Ceridwen Dovey Livres

'A sublime gem of a novel' Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites

A brilliant young woman and an older, more powerful man in a tale of slow-burning obsession and retribution - for fans of Patricia Highsmith and Rachel Cusk 'This psychological thriller examines what happens when the lines between victim and predator, loyalty and obsession become blurred' Mail on Sunday 'Spellbinding' Anna Funder 'Precise, cool, complex' Observer 'Striking, stylish, compelling... Her language is perfectly measured, her imagery precise, the settings lush and tactile, gorgeously rendered' Sydney Morning Herald Vita is an undergraduate when she catches the attention of Royce. She is sharply focused, slightly solitary, evidently gifted. Something in her reminds him of his own youth, of the woman he loved then and of what happened to her. So he grants her a scholarship - a transaction that will bind her to him, in subtle and inescapable ways, for the rest of her life. What passes between them haunts Vita for years. She spends her life playing cat and mouse with his shadow, seeing it slip across the mountains behind her, feeling its chill at her back. So when, decades later, Royce gets in touch once again, Vita has her own reasons for responding. He still sees her as the helpless ingénue. But she is not that any more. 'Dovey does not shy away from bluntly confronting big questions head-on... Trembling with meaning, unsettlingly alive, a literary page-turner' Kirkus

Perhaps only the animals can tell us what it is to be human. The souls of ten animals caught up in human conflicts over the last century tell their astonishing stories of life and death. In a trench on the Western Front a cat recalls her owner Colette's theatrical antics in Paris. In Nazi Germany a dog seeks enlightenment. A Russian tortoise once owned by the Tolstoys drifts in space during the Cold War. In the siege of Sarajevo a bear starving to death tells a fairytale. And a dolphin sent to Iraq by the US Navy writes a letter to Sylvia Plath. Exquisitely written, playful and poignant, Only the Animals is a remarkable literary achievement by this bright young writer. An animal's-eye view of humans at our brutal, violent worst and our creative, imaginative best, it asks us to find our way back to empathy not only for animals, but for other people, and to believe again in the redemptive power of reading and writing fiction.

In einem kleinen Land wird der Präsident gestürzt, und sein Koch, Maler und Barbier erzählen ihre Geschichten und Geheimnisse. Während sie in der Sommerresidenz gefangen sind, enthüllen sie ihre Verbindungen zur Macht und ihre geheimen Leidenschaften. Ceridwen Dovey thematisiert die Korrumpierbarkeit des Menschen und die primitiven Instinkte hinter der zivilisierten Fassade.