. While pursuing the case in a decaying but adored Havana, Conde confronts his lost love for Tamara and the dreams and illusions of his generation.

A writer is murdered at the Ritz on the night she wins an important literary prize, battered to death with the trophy she has just won. A satire of the Catalan literary scene dressed up as a hilarious murder mystery

"A scathing satire of Spanish society, hilarious dialogue, all beautifully dressed up as a crime novel."--"Krimi-Couch"

"A first novel that's spread like wildfire by word of mouth."--"El Avui"

"Teresa Solana is great proof of the vitality of the roman noir in Catalan. . . . A wonderfully ironic hymn to the city of Barcelona."--"Diari de Balears"

Another day in Barcelona, another slimy politician's wife is suspected of infidelity. Lluis Font discovers a portrait of his wife in an exhibition that leads him to conclude he is being cuckolded by the artist. Concerned only about the potential political fallout, he hires twins Eduard and Pep, private detectives with a supposed knack for helping the wealthy with their "dirty laundry." Their office is adorned with false doors leading to nonexistent private rooms, a mysterious secretary who is always away, and a broken laptop computer picked up on the street. The case turns ugly when Font's wife is found poisoned by a "marron glace "from a box of sweets delivered anonymously.

This is a deftly plotted, bitingly funny mystery novel. A satire of Catalan politics and a fascinating insight into the life and habits of Barcelona's inhabitants, diurnal and nocturnal.

Teresa Solana lives in Barcelona. Born in 1962, she studied philosophy and worked as a literary translator and essayist. She has written several novels kept quietly in her drawer. "A Not So Perfect Crime," her first published title, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for the best Catalan mystery novel.

On August 6 th 1989 , the day on which the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration, the body of a strangled transvestite is discovered in the humid undergrowth of the Havana Woods. He is wearing a beautiful red evening dress and the red ribbon with which he was asphyxiated is still round his neck. To the consternation of Lieutenant Mario Conde, in charge of the investigation, the victim turns out to be Alexis Arayan, the son of a highly respected diplomat. His investigation begins with a visit to the home of the 'disgraced' dramatist, Alberto Marques, with whom the murdered youth was living. Marques, a man of letters and a former giant of the Cuban theatre, helps Conde solve the crime. In the baking heat of the Havana summer, Conde also unveils a dark, turbulent world of Cubans who live without dreaming of exile, grappling with food shortages and wounds from the Angolan war.

Civilian control of the armed forces is crucial for any country hoping to achieve a successful democratic transition. In this remarkable book, Narcis Serra, Spanish Minister of Defence between 1982 and 1991, explains the steps necessary to reduce the powers of armed forces during the process of a democratic transition. Spain's military reform proved a fundamental and necessary element for the consolidation of Spanish democracy and is often viewed as a paradigm case for the transition to democracy. Drawing on this example, Serra outlines a simple model of the process and conditions necessary to any democratic military reform. He argues that progress in military transition must include legal and institutional reforms, changes to the military career structure and doctrine, and control of conflict levels.

Barcelona is one of the most visited cities in Europe, a multilingual capital of an autonomous region that longs to be independent of Spain. The city is famous for its painters, modernist architecture, style of football, and its history, but as Peter Bush reveals it has always been a major centre of literary talent and creativity. Barcelona Tales presents a selection of newly translated short stories by 14 writers, many of them Catalan. The stories explore the themes of migration and class conflict in a city renowned in world literature from the day rural innocents Don Quixote and Sancho Panza visited its streets at the beginning of the seventeenth-century, and witnessed the wonders of the printing press and the cruelties of slavery. Together, they open up the city in ironic, tragic, and lyrical ways, inviting readers to explore fictional lives and literary styles that reflect the dynamic, conflict-ridden character and history of this great European city.

"A lot of people will be interested in the famous bookshops of the world: Jorge Carrion has gone and visited them all. We can't travel right now, but we can travel in books." MARGARET ATWOOD Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining extended essay, Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the world, via its bookshops. His travels take him to Shakespeare & Co in Paris, Wells in Winchester, Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier, the Strand Book Store in New York and provoke encounters with thinkers, poets, dreamers, revolutionaries and readers. Bookshops is the travelogue of a lucid and curious observer, filled with anecdotes and stories from the universe of writing, publishing and selling books. A bookshop in Carrion's eyes never just a place for material transaction; it is a meeting place for people and their ideas, a setting for world changing encounters, a space that can transform lives. Written in the midst of a worldwide recession, Bookshops examines the role of these spaces in today's evershifting climate of globalisation, vanishing high streets, e-readers and Amazon. But far from taking a pessimistic view of the future of the physical bookshop, Carrion makes a compelling case for hope, underlining the importance of these places and the magic that can happen there. A vital manifesto for the future of the traditional bookshop, and a delight for all who love them. Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush

"The finest crime-fiction writer in the Spanish language...""--The London Times""Full of atmosphere and descriptions to savour, this is as much a life-affirming tribute to Havana as a fine novel of death and detection.""--The Independent""Police work is not merely a vocation but a metaphor for a futile yearning to solve the island's deepest crimes and misdemeanours."--"Times Literary Supplement"

Mario Conde has retired from the police force and makes a living trading in antique books. Havana is now flooded with dollars, populated by pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, and other hunters of the night. In the book collection of a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, Conde discovers an article about Violeta del Rio, a beautiful bolero singer of the 1950s who disappeared mysteriously. A murder soon follows. This is a crime story set in today's darker Cuba, but it is also an evocation of the Havana of Batista, the city of a hundred night clubs where the paths of Marlon Brando and Meyer Lansky crossed.

Probably Leonardo Padura's best book, "Havana Fever" is many things: a suspenseful crime novel, a cruel family saga, and an ode to literature and his beloved, ravaged island.