Rose Tremainová je oceňovaná autorka, jejíž romány se často zabývají tématy identity, paměti a lidské touhy po spojení. Její próza je známá svou bohatou smyslovostí a pronikavým vhledem do lidské psychiky. S neomylným okem pro detail a hlubokým porozuměním lidské povaze Tremanová vytváří příběhy, které jsou zároveň intimní i epické. Její dílo zkoumá složité vztahy mezi postavami a světem kolem nich, často zasazené do dramatických historických kulis.
Mladý loutnista Peter Claire přijíždí roku 1629 na dvůr dánského krále Kristiána IV. a stává se členem orchestru, který své umění provozuje převážně v chladném a temném sklepení. V touze po ochraně a bezpečí si ho král vybírá za svého „anděla strážného“, pročež se Peter ocitá v situacích, kdy spolu zápasí světlo a tma, dobro a zlo, ale také povinnost a milostná vášeň. V tomto lyricky laděném výpravném dramatu z dvorského prostředí nejde totiž o nic méně než o naplnění touhy a spásu vlastní duše.... celý text
Navrácená milost je historický román z prostředí Anglie druhé poloviny 17. stol., doby, kdy po pádu Cromwellova protektorátu zemi opět vládne král – Karel II. Do královy blízkosti se náhodou dostane nadaný, byť poněkud nezodpovědný student medicíny Robert Merivel. Panovník si ho oblíbí, ale protože má lékařů dost, udělá z něj svého šaška a rozhodne se ho využít i jinak – Robert se musí oženit s jeho metresou Célií Clemencovou. Sám se jí však nikdy nesmí dotknout jako manžel. Aby zbytečně neupadal v pokušení, odstěhuje ho Karel na přidělený zámek na severu. Když se však Célie králi znelíbí a je poslána za manželem, Robert zjistí, že své zakázané choti nedokáže odolat, a za svou slabost musí podstoupit trest. Ten ho ale nezlomí, naopak, udělá z něho lepšího člověka.
Filmová adaptace oceněna dvěma Oscary.
Román Valentina a já z roku 1997 nás zavádí do současné Paříže, kam vypravěč románu, třináctiletý anglický hoch, přijíždí jednoho léta se svou matkou, jež zde má pracovat na překladu nového románu enigmatické, uhrančivé a velice úspěšné francouzsky píšící spisovatelky ruskéhopůvodu Valentiny Gavrilové. Valentina je namyšlená, arogantní, necitlivá, ovšem pro mladého hrdinu neodolatelně přitažlivá. Román kombinující žánry psychologického thrilleru a klasického románu.
Po nevyjasněné smrti svého otce-policisty žije Gustav sám s matkou na pokraji hmotné nouze. Když ve školce pozná stejně starého Antona, znamená to především konec jeho osamělosti. Anton, nadaný klavírista, pochází z bohaté židovské rodiny, která se do Gustavova rodného Matzlingen přistěhovala z Bernu těsně před tím, než se švýcarské hranice uzavřely židovským uprchlíkům z Říše. Antonovo přátelství dává Gustavovi možnost nahlédnout do světa láskyplnosti a blahobytu, Anton zas Gustava používá jako záštitu vůči ambiciózním rodičům. Gustav mu může nabídnout svůj pevný postoj, odolnou slupku, kterou si byl nucen vypěstovat v soužití s citově chladnou matkou.
Román Gustav a Anton tematizuje švýcarskou neutralitu, a to jak v historickém období přelomu 30. a 40. let 20. století, tak v protagonistech knihy. Příběh o celoživotním přátelství dvou mužů vypráví především o různých podobách lásky, o vášni, nepochopení i nenávisti. Osudy hlavních postav líčí autorka vždy z jiného úhlu, ale pokaždé citlivě a vytříbeným stylem.
Autorka prý chtěla napsat román připomínající švýcarské hodinky - na pohled obyčejný, ale při hlubším ohledání rafinovaný, složený z tolika malých částeček a mechanismů. Navzdory komornímu klidu, s nímž je kniha psaná, jde o velké drama, vystavěné kompozičně jako třívětá sonáta.
Román o lidské touze zbavit se svého starého já, o potřebě vytvořit si lepší svět, o snaze nalézt smysl života a štěstí uprostřed neznámé divočiny.
Joseph a Harriet Blackstoneovi opustí v polovině devatenáctého století Anglii, aby si založili farmu na Novém Zélandu. Jejich sen o budoucím úspěchu se však téměř ihned promění v neúprosný zápas o přežití v lůně nespoutané a kruté přírody. Joseph se proto rozhodne vsadit znovu vše na jedinou kartu - se svými minimálními prostředky se připojí k dobrodruhům hledajícím štěstí mezi zlatokopy.
The BP Portrait Award, now in its twenty-first year, is one of Britain's most prestigious art prizes, and is the leading showcase for artists throughout the world specialising in portraiture. Last year nearly 300,000 people visited the exhibition, which is based on the competition open to all artists aged eighteen and over from around the world. The catalogue features sixty works from an international list of artists, which together display a diverse range of styles and painterly techniques. It also includes a fascinating essay by bestselling novelist Rose Tremain and an illustrated article by the 2009 Travel Award winner Isobel Peachey. Peachey describes the journeys she undertook to Switzerland and Belgium to document historical re-enactment weekends in which participants recreated life in a medieval castle and a Napoleonic battle. Her account and the accompanying portraits capture her sitters' passionate involvement in recreating the past, and their dual identity as contemporary people re-enacting historical events.
From an acclaimed voice in literature comes a children's story steeped in magic...Oliver loves birds - watching them soar into the sky and wishing that just sometimes they would stay close.So when he discovers a robin made of iron, he thinks he's found the perfect friend - even if his pet dragon isn't quite so certain! When the robin begins to glimmer and hop, Oliver is overjoyed, but in a terrible turn of events, this new friend is lost. But the magic of Iron Robin and the joy of friendship means that there is wonder and excitement ahead for Oliver...Join Oliver on the start of his adventure, with this lyrical and funny story which explores friendship, loyalty and the power of hope. Iron Robin is the perfect bedtime story to share together.
Set in seventeenth-century England, the story follows Robert Merivel, a physician and courtier to Charles II, as he grapples with the complexities of middle age. As he questions his roles as a father, master, and friend to the King, Merivel embarks on a journey to the French court of Versailles. His quest for self-discovery leads to a series of misadventures, blending humor and introspection in a richly depicted historical context.
Court physician Robert Merivel has a middle age crisis and sets off for Versailles where he meets Madame de Flamanville, a Swiss botanist, and rescues a captive bear to take back to Bidnold Manor.
Standing in a cold Suffolk field with her family, six-year-old Mary Ward has a
revelation: I am not Mary. I am not a girl. I'm a boy. So begins Mary's heroic
struggle to change gender. In this book, her story begins from the rural
community of the 1950s to London in the Sixties, and beyond to the glitter of
America in the Seventies.
Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. He struggles with the mysterious rituals of 'Englishness', and the fashions and fads of the London scene. We see the road Lev travels through his eyes, and we share his dilemmas.
These stories are aimed at readers of 'Good Housekeeping' magazine - primarily women aged 25 to 55 - and deal with the myriad issues facing women today. Each story is a generous bite size of well-written, self-contained fiction perfectly suited to holiday reading.
Set in 1629, this is the story of young English musician, Peter Claire, who joins the Danish Court to play with the Royal Orchestra - He finds himself falling in love with the Queen's companion and begins to tread the path of divided loyalties.
A piercing short novel of thwarted love and true friendship from one of our greatest living writers.Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon’s plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne’s telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that―in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella―she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can’t envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.
London, 1850. On a freezing winter's night, a baby is abandoned at the gates of a park only to be saved by a young policeman and taken to the Foundling Hospital. After suffering years of brutal hardship at the Hospital, Lily is released into the world of Victorian London. But she is hiding a dreadful secret... When Lily and the policeman meet again, Lily is convinced that he holds the key to her happiness. But might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?
Fat and fifty, educated only to be a wife and mother, Ruby Constad has reached a point of crisis. Her husband, Leon, lies in a nursing home after a stroke that has left him paralyzed; her grown-up children are gone. In her anguish Ruby appeals for help to a half-remembered figure from her colonial Indigenous girlhood — Sister Benedicta. Gradually the events leading up to Leon’s stroke are revealed and a woman emerges whose capacity to love, hope and understand are far greater than she realizes.
These short stories deal with ideas about mutability, improvement and escape into new worlds, and involve characters who constantly fail to understand themselves or anyone else. They also celebrate the small success or fragment of knowledge which can contribute to a person's experience of life.
She was 'The Angel of the Baths', the one woman whose touch everybody yearned for. Yet she would do more. She was certain of that. In the city of Bath, in the year 1865, an extraordinary young woman renowned for her nursing skills is convinced that some other destiny will one day show itself to her. But when she finds herself torn between a dangerous affair with a female lover and the promise of a conventional marriage to an apparently respectable doctor, her desires begin to lead her towards a future she had never imagined. Meanwhile, on the wild island of Borneo, an eccentric British 'rajah', Sir Ralph Savage, overflowing with philanthropy but compromised by his passions, sees his schemes relentlessly undermined by his own fragility, by man's innate greed and by the invasive power of the forest itself. Jane's quest for an altered life and Sir Ralph's endeavours become locked together as the story journeys across the globe - from the confines of an English tearoom to the rainforests of a tropical island via the slums of Dublin and the transgressive fancy-dress boutiques of Paris. Islands of Mercy is a novel that ignites the senses, and is a bold exploration of the human urge to seek places of sanctuary in a pitiless world.
This is the summer that Lewis Little, precocious thirteen-year-old, is spending in Paris with his mother, Alice. Alice is translating the latest medieval romance by Valentina Gavrilovich, the bestselling and exotic Russian emigre. As Valentina slowly casts a spell over Lewis, he is driven on a terrifying quest.
From the author of The Gustav Sonata At the moment that Colonel Browne is standing in the shallow end of the swimming pool of the Hotel Alphenrose, preparing for his late afternoon dip, his daughter Charlotte, carrying a suitcase, is getting out of her car back in England, preparing to rob the ancestral home. It is not just another day- it is the culmination of hundreds of days, hundreds of disappointments and misunderstandings, and thousands of very small lies... Over a million Rose Tremain books sold 'A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion' Independent I 'There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain' Irish Times 'Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect' The Times 'Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists' Salman Rushdie 'Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness' Marcel Theroux, Guardian
A wonderful new collection of short stories, most of which are published here for the first time.Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American woman for whom Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, ended her life (as the Duchess of Windsor) as the prisoner of her lawyer who would not allow anyone — friend, foe or journalist — to visit her in her Paris flat. Rose Tremain takes this true story and transforms it into an imaginative and ironic fiction. Her thesis is that Wallis, gaga and bed-ridden, had forgotten the king who gave up an empire for love of her.This superb story plays with the selectiveness of why does Wallis recall the seemingly unimportant, while forgetting the glory days of her notoriety? She can remember her first two husbands — one a bit of a brute, the other very boring — but not the world-famous third one.The other stories in this magnificent collection range over a variety of themes, equally original and an East German border guard, redundant after the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, imagines that he might still have a purpose in life. He tries to reach Russia by bicycling across the hostile wastes of Poland. A jilted man gets his revenge. A baby grows wings. A character in an Impressionist painting escapes from his “frame” — or does he? And there’s a Christmas story set in a seedy hotel.From the Hardcover edition.
Set among the hills and gorges of the Cevennes, the dark and beautiful heartland of southern France, 'Trespass' is a novel about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge.
What is the secret to true friendship? Is it really love's quieter relation or
something stronger and more profound? And where does the line between the two
lie? Rose Tremain looks at two unlikely lifelong friendships, which - though
tested - prove unbreakable. Thought-provoking and life-affirming, this is at
once an examination and a celebration of friendship in all its glorious
complexity.
Geboren 1943 in London, ist Rose Tremain umgeben von zerstörten Familien und einer Stadt in Trümmern. Vordergründig ist ihre Familie zwar intakt, doch fehlt es an Zuneigung und Liebe. Ihre einzige Vertraute ist das Kindermädchen Vera, die für Rose wie eine Mutter ist. Ihre »richtige« Mutter Jane hingegen steckt ihre Töchter kurzerhand ins Internat, denn sie will die verlorene Zeit nachholen, hat der Krieg ihr doch die Jugendjahre genommen. Im Internat knüpft Rose prägende Freundschaften – vor allem aber findet sie das, was für ihr Leben bestimmend sein wird: den unbedingten Willen, zu schreiben. Rose Tremains Kindheits- und Jugenderinnerungen bewegen durch die große Aufrichtigkeit der Autorin, bestechen durch ihren ungeschönten Blick – und das Bedürfnis danach, die eigene Mutter verstehen zu wollen.
