Daunt Books

Your Basket

Shops

News Flash

The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Southern & Mediterranean Europe

• Italy
• Spain
• Portugal
• Greece
• Balkans

• 

  Death of an Englishman by Magdalen Nabb

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Nabb's Marshal Guarnaccia thrillers are among our favourites of the genre, astutely plotted and redolent with Florentine atmosphere. In this first book he must solve the murder of the wonderfully-named Mr Langley-Smythe, ideally in time to make it home for Christmas.

• 

  April Fool's Day by Josip Novakovich

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A devastating political satire and a parody of war this is a grimly humorous novel of Tito's Yugoslavia.

• 

  The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  When the Nazis bomb Belgrade Zoo a tiger escapes to the hills of a mythical Yugoslavia and befriends a mysterious mute woman. Sixty years later, the legend of the tiger is rekindled by the death of the narrator’s grandfather, who raised his granddaughter on tales about the tiger’s wife and stories of a deathless man who appears just before catastrophes. As Natalia, now a doctor on an ill-advised mercy-mission, is overwhelmed by memories, dreams and superstitions, she begins to consider the value of myth and metaphor in violent times.

• 

  The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A breathtaking novel, well worth a read even if you've seen the film. Ondaatje's descriptions of both the Tuscan and desert landscape are achingly beautiful, and his creation of distinct, genuine characters, each haunted by the war and their past, is utterly absorbing.

• 

  Law of Return by Rebecca Pawel

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  In this second instalment, Tejada has been relocated to Salamanca. Pawel introduces a love interest in the form of Elena, and the political strife that surrounds them contines to provide a gripping backdrop. Perhaps not up to the high standard of 'Death of a Nationalist', this sequel will nonetheless prove irresistible to readers seduced by its predecessor.

• 

  Blank Gaze by Jose Luis Peixoto

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  This recent novel by a young Portugese author is impressively and memorably rendered. In a rural landscape hardened by poverty and the glare of the sun, an extraordinary group of characters (including a pair of Siamese twins joined at the fingertip and a shepherd who encounters the devil in a local shop) come together in a bright narrative with the resonance of a fable.

• 

  The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  One of Spain's best-loved authors, Perez-Reverte writes superb mysteries. This is one of his best, following the trail of a rare Dumas manuscript and a nasty murder. Great entertainment, and a wonderful evocation of Madrid.

• 

  The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A fantastic mystery full of religious and political intrigue, it would be easy to cast this as a superior, Spanish Da Vinci Code. The quality of the writing and depth of feeling ensure it is much more than that.

• 

  Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  Reminiscent of Dumas, Perez-Reverte here indulges in a real swashbuckler of a book, replete with swordfights and maidens in distress. The first of a popular series following the marvellous hero, this is historical fun at its finest.

• 

  The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A skillfully told tale following Jaime Astarloa, a man whose life is dedicated to the art of fencing until a strange woman draws him into a spiral of erotic and political turmoil. Set against the backdrop of Spain's 1868 revolution, this is compelling stuff.

• 

  Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  Pessoa's monumental work of philosophical illumination inspires feverish devotion among its fans, while to others it remains utterly impenetrable. The grace and clarity of his thinking is undeniable, his prose often delightful, and the rewards for pushing through it enormous. But this remains a challenging undertaking, not for the faint of heart.

• 

  The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  Mattia Pascal is released from a life of provincial drudgery when he discovers himself to have been declared dead. Free at last to move to the city, he soons finds his new life to be as insufferable as ever. But by then it is too late to go back... Riotously funny, acutely observed and moving in its exploration of the human condition.

• 

  Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  This impeccably researched historical novel tells with great humanity the epic story of the Battle of Thermopylae, when three hundred Spartan warriors fought heroically to repel the invading Persian army of King Xerxes.

• 

  Rome by Glyn Pursglove

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  A splendid little volume collecting poetry inspired by the great city from across the ages. Includes the work of Thomas Hardy, Goethe and Ovid.

• 

  The Crime of Father Amaro by Eca de Queiroz

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  A fantastically cynical novel from this 19th century master. Amaro is ordained into the Catholic priesthood against his will and must live at odds with his love for young Amelia. The eventual collapse of his fragile moral fabric leads to tragedy. Scandalous when first published, it retains a real bite to this day.

• 

  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A hugely entertaining novel centred around a failing newspaper in Rome. The eccentric employees seek venal distractions as their lives and livelihoods slowly disintegrate.

• 

  The King Must Die by Mary Renault

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In the first instalment of the brilliant Theseus saga our hero struggles to defy the decree of the God's and claim his inheritance on the throne of Athens. Renault weaves historical accuracy with deft characterisation and an intuitive grasp of the power of mythology.

• 

  The Carpenter's Pencil by Manuel Rivas

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  Narrated by sinister Republican Herbal, this is really the story of Daniel and Marisa and of their love thwarted by war. Like James Salter's narrator in 'A Sport & A Pastime', Herbal is himself fixated on the girl, and his account of the affair is all the more chilling for that. Brilliant stuff.

• 

  Venetian Stories by Jane Turner Rylands

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  A wonderful collection of interlinked stories that blend effortlessly the intimate details of everyday life in the city with the dense presence of its history.

• 

  Dusk: and Other Stories by James Salter

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  A reprinted edition of Salter's masterful collection of short stories. 'Twenty minutes' describes the peculiar death-in-life sensations of a woman injured in a motorcycle accident; 'American Express' follows two young men through Italy as they spend their newly acquired wealth; in 'Via Negativa', a man is driven mad by his passion. Breathtaking in scope and teeming with complex, intruiging characters, Salter's prose is second to none. We urge you to read him.

• 

  Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Fans of Sansom's Shardlake series will need no persuading - new readers keen on the tense historical thriller should investigate at once. Set in post-Civil War Madrid, both the city and its people are brought ably to life in a story that grips from the start.

• 

  Seeing by Jose Saramago

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Four years after the blindness epidemic, life in The City has returned to normal. Then voting ballots start turning up blank and the government must act to cling on to power. A fantastic satire, this sequel-of-sorts lacks the unmitigated brilliance of 'Blindness' but is nonetheless essential reading for anyone who enjoyed its predecessor.

• 

  Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Once more employing a fantastical premise through which to probe the instability of society, Saramago here presents a city in which death is suddenly absent. Spliced with a portrait of Death 'herself' - weary, unwilling to continue - this is another satirical gem from the Portuguese master.

• 

  The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A glorious love story from this remarkable Portuguese writer, with an ingenious plot which explores the nature of history and how it is created. Saramago's hero is the proof reader Raimundo Silva, who's small act of adding one negative word to a translator transforms the history of Portugal and his own destiny.

• 

  The Wine-Dark Sea by Leonardo Sciascia

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Marvellous collection of stories from the Sicilian master: robust yet intimate, profound yet light.