Den ensamma staden : om konst, ensamhet och överlevnad

Wie Geschichte sich in eine Landschaft einschreibt - und wie Geister nie von den Orten verschwinden, die sie lieben.Über sechzig Jahre nachdem Virginia Woolf in der Ouse ertrunken ist, macht Olivia Laing sich an einem hellen Mittsommermorgen auf den Weg durch Südengland, um dem Lauf des magischen Flusses von der Quelle bis zur Mündung zu folgen. In von Kreidefelsen milchig-grün gefärbten Windungen, an Ufern auf dem Weg Richtung Meer sucht sie nach den Geheimnissen, die Flüsse tragen, verbergen, preisgeben. Herauskommt eine große, kluge und poetische Erzählung davon, wie Geschichte sich in eine Landschaft einschreibt - und davon, wie Geister nie von den Orten verschwinden, die sie lieben.

Ein überwuchertes Eden voller ungewöhnlicher Pflanzen und Geheimnisse: Im Jahr 2020 beginnt Olivia Laing, eine der renommiertesten literarischen Stimmen Englands, mit der Restaurierung eines verwunschenen Gartens in Suffolk. In der Erkundung von Sehnsucht und Vergänglichkeit erzählt Laing vom Werden eines Paradieses, bewegt sich zwischen realen und imaginären Gärten der Kulturgeschichte, hinterfragt die manchmal schockierenden Kosten für die Schaffung eines Ideals und macht den Garten als einen explosiven Ort der Rebellion und gemeinschaftlicher Träume aus. Nicht nur unwahrscheinliche queere Utopien und konkrete Visionen eines idealen Zusammenlebens erzählen davon, dass inmitten von Blumenbeeten schon immer neue Lebensformen ausprobiert wurden.Eine berauschende, überbordende Hommage an die Vielfalt des Gartens und die tief verwurzelten Möglichkeiten, die in ihm verborgen liegen.'Dieses Buch ist reine Magie. Eine der ganz großen intellektuellen Stimmen unserer Zeit.' Daniel Schreiber

It's the summer of 2017 and Kathy is getting married. Meanwhile, fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever closer to nuclear war. In Crudo, her first work of fiction, Olivia Laing radically rewires the novel with a fierce, compassionate account of learning to love when the end of the world seems in sight.

Bitte diesen Roman lesen, um das tragikomische Gefühl unserer Gegenwart zu spürenDie Schriftstellerin Kathy verbringt den Sommer in der Toskana, in einem Hotel für Superreiche. Neben dem Schwimmen im Pool und den rauschenden Partys kümmert sie sich um die Planung ihrer bevorstehenden Hochzeit. Doch an den Gedanken, lebenslang an einen Menschen gebunden zu sein, muss sie sich noch gewöhnen. Und auch an die Welt da draußen, die ihr immer wieder in die Timeline des Sozialen Netzwerks gespült wird. Der Faschismus ist auf dem Vormarsch, der Planet hat den Kipppunkt längst überschritten, und die Wahrheit hat keinen Wert mehr. Lohnt es sich wirklich, lieben zu lernen, wenn die Gegenwart in ihr Ende rennt?Olivia Laings erster Roman ist eine brillante, witzige und in jeder Hinsicht rohe Darstellung unserer Gegenwart und hebelt elegant die Angst vor der Zukunft aus. 'Ein Liebesbrief an das Leben und die Kunst' (Deborah Levy).

Queer love story meets true crime thriller in the dream factory of 1970s cinema, from the award-winning, bestselling author. Perfect for readers of André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley.<BR><BR>SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025<BR>A NEW YORK MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025<BR>RUNNER-UP FOR THE TADEUSZ BRADECKI PRIZE 2026<BR><BR>'Sublime' The New York Times<BR><BR>'Brilliant' Olly Alexander<BR><BR>'It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night.'<BR><BR>It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini's Casanova. A young - and beautiful - apprentice is just what he needs.<BR><BR>He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova's Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini's horrifying fable of fascism.<BR><BR>But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy's 'Years of Lead', he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn't intend.<BR><BR>Stylish and seductive, The Silver Book is an absorbing fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.<BR><BR>Praise for The Silver Book:<BR><BR>'Seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force' Times Literary Supplement <BR><BR>'A great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness' Observer<BR><BR>'Unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic' Art in America<BR><BR>'My favourite novel of last year' M. John Harrison<BR><BR>'You do not need to be an expert on postwar Italian cinema or politics (or to know the true crime story unfolding here) to savour this novel. Laing describes the filming in dazzling clarity. 1970s Rome swaggers from the page' The Times <BR><BR>'Laing's vibrant depiction of both real and imagined events is a prescient exploration of the meaning of art in dangerous places' Washington Post<BR><BR>'Loved this book, have thought about it a lot' Rachel Kushner

'I couldn't put it down' - Sally Rooney<BR>'Crudo is a hot, hot book' - The Observer<BR>'So fresh and clever and funny' - Tessa Hadley<BR><BR>Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It's the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart.<BR><BR>Kathy spends the first summer of her forties trying to adjust to making a lifelong commitment - marriage. But it's not only Kathy who is changing. Political, social and natural landscapes are all in peril. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is hotting up. Is it really worth learning to love when the end of the world is nigh? And how do you make art, let alone a life, when it could all end at any moment?<BR><BR>From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a politically-paralysed UK, Olivia Laing's first novel is a love letter, inspired by the life and work of Kathy Acker. It is a blistering rewire of the form and a brilliant, funny and emphatically raw account of love in the apocalypse.<BR><BR>'Will blow you away' - Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk<BR><BR>Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction<BR><BR>Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize

Queer love story meets true crime thriller in the dream factory of 1970s cinema, from the award-winning, bestselling author. Perfect for readers of André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley.<BR><BR>SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025<BR>A NEW YORK MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025<BR>RUNNER-UP FOR THE TADEUSZ BRADECKI PRIZE 2026<BR><BR>'Sublime' The New York Times<BR><BR>'Brilliant' Olly Alexander<BR><BR>'It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night.'<BR><BR>It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini's Casanova. A young - and beautiful - apprentice is just what he needs.<BR><BR>He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova's Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini's horrifying fable of fascism.<BR><BR>But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy's 'Years of Lead', he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn't intend.<BR><BR>Stylish and seductive, The Silver Book is an absorbing fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.<BR><BR>Praise for The Silver Book:<BR><BR>'Seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force' Times Literary Supplement <BR><BR>'A great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness' Observer<BR><BR>'Unabashedly queer and unapologetically erotic' Art in America<BR><BR>'My favourite novel of last year' M. John Harrison<BR><BR>'You do not need to be an expert on postwar Italian cinema or politics (or to know the true crime story unfolding here) to savour this novel. Laing describes the filming in dazzling clarity. 1970s Rome swaggers from the page' The Times <BR><BR>'Laing's vibrant depiction of both real and imagined events is a prescient exploration of the meaning of art in dangerous places' Washington Post

The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century-among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X.Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.