Человек сделан из любви. Все поступки человека диктуются любовью, а также — непонимание и нелепицы, альтруизм и нежность, юмор и суета. Миром правит любовь. И в первом романе современного английского прозаика Адама Тёрлвелла “Политика” все — тираны и злодеи, мученики и праведники, шлюхи и ханжи — хотят любить и быть любимыми. А как же секс, спросит читатель. Секс — всего лишь тоска по любви. В 2003 году Адам Тёрлвелл был признан “лучшим молодым писателем Великобритании”. На русском языке издается впервые.

This yarn takes place in the suburbs of a giant city, and its hero is Edison Lo. There he is, in his thirties, in the middle of things! In Chicago they're coming off their night shift, in Tokyo they're asleep — that's what's happening elsewhere in the world when Edison wakes up. Our hero has had the good education, and also the good job. Together with his wife, Candy, he lives at home with his parents. In other words, the juggernaut of meaning is very much not parked heavily on Edison's lawn. But then the lurid overtakes him and the form it chooses is Park. At school and university, Park was Edison's best friend, until Park moved out east. For a decade, they never saw each other. And...

Politics is about: a) a threesome; b) politics. Moshe loves Nana. But love can be difficult — especially if you want to be kind. And Moshe and Nana want to be kind to someone else. They want to be kind to their best friend, Anjali. Politics explores crucial problems of sexual etiquette. What should the sleeping arrangements be in a ménage-à-trois? Is it polite to read while two people have sex beside you? Is it permissible to be jealous?

Haffner is charming, morally suspect, vain, obsessed by the libertine emperors. He is British and Jewish and a widower. But Haffner’s attachments to his nation, his race, his marriage, have always been matters of conjecture. They have always been subjects of debate. There are many stories of Haffner — but this, the most secret, is the greatest of them all. The Escape opens in a spa town snug in the unfashionable eastern Alps, where Haffner has come to claim his wife’s inheritance: a villa expropriated in darker times. After weeks of ignoring his task in order to conduct two affairs — one with a capricious young yoga instructor, the other with a hungrily passionate married woman — he...

An anthology of stories edited by Zadie Smith A stellar host of writers explore the cornerstone of fiction writing: character “The Book of Other” People is about character. Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight "realism", if such a thing exists-is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this...