La Santita es una apertura de mundos cosmopoéticos en los que las fronteras entre cuerpo y espíritu, cultura y naturaleza, femenino y masculino, lo lúdico y lo racional, la ciencia y la magia se desvanecen. En siete historias, la autora organiza universos en los que los manglares, las gallinas, las rocas volcánicas, las cenizas, Owi Wan Kenobi o Cristal se encuentran y tejen vínculos que ponen en juego la existencia de otras realidades (no necesariamente occidentales) que escapan a los límites de tiempo y espacio y vivos y muertos. Inspirada en las cosmologías del mundo andino y sus violencias profundas, Moscoso hace magia con las palabras, inventa ritmos y trae referencias de la cultura popular junto a otra cultura pop ancestral. Rompecabezas de referencias tan reconocible en el imaginario de Moscoso y en tantísimos puntos de América. Pósters de Chayanne y Hello Kitty entre viviendas precarias, vegetación random, terrenos vacíos, casas hechas con ladrillos sin pintar ni revocar, ciudades interminables y edificios que brillan al sol, olor a frito y a cilantro. Neón y cumbia. Vírgenes y Star Wars. Estamos, quizás, frente a una literatura del fin del mundo.

It was raining when I arrived at the house. The walls of my room were lined with cat photos, set in fancy frames just below the ceiling. When her mother emigrates to China for work, twenty-year-old Chizu moves in with 71-year-old Ginko, an eccentric distant relative, taking a room in her ramshackle Tokyo home, with two its resident cats and the persistent rattle of passing trains. Living their lives in imperfect symmetry, they establish an uneasy alliance, stress tested by Chizu's flashes of youthful spite. As the four seasons pass, Chizu navigates a series of tedious part-time jobs and unsatisfying relationships, before eventually finding her feet and salvaging a fierce independence from her solitude. A Perfect Day to Be Alone is a moving, microscopic examination of loneliness and heartbreak. With flashes of deadpan humour and a keen eye for poignant detail, Aoyama chronicles the painful process of breaking free from the moorings of youth.

“Even though A Woman of Pleasure exposes the brutal life of sex workers, a dynamic optimism runs throughout the book. Only Kiyoko Murata can convey this world.” —Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police ( Yomiuri Shimbun ) In 1903, a fifteen-year-old girl named Ichi Aoi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan. Despite her modest beginnings in a southern fishing village, she becomes the protégée of an oiran, the highest-ranking courtesan at the brothel. Through the teachings of her oiran, Shinonome, Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. And in her mandatory school lessons, her writing instructor, Tetsuko, encourages Ichi and the others to think clearly and express themselves.  Based on real-life events in Meiji-era Japan, award-winning and critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata re-creates in stunning detail the brutal yet vibrant lives of women in the red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century—the bond they share, the survival skills they pass down, and the power of owning one's language. By banding together, the women organize a strike and walk away from the brothel and into the possibility of new lives.

For fans of Asako Yuzuki and Fleabag, an audacious, unhinged debut following the major humiliations and minor triumphs of an overworked, undersexed young woman in Tokyo who must save herself from the hazards of her own lust, obsession, and delusion. limerence. [li-mer-uhns] noun the state of being obsessively infatuated with someone, usually accompanied by delusions of or a desire for an intense romantic relationship with that person; e.g., her limerence lasted for around three months before she actually met him Mika is about to turn 25, and all she has to show for it is a soul-sucking office job and a terminal case of virginity. Between unwanted advances from co-workers and subway commuters, and love-bombing from unappealing fuckboys, Mika’s ready to explode. Her only therapeutic outlet is her imagination, which manifests in a series of comically violent and horny fantasies. Determined to change her fate, and with the encouragement of Nana, her certified “Hot Girl” best friend, Mika loses half of her virginity to Tyler, a Japanese-American boy with an allergy to commitment. The other half is taken by a man with a drawer full of red flags, all while Mika indulges in fantasies of women much to her titillation and confusion. Caught in a love(less) triangle, Mika also must weather a mysterious outbreak spurred by the unhygienic bathroom practices of white male westerners. Will she emerge from quarantine a new woman? Or, spurred by a reunion with an estranged friend, can she shift her life in a new direction? Could this be yet again limerence, or might it be the beginning of something a bit less one-sided? Scathingly funny, delightfully profane, and surprisingly heartfelt, Hello, Limerence is a story for the unloved and the unhinged—a madcap spin through the frenzy of one woman’s desire.

Actor, writer and hopeless romantic Rebecca Humphries had often been called crazy by her boyfriend. But when paparazzi caught him kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner, she realised the only crazy thing was believing she didn't deserve more. Forced into victimhood by the story, Rebecca chose to reclaim her power, posting her thoughts on social media, including advice for other women who might be experiencing what she realised she'd managed to escape: a toxic, oppressive relationship. A flood of support poured in, but amongst the well-wishes was a simple question with an infinitely complex answer: 'If he was so bad, why did you stay?' Empowering, unflinching and full of humour, this book takes that question and owns it. Using her relationship history, coming of age stories and experiences since the Strictly scandal, Rebecca explores why good girls are drawn to darkness, whether pop culture glamourises toxicity, when a relationship 'rough patch' becomes the start of a destructive cycle, if women are conditioned for co-dependency, and - ultimately - how to reframe disaster into something magical.

Daphne du Maurier's occasional volumes of short stories have always shown how compellingly she can make our flesh creep (think of the brilliant 'The Birds', and that truly horrifying story 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger'). This new collection, which contains five long stories, makes exactly the same stunning, sinister impact. Not After Midnight-the title gives warning that here are no cosy tales for reading to a maiden aunt or an elderly cousin. Venice... Crete... Ireland... Jerusa- lem... East Anglia: the settings are as varied as the plots. A married couple enjoying a holiday in Venice are swept helplessly into a tragedy played out against a back-drop of murky canals and back- alleys. A middle-aged schoolmaster gets involved with an American couple whose fishing expeditions are very far from being what they appear. A young actress, setting out on an impulsive but innocent quest, blunders into a situation which sweeps away all the roots of her youthful self- confidence. One story, subtly mocking, follows the vicissitudes of an ill-assorted little party of pilgrims in Jerusalem; another explores the meaning of life and death in a brilliantly original tale. Such unremarkable people, following their unexceptionable paths-yet all caught up in situations beyond the boun- daries of their experience and outside their control. Compelling, exciting, this collec- tion shows once again what mastery of the short story Daphne du Maurier has.

In sixteenth-century Spain, a cabin boy sets sail on a ship bound for the New World. An inland expedition ends in disaster when the group is attacked by Indians. The Witness explores the relationship between existence and description, foreignness and cultural identity. Juan Jose Saer was born in Argentina in 1937 and is considered one of Argentina's leading writers of the post-Borges generation. He died in 2005.

When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation. Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity." Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.

The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time.'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian

Ladders to Fire , Children of the Albatross , The Four-Chambered Heart , A Spy in the House of Love , Seduction of the Minotaur . Haunting and hypnotic, these five novels by Anaïs Nin began in 1946 to appear in quiet succession. Though published separately over the next fifteen years, the five were conceived as a continuous experience—a continuous novel like Proust’s, real and flowing as a river. The full impact of Anaïs Nin’s genius is only to be found through reading the novels in context and in succession. They form a rich, luminous tapestry whose overall theme Nin has called “woman at war with herself.” Characters, symbols appear and now one, now another unfolding, gradually revealing, changing, struggling, growing, and Nin had forged an evocative language all her own for the telling. “The diary taught me that there were no neat ends to novels, no neat denouement, no neat synthesis,” she explains. “So I began an endless novel, a novel in which the climaxes consisted of discoveries in awareness, each step in awareness becoming a stage in the growth like the layers in trees.” Cities of the Interior fulfills a long–time desire on the part of readers, publisher, and Anaïs Nin herself to reunite the five novels in a single volume.

Both stories capture a moment of sexual awakening, and reveal the subtle or explicit means by which men and women are aroused. Lust, obsession, fantasy and desire emerge as part of the human condition, as pure or as complex as any other of its aspects. Previously published in The Delta of Venus (1978) and Little birds (1979) respectively. - Artists and Models - A Model

The intimacy between Nin and Miller, first disclosed in Henry and June, is documented further in this impassioned exchange of letters between the two controversial writers. Edited and with an Introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann; Index.

A writer engulfed by a new obsession, an occasional sex-worker, a runaway, a teenager entering the workplace: these four tales of desire and dislocation explore the rough edges of relationships and the inner lives of women negotiating their precarious place in the world. In these coolly compelling and quietly devastating stories, Gaitskill evokes with razor-sharp precision the pleasure, pain, fear and longing that haunt modern life.

‘Last year I lost my cat Gattino. He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead but I don’t know for certain.’ So begins Mary Gaitskill’s stunning book-length essay, the closest thing she has written to a memoir. Lost Cat begins with the story of how Gaitskill rescued a stray cat in Italy and brought him to live with her in the US, where he went missing. As she explores the unexpected trauma of her loss, Gaitskill describes how she came to foster two siblings, Caesar and Natalia, a pair of inner-city children who spent summers and holidays with Gaitskill and her husband. The joys and ultimate difficulties of this relationship leads to a searing examination of loss, love, safety and fear. Gaitskill applies her razor-sharp writing to her most personal subjects yet.

First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan's finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film Ugetsu. The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense. The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.

Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom. Estranged from his father, newly divorced, unable to communicate with his only daughter, he realizes that while he may have seventy-four friends on Facebook, there is nobody in the world with whom he can actually share his problems. Then a business proposition comes his way - a strange exercise in corporate PR that will require him to spend a week driving from London to a remote retail outlet on the Shetland Isles. Setting out with an open mind, good intentions and a friendly voice on his SatNav for company, Maxwell finds that this journey soon takes a more serious turn, and carries him not only to the furthest point of the United Kingdom, but into some of the deepest and darkest corners of his own past. In his sparkling and hugely enjoyable new book, Jonathan Coe reinvents the picaresque novel for our time.

El esperado debut de una de las voces poéticas más celebradas y premiadas. Una novela queer única que torpedea los límites inmortales de los ¿es posible amar fuera de un lenguaje común? Tras cinco años fuera de Italia, Mia regresa a Lecce para cuidar de su madre, en estado avanzado de demencia, que ya no habla, solo canta. En la casa se encuentra con Cavalli, una gata callejera que despierta una ternura nueva y extraña en su madre, cuyo deterioro físico y mental, sumado a la intimidad que ha establecido con el animal, coloca a Mia en un proceso obsesivo de transformación. Si no pudo ser querida como hija, quizá pueda recibir ese amor desde otra parte. Leche cruda indaga en los límites difusos de la comunicación, en la pulsión queer de la imaginación y en la urgencia por inventar formas de amar fuera de una lengua común. Entre lo poético y lo crudo, se ¿el cruce de fronteras entre lo humano y lo animal podrá ser una manera de acortar la brecha que nos separa? Ángelo Néstore se sirve de una lengua híbrida que derrite las barreras del género para adentrarse en temas universales como el duelo, los apegos feroces entre madres e hijas, la enfermedad y la delicadeza cotidiana. Con esta novela, que se lee con el cuerpo y los sentidos, nos demuestra que los errores moldean nuestro porvenir y que los afectos son una fiesta si llegan de la mano de la literatura. La crítica ha «Una celebración voluptuosa y melancólica del lenguaje. Néstore ha escrito una historia de amor y comunicación entre una madre, una hija y una gata que tiene la textura cálida del recuerdo, con sus trampas e idealizaciones. Si somos lo que nuestra memoria selecciona para construirnos, pocas veces lo he leído de un modo tan claro y conmovedor como en esta novela. Pura belleza». Alana S. Portero «Entre la ausencia, la presencia y la devoción se juegan los términos del amor. Una novela escrita en al menos tres castellano, italiano y felino, donde fantasear con la vejez de nuestra madre sirve también para imaginar la ¿pasaremos los últimos días de la vida olvidadas por la norma, recordando solo antiguas canciones, comiendo los espaguetis del mismo plato que una gata? Si te conmueve Ocean Vuong, amarás la escritura de Ángelo Né inteligente, bella, venida del espacio atemporal de las valientes y hermosas obras de la historia de la literatura queer». Sara Torres «Arrebatador. No solo por la forma precisa y preciosa de masticar el lenguaje -esa manera de juntar lo que un día desaparecerá con lo que todavía existe-, sino por lo que cuenta, que me atraviesa de una manera oscura y luminosa. Además de leerse, puede escucharse». Roy Galán «Este libro es un artefacto peligroso. Tan peligroso como las flores devoradoras, como los animales salvajes que se vuelven tuyos por un tiempo, como el duelo, como las madres que van a morir. Su lectura te acaricia y te araña, es una mirada al corazón oscuro del dolor. Leche cruda es un as, un dolor y una alegría. La he vivido completa». Elaine Vilar Madruga

Hacia 1912, siete años después de separarse, se encuentran en los pasillos del Teatro Imperial de Tokio el ejecutivo Yoshioka y la geisha Komayo. Él es un hombre casado, próspero; ella ha vuelto al oficio después de haber enviudado. Esa misma noche reanudan su relación, pero Komayo se enamora de un célebre actor especializado en papeles femeninos. Ella cree que «en el mundo no hay nada más misterioso que el destino de cada persona», y el suyo, en efecto, le reserva tanto el éxtasis como la humillación. En «este mundo de aguas terrosas» que es el oficio de geisha acechan ocasiones para la venganza, aunque no se sepa quién las espera y quién las aprovechará. Geishas rivales (1917) es un brillante recorrido por los distritos del placer del Tokio de principios de siglo XX, un mundo de artistas, geishas, prostitutas, poetas y «gente perdida» que el autor, Nagai Kafu, un clásico de las letras japonesas modernas, conoció muy bien: «En Tokio e incluso en Occidente, no he conocido prácticamente otra sociedad que la de las cortesanas», decía. Un sorprendente erotismo y una escritura lírica y viva iluminan en esta magnífica novela «los conflictos en torno a la dignidad y la compasión» que siempre surgen «al relacionarse un hombre y una mujer».

Carmen Laforet’s Nada ranks among the most important literary works of post-Civil War Spain. Loosely based on the author’s own life, it is the story of an orphaned young woman who leaves her small town to attend university in war-ravaged Barcelona. Residing amid genteel poverty in a mysterious house on Calle de Aribau, young Andrea falls in with a wealthy band of schoolmates who provide a rich counterpoint to the squalor of her home life. As experience overtakes innocence, Andrea gradually learns the disquieting truth about the people she shares her life with: her overbearing and superstitious aunt Angustias; her nihilistic yet artistically gifted uncle Román and his violent brother Juan; and Juan’s disturbingly beautiful wife, Gloria, who secretly supports the clan with her gambling. From existential crisis to a growing maturity and resolve, Andrea’s passionate inner journey leaves her wiser, stronger, and filled with hope for the future. The incomparable Edith Grossman’s vital new translation captures the feverish energy of Laforet’s magnificent story, showcasing its dark, powerful imagery, and its subtle humor. And Mario Vargas Llosa’s Introduction illuminates Laforet’s brilliant depiction of life during the early days of the Franco regime. With crystalline insight into the human condition, Carmen Laforet’s classic novel stands poised to reclaim its place as one of the great novels of twentieth-century Europe.