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"This second volume of A.H. Tammsaare's monumental pentalogy portrays the education of Indrek who emerges here as the protagonist and will remain so throughout the next three volumes. ... Indrek is the story of moving to the polyglot city and abandoning the countryside which at that time was the heartland of the Estonian language. This new environment is a vortex of prejudices and national rivalries nevertheless held together in practice by a strange and very human tolerance. The boarding school is as dysfunctional as any Dickensian one, but it is a great deal more benevolent. Russians, Germans, Poles, Latvians and Caucasians mix with the Estonian majority, and somehow compromises are nearly always arrived at in spite of--or possibly because of--some extraordinary theatrics, in which Mr Maurus must outperform not only all the other characters in the book but all other celebrated headmasters created by European literature over the centuries. Indrek not only has to come to terms with this world so utterly unsuited to his shy and innocent rural upbringing, but he also has to deal with his first encounters with love and death."--

Hanuman's Travels is the picaresque tale of two asylum-seekers.

White Shroud (Balta drobule, 1958) is considered by many as the most important work of modernist fiction in Lithuanian. Drawing heavily on the author's own refugee and immigrant experience, this psychological, stream-of-consciousness work tells the story of an emigre poet working as an elevator operator in a large New York hotel during the mid-1950s. Using multiple narrative voices and streams, the novel moves through sharply contrasting settings and stages in the narrator's life in Lithuania before and during World War II, returning always to New York and the recent immigrant's struggle to adapt to a completely different, and indifferent, modern world. Strong characters and evocative utterances convey how historical context shapes language and consciousness, breaking down any stable sense of self.

Set in nineties Rome, Surviving tells the story of a group of English-speaking ex-patriot alcoholics whose fragile existences are kept together by a network of friendships. This book has been widely reviewed and always appreciated for its depth, simplicity, economy of language and understanding.

Elspeth, a young actress seduced by promises of fame and theatrical acclaim, travels to Barbados, where her hopes are dashed by hurricane. Dolan explores the themes of racism, eugenics and oppressiveness of unrealised potential: Elspeth's imaginings diverge from the realities of Caribbean life.

Gerry Loose's fifth collection of poetry maps the "fault line" between man and his environment, and takes the area around Faslane submarine base with its nuclear weapons for his setting. Beauty, fragility, aggression and human insensitivity. This is poetry that has a great deal to say.

This is novella recounts the last days of Klaus Mann's life, while referring back to the trials of the Mann family and Klaus's own autobiographical novel, Mephisto. It is the story of courage and isolation.

These brief, vivid glimpses into the lives of others lay bare the ugliness and absurdity - but also the beauty - of existence. In his flash fictions Gary Duncan explores what it means to be human with insight, compassion and humour.

The Spit, the Sound and the Nest is a novel in three parts set in distinct, unnamed locations over a winter, a day and a week. Each part revolves around a small group of central characters forced to depend on one another when faced with unexpected circumstances. In all the stories the past weighs heavily on the present.

A political thriller set in the Baltic during the dying days of the Soviet Union. It follows the young pro-independence dissidents and their entangles lives, loyalties and betrayals. A very human and nuanced tale.

The Canadian and now Scottish poet, Theresa Munoz writes of migration and of our digital world, separate but not unconnected subjects. She does so with style and clarity, and a sense of the impermanence of the modern world. Settle is an engaging collection of poetry on matters that could not be more topical.

In Praise of the Garrulous examines how language developed and was influenced by technology (mainly writing and printing). This raises some important questions concerning the "ecology" of language, and how any degradation it suffers might affect "not only our competence in organising ourselves socially and politically, but also our inner selves."

Lars Sund's prescient novel is the story of a remote community caught up in a human tragedy on a vast scale - asylum-seekers drowning at sea. Initially they react with humanity, but as more dead bodies wash up on their shores and disturb their safe lives, many in the community find it increasingly difficult to maintain their air of civility.

An Italian novel set in Gorbachev's Russia examining the instability of a society in transition - a witty, insightful, and vibrant homage to the country and its great literature. A state murder in the forties and terrorist one in the nineties are linked through a complex but gripping plot.

Klaus, the core work in this collection, is a a novella that recounts the last days of Klaus Mann's life, while referring back to the trials of the Mann family and Klaus's own autobiographical novel, Mephisto. The other stories from Massie's long writing career have been published under one cover for the first time.

After 15 years in prison, Tommy Hunter decides to put right the misery he has heaped on his family by bringing them back together - at the point of a gun. The resulting mayhem and pursuit across Scotland is an exhilarating, point-by-point examination of ludicrous modernity and a Western hero who does not understand which planet he's on.

A collection of short stories that explores the arduousness of people's lives and covers such diverse subjects as human solidarity, generational change, single parenthood, domestic violence, the tragic complexity of revolution, police brutality, artistic hubris, and the limitations of rationalism.

An Italian novelist's account of his nine months on the run as a seven-year-old Jewish boy avoiding the Nazi-Fascist authorities with the help of a civilian network. Written in a moving and effective style, he evokes the keen powers of observation required by the boy surviving by his wits.

A fantastic evocation of life and learning in a dream sequence: Jerome, who has to sit an exam and suffers from toothache, enters a nighmarish library in which everything conspires to frustrate his desperate attempts to revise.

An anthology of three collections bringing three poets together around the subjects of birth and war. The styles of these poets differ, but their imagery and intensity echo each other.

Anthology of poems by forty new Scottish poets. A generation of poets has emerged who have grown up in an age of change, political and technological, with the internet providing them not only with new ways of sharing writing - through their websites, podcasts, Twitter - but also in some cases with a subject too.