Georgina Harding

An intimate and devastating portrait of Romania during and after World War II, this is a novel of quite extraordinary beauty that will capture your heart and imagination.

Painter of Silence

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Ernest Boyd

Originally published in 1889, this work's protagonist Andrea Sperelli introduced the Italian culture to aestheticism and a taste for decadence. The young count seeks beauty, despises the bourgeois world, and rejects the basic rules of morality and social interaction. His corruption is evident in his sadistic superimposing of two women.

The Child of Pleasure

Years after their German refugee mother disappears on the same day the media releases a story about a spy family, Anna and her brother, Peter, struggle to sort out facts and lies about their mother's identity and wonder if she had a secret life. By the author of The Solitude of Thomas Cave.

A Novel

The Spy Game

Harvest

'If you were a sleeper, how long do you think it would take before you forgot who you really were? If you were living undercover for years and years. Which person would be you?' On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna's mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna's cheek, a rumble of exhaust and a blurred wave through an icy windscreen, and her mother is gone. Looking back, Anna will wish that she could have paid more attention to the facts of that day. The adult world shrouds the loss in silence, tidies the issue of death away along with the things that her mother left behind. And her memories will drift and settle like the fog that covers the car. That same morning a spy case breaks in the news - the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the Cold War, and of the Second World War which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults about them, Anna's brother Peter begins to construct a theory that their mother, a refugee from eastern Germany, was a spy working undercover and might even still be alive. As life returns to normal, Anna struggles to sort between fact and fantasy. Did her mother have a secret life? And how do you know who a person was once she is dead? The Spy Gameis a beautifully wrought novel about loss, history, memory and imagination, and the way in which we shape these to construct our own identities. It is a painful and tender reminder of the importance of understanding the past and, in turn, the importance of letting go.

Lucy Caldwell

Danny Rhodes

Rory Gleeson

Richard Smyth

A group of teenage boys take turns assessing each other’s changing bodies before a Friday night disco… A grieving woman strikes up an unlikely friendship with a fellow traveller on a night train to Kiev… An unusually well-informed naturalist is eyed with suspicion by his comrades on a forest exhibition with a higher purpose… The stories shortlisted for the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University take place in liminal spaces – their characters find themselves in transit, travelling along flight paths, train lines and roads, or in moments where new opportunities or directions suddenly seem possible. From the reflections of a new mother flying home after a funeral, to an ailing son’s reluctance to return to the village of his childhood, these stories celebrate small kindnesses in times of turbulence, and demonstrate a connection between one another that we might sometimes take for granted. The BBC NSSA is one of the most prestigious prizes for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. James Runcie is joined on the judging panel by a group of acclaimed writers and critics including: Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Fiona Mozley; award winning writer, poet and winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize, Derek Owusu; multi-award winning Irish novelist and short story writer, Donal Ryan; and returning judge, Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2021

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page. The memories are Safta's also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook at the manor house which was Safta's family home. Born six months apart, they grew up with a connection that bypassed words. But while Augustin's world remained the same size Safta's expanded to embrace languages, society - and a fleeting love, one long, hot summer. But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist regime, and nothing would remain the same.

Now a fishing village on the Coromandel Coast of India, Tranquebar was once the chief Danish colony in Asia. Intrigued by its dual identity, the author spent a winter there with her baby son, and describes it today - a village reclaimed by an India that appears careless of its legacy, its history, its decaying colonial buildings now occupied by rich Muslims and rival Christian missions, and even of the Hindu temple that is slipping into the sea.

A Season in South India

Tranquebar

In 1616, as the last warm days dwindle in the north Atlantic, the men on an English whaling ship prepare to head back toward home. But there is one exception among them: the quiet, headstrong Thomas Cave. For Cave has bet the rest of the crew that he can spend a winter on this Arctic island. Alone. His shipmates sail away, the days shorten, and the cold weather moves in. Thomas Cave faces months of darkness, ice, and blizzards. He has nothing to his name except his rations, shelter, and a journal-a record in case he doesn't survive to tell his story. But nothing so threatens the willful sailor as his own mind: he is haunted by the remembrances of another life and a lost love. From his post at the edge of the known world, Cave sees his own past, and begins to reflect on man's relationship with God and the wilderness. A beautiful, ghostly tale, The Solitude of Thomas Cave brings us back to the beginning of the modern world, in a story infused with the violence, power and beauty that define both man and nature. Georgina Harding is the author of two works of non-fiction: Tranquebar: A Season in South India and In Another Europe. She lives in Colchester, England. This is her first novel.

The Solitude of Thomas Cave

Land of the Living

It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta recognizes him from the past and brings him paper and pencils so that he might draw. Gradually, memories appear on the page: the man is Augustin, the cook's son at the manor house at Poiana where Safta was the privileged daughter. Born six months apart, they had a connection that bypassed words, but while Augustin's world stayed the same size, Safta's expanded to embrace languages, society, and a fleeting love one long, hot summer. But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist regime, and nothing would remain the same. Georgina Harding's kaleidoscopic new novel will appeal to readers of Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje, and Sandor Marai. It is as intense and submerging as rain, as steeped in the horrors of our recent history as it is in the intimate passions of the human heart.

'I would compare her to writers like Helen Dunmore, Elizabeth Strout, Jon McGregor' BBC Radio 4 'Harding achieves a weighty sense of silence and things not said in this unsettling book about the aftershocks of trauma and the burdens of bearing witness' Sunday Times 'A masterly achievement, illuminating with wisdom and compassion the darkest corners of the human heart' Guardian So fresh and free she looked, in the yellow dress. Sunlight to blaze away the shadows. A farm in Norfolk in the 1970s. A Japanese girl comes to visit her English lover in the house where he was born. She arrives on a day of perfect summer, stands with his mother in a garden filled with roses, watches as his brother walks fields of ripening wheat. But between the two brothers lies the shadow of their father's violent death almost twenty years before, the unresolved narrative of their childhood – a story that has gone untold, a story that began in the last war. In the presence of the girl, the old trauma begins to surface as the work of the harvest begins. In a compelling addition to Harding's cycle of acclaimed novels on themes of witness, memory and silence, on what goes unsaid long after wars are over, Harvest tells how a family reaps the consequences of its past. 'Taut and unsettling ... A fine meditation on war's long reach' Mail on Sunday

So fresh and free she looked, in the yellow dress. Sunlight to blaze away the shadows. A farm in Norfolk in the 1970s. A Japanese girl comes to visit her English lover in the house where he was born. She arrives on a day of perfect summer, stands with his mother in a garden filled with roses, watches as his brother walks fields of ripening wheat. But between the two brothers lies the shadow of their father's violent death almost twenty years before, the unresolved narrative of their childhood – a story that has gone untold, a story that began in the last war. In the presence of the girl, the old trauma begins to surface as the work of the harvest begins. In a compelling addition to Harding's cycle of acclaimed novels on themes of witness, memory and silence, on what goes unsaid long after wars are over, Harvest tells how a family reaps the consequences of its past.

In 1616, the crew of an English whaling ship prepares to sail home, except for Thomas Cave, who has accepted a wager from his shipmates--to endure a winter alone on an Arctic island--and prepares for months of solitude and harsh weather.

It is August 1616. The whaling ship Heartseasehas ventured deep into the Arctic, but the crew must return home before the ice closes in. All, that is, save Thomas Cave. He makes a wager that he will remain there alone until the next season, though no man has yet been known to have survived a winter this far north. So he is left with provisions, shelter, and a journal - should he not live to tell the tale…

The Gun Room

Iasi Romania inceputul anilor ’50. Pe treptele unui spital este gasit un barbat fara nume. Surd si mut necunoscutul incepe sa comunice numai cand Safta o asistenta medicala ii aduce hartie si un creion cu care sa deseneze. incet chinuitor amintirile incep sa se astearna pe foi. Iar amintirile lui sunt si amintirile Saftei pentru ca strainul este Augustin fiul bucataresei de la conacul pe care l-a avut odinioara familia Saftei. Destinele celor doi protagonisti s-au despartit insa intr-o vara torida. Dupa care au urmat razboiul si invazia stalinista in urma carora totul s-a schimbat. „Cartea Georginei Harding este o analiza profunda a nevoii noastre de a avea un camin si de asemenea a consecintelor pe care le are pierderea lui.“ The Telegraph „Harding scrie cu rezerva admirabila si surprinde cenusiul monoton al orasului comunist cu aceeasi tandrete delicata cu care zugraveste peisajul idilic din satul Poiana. Proza ei aparent simpla ii confera banalului o frumusete tulburatoare si evoca marea profunzime a suferintei.“ The Guardian "

Pictorul fără glas   - Editura Nemira

It is August 1616. The whaling ship Heartsease has ventured deep into the Arctic, but the crew must return home before the ice closes in. All, that is, save Thomas Cave. He makes a wager that he will remain there alone until the next season, though no man has yet been known to have survived a winter this far north. So he is left with provisions, shelter, and a journal - should he not live to tell the tale...

'Vivid, illuminating and unbearably tense ... A masterly meditation on trauma, on beauty, on the idea of home and the limits of love' GuardianCharlie's experiences at the Battle of Kohima and the months he spent lost in the remote jungles of Nagaland during the Second World War are now history. Home and settled on a farm in Norfolk and newly married to Claire, he is one of the lucky survivors. Starting a family and working the land seem the best things a man can be doing. But a chasm exists between them. Memories flood Charlie's mind; at night, on rain-slicked roads and misty mornings in the fields, the past can feel more real than the present. Though hidden even to himself, the darkest secrets of Charlie's adventures in the strange and shadowy ridges of the Nagaland mountains, his dream-like encounters with the mysterious and ancient tribesmen, leak and bleed through his consciousness. What should be said and what left unsaid? Is it possible to forge a new life in the wake of unfathomable horror? A beautifully conceived, deftly controlled and delicately wrought meditation on the isolating impact of war, the troubling legacies of colonialism and the inescapable reach of the past, Georgina Harding's haunting, lyrical novel questions the very nature of survival, and what it is that the living owe the dead.

Georgina Harding

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