Letters to Kafka, by Harry Greenberg
The funny, tragic, sometimes hilarious letters to a latterday Franz Kafka, whose insights into the existential dilemmas of contemporary being continue to be misunderstood, and sometimes dangerously so.
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The Emperor's Favourite Elephant, by Power McTeal
One day a sly and hungry jackal thinks to trick the Emperor’s favourite elephant into taking him to green and fertile pastures where he can get a good meal, without having to work for it. But he doesn’t bargain for the kind of destination the elephant has in store for him. Power McTeal’s eventful little tale of life in the wilds.
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The Butcher of Poland, a play by Garry O'Connor
Condemned to death and hanged in 1947, Hans Frank’s public repentance was unique among the leading Nazi criminals tried at Nuremberg. One psychiatrist pointed out Frank’s ‘beatific tranquillity merely hid his own tensions’. But what of such carefully acted out piety? Didn’t this hastily cultivated yet forceful and theatrical piety have something about it which was so patently flimsy compared to the much more formidable integrity and long studied piety of Pope Pius XII?
Both had their roots in South German and Italian theatricality. In the way Frank called attention to himself on every possible occasion he was no ordinary criminal. He was not only criminal in his acts and attitudes, which he acknowledged, but also he flaunted, in an egotistic, nihilistic way, a vanity of evils which today remain a significant part of our culture. Unlike Ribbentrop, who lamented he would never be able to write his ‘beautiful memoirs’, Frank wasted no time during the trial and had gone ahead. He composed his testament, Facing the Gallows, with a dedication from Goethe’s Werther, in quoting from which he subtly changed the wording to serve his self-serving account of ‘former and partial guilt’ – to make it sound as if God endorsed it, which was not in the sense of the original.
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L'altra donna, by Peter Cowlam with Angela D'Ambra
The 1970s. Bruce takes over a financial consultancy firm founded by his father, while student Marisa inherits property. Love, lust and money drive them both, until their relationship ends, with Bruce committed to commerce and Marisa setting off in search of social justice. Twenty-five years after an intense and bad-tempered affair, a chance entry in one of Bruce’s business listings shows that Marisa is now boss of the Rae Agency – a media PR concern. Bruce, as he recollects their partnership, is torn between his staid if harmonious family life, and renewing contact with Marisa. Finally, he does commit to a course of action, but must face the truth of not having grasped the widening cultural and social separation their two different views of the world have wrought over the intervening quarter century. First published in its original English, this edition in Italian translation by the distinguished translator Angela D'Ambra.
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Alec Guinness: A Life, by Garry O'Connor
A definitive, revealing biography of actor Alec Guinness, whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. He appeared in seventy-seven films and fifty-five plays, acclaimed for such roles as Professor Marcus in The Lady Killers, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and George Smiley in le Carré’s Smiley’s People. He was an astonishingly gifted actor who became a British national treasure, familiar to many. Yet Guinness was a complex, thoughtful man, careful throughout his life to reveal little of the real self beneath the roles he assumed. He died with much of the truth still submerged. Garry O’Connor’s timely biography gives us the full story, including revelations on Guinness’s childhood, his secret relationships and the fears that haunted him throughout his life. Backed by O’Connor’s usual meticulous research, including interviews with Guinness himself and those close to him, this riveting account fills in the gaps, adding a new depth to our understanding not just of Guinness’s life but of his remarkable acting talent.
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