Alex Christofi Livres

A highly original and immersive new biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, published to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth

A highly original and immersive new biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, published to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth

A poignant love story set in the wake of the Second World War, now in paperback.

Meet Günter Glass: ex-milkman and aspiring window-cleaner, struggling to find his way in the modern world.Ever since a childhood visit to a glass-blower's workshop, Günter has had an unusual fixation with glass. When a minor adventure up the spire of Salisbury cathedral turns him into a local celebrity - and gives him a taste for extreme heights - Günter is called to his dream job: cleaning Europe's tallest skyscraper, London's Shard.Enchantingly under-prepared for the bright lights of the city - and philosophically under-equipped for sharing a flat with an eccentric German intellectual called the Steppenwolf - Günter must navigate his own way through life, armed only with his mother's homespun wisdom and knowledge gleaned from haphazard wanderings through Wikipedia. But will his innocence put him on a collision course with the baffling modern world?Glass is a novel about learning to wise up to the world around you. Charming, funny and slyly clever, it establishes Alex Christofi as one of Britain's most exciting new writers.

Glass is pure. Glass is transparent. Glass is sharp.Günter Glass, ex-milkman and aspiring window-cleaner, is certainly pure. And he's pretty transparent. But the jury's still out on how sharp he is.What naïve young Günter does have is a head for heights and, ever since he visited a glassblower's workshop as a child, an unusual fixation with glass. When a minor adventure up the spire of Salisbury Cathedral makes Günter a local celebrity, John Blades - window-cleaner to the stars - comes calling. He wants Günter to join him in London to clean Europe's tallest skyscraper, the newly constructed Shard in London Bridge.With his mother recently passed away, his dad retired and no money to pay off the mortgage, Günter takes Blades up on his offer and soon finds himself, for the first time, among the bright lights of London. He has his first experience of romantic love with short-range psychic Lieve Toureau, tries not to encourage Blades' frequent racist outbursts, and cohabits a Hackney 'bachelor-pad' with a reclusive landlord who has spent decades writing a never-ending book in his cork-lined bedroom. But above all, Günter spends his time trying to figure out how to be good and follow his dear departed mother's advice as best he can.Will Günter find his way along the straight and narrow? Or will his innocence put him on collision course with the frequently baffling modern world?

An evocative and lyrical history of Cyprus and the Mediterranean.Think of a place where can you stand at the intersection of Christian and Arab cultures, at the crossroads of the British, Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian empires; a place marked by the struggle between fascism and communism and where the capital city is divided in half as a result of bloody internal conflict; where the ancient olive trees of Homer's time exist alongside the undersea cables which provide the world's internet.In Cypria , named after a lost Cypriot epic which was the prequel to The Odyssey , British Cypriot writer Alex Christofi writes a deeply personal, lyrical and historical portrait and history of the island of Cyprus, from ancient times to the present day.This sprawling, evocative and poetic book begins with the legend of the cyclops and the storytelling at the heart of the Mediterranean culture. Christofi travels to salt lakes, mosques and the eerie towns deserted at the start of the 1974 war. He retells the particularly bloody history of Cyprus during the twentieth century and considers his own identity as traveler and returner, as Odysseus was.Written in the same sensitive, witty and beautifully rendered prose as his last book Dostoevsky in Love , with a novelist's flair and eye for detail, Cypria combines the political, cultural and geographical history of Cyprus with reflections on time, place and belonging.