Adriana Hunter Knihy

The timely, powerful memoir of a man unjustly charged with a crime for helping his relatives, refugees from Syria. For trying to save his in-laws, who were fleeing certain death in Syria, Stéphan Pélissier was threatened with fifteen years in prison by the Greek justice system, which accused him of human smuggling. His crime? Having gone to search for the parents, brother, and sister of his wife, Zéna, in Greece rather than leaving them to undertake a treacherous journey by boat to Italy. Their joy on finding each other quickly turned into a nightmare: Pélissier was arrested as a result of a missing car registration and thrown into prison. Although his relatives were ultimately able to seek asylum—legally—in France, Pélissier had to fight to prove his innocence, and to uphold the values of common humanity and solidarity in which he so strongly believes. I Just Wanted to Save My Family offers a heartrending window into the lives of those displaced by the Syrian civil war and a scathing critique of the often absurd, unfeeling bureaucracies that determine their fates.

Bustle: Best Book of the Month From the critically acclaimed author of The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris, a fascinating, intimate portrait of one of Japan’s most influential and respected textile artists. Writer, filmmaker, and photographer Marc Petitjean finds himself in Kyoto one fine morning with his camera, to film a man who will become his friend: Kunihiko Moriguchi, a master kimono painter and Living National Treasure—like his father before him. As a young decorative arts student in the 1960s, Moriguchi rubbed shoulders with the cultural elite of Paris and befriended Balthus, who would profoundly influence his artistic career. Discouraged by Balthus from pursuing design in Europe, he returned to Japan to take up his father’s vocation. Once back in this world of tradition he had tried to escape, Moriguchi contemporized the craft of Yūzen (resist dyeing) through his innovative use of abstraction in patterns. With a documentarian’s keen eye, Petitjean retraces Moriguchi’s remarkable life, from his childhood during the turbulent 1940s and 50s marked by war, to his prime as an artist with works exhibited in the most prestigious museums in the world.

An eloquent, heartfelt account of a young boy's fight with cancer and of a mother's determination and resilience, which see their family through to his recovery. As her ten-year-old son sits at the kitchen table one evening, Lise Marzouk inspects his mouth and discovers an unusual growth, which doctors later confirm is cancerous. When he is hospitalized at the Curie Institute in Paris for lymphoma treatment, Lise finds herself torn between two worlds, one at his bedside, and the other at home with her two younger children, struggling to maintain a sense of stability in their lives. And so she writes—of their fears and doubts, but also of their moments of tenderness and joy—and through these memories, stories, and reveries, she arrives at a deeper understanding of herself as a woman, a mother, and a writer. Brimming with a rebellious sense of hope, If offers an intimate look at how a mother's love and support enabled her family to come out of a devastating experience stronger and more connected.

Dvaatřicetiletá Julia určitě nesnila o tom, že by i jen dočasně chtěla pracovat jako psycholožka v domově pro seniory; zvolila tu možnost jako útěk od ztráty v rodině a hlavně útěk od partnera, který ji zklamal. O životě mezi starými lidmi si iluze nedělá, avšak stačí pár týdnů a sblíží se s nimi i se svými kolegy, jako by našla novou rodinu. K pocitu naplnění a štěstí jí zbývá už jen krok – jenže, jak se říká, kovářovic kobyla chodí bosa, a tak Julia musí zapracovat také na sobě a překonat strach z nové lásky… Román vás vtáhne do světa pestrých a živoucích postav, v němž se každý den servíruje tak vydatný i osvěživý koktejl slz a smíchu, že vám bude líto ho dopít.

This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene. In 1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina, in 1934. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France—her only trip to Europe, and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own. Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp. Using Kahlo’s whirlwind romance with the author’s father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.

V mrazivém ránu zimy roku 1917 je v severofrancouzském městečku, ležícím nedaleko frontových bojů první světové války, nalezeno tělo zavražděné desetileté dívky, dcery majitele místního hostince. Vyšetřování tragédie nikdy nedospěje k přesvědčivému závěru a případ dále komplikuje řada nejasností kolem jednotlivých aktérů včetně samotného vypravěče, bývalého policisty, jehož svědomí tíží vlastní nepřiznané provinění. Je pachatelem tajemný a do samoty uzavřený prokurátor Destinat, či mladý bretonský dezertér, na nějž se upře nelítostná pozornost vyšetřovatelů? A jaké tajemství skrývala mladá učitelka, nalezená nedlouho po vraždě v bytě oběšená? Rekapitulace celého příběhu, jehož melancholickou atmosféru výrazně dotváří všudypřítomný stín válečných hrůz...

Mladá belgická dívka přijíždí do Japonska na jednoroční stáž a nastupuje na místo tlumočnice ve významné obchodní společnosti. Tady se ocitá tváří v tvář těžkému vystřízlivění z dávného snu a začíná chápat, jak složitá je cesta za slávou v hierarchii společnosti, kde každý má svého nadřízeného a kde se skutečně tvrdě pracuje. Navzdory všemu dostává ty nejhorší a nejprimitivnější úkoly a postupně padá až na samé dno pracovního žebříčku. Dokáže se s tím vyrovnat?

This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene. In 1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina, in 1934. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France—her only trip to Europe, and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own. Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp. Using Kahlo’s whirlwind romance with the author’s father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.

New York Times Bestselling and Goncourt Prize-Winning Author of The Anomaly Any man—or woman—who wants to hear nothing—or no more—about love should put this book down. Anna and Louise could be sisters, but they don’t know each other. They are both married with children, and for the most part, they are happy. On almost the same day, Anna, a psychiatrist, crosses paths with Yves, a writer, while Louise, a lawyer, meets Anna’s analyst, Thomas. Love at first sight is still possible for those into their forties and long-married. But when you have already mapped out a life path, a passionate affair can come at a high price. For our four characters, their lives are unexpectedly turned upside down by the deliciously inconvenient arrival of love. For Anna, meeting Yves has brought a flurry of excitement to her life and made her question her values, her reliable husband, and her responsibilities to her children. For Louise, a successful career woman in a stable and comfortable marriage, her routine is uprooted by the youthful passion she feels for Thomas. Thought-provoking, sophisticated, and, above all, amusing, Enough About Love captures the euphoria of desire through tender and unflinching portraits of husbands, wives, and lovers.

Beguiling and ambitious, this new novel by the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, is ostensibly a search for an ancient text, and a love story. But beneath that is a haunting tale about language and identity, about the shifting layers of history under the confusing surface of Chinese life and politics, with a final Buddhist twist. A young French woman in Peking in the late 1970s interprets between Chinese professors and Bertolucci for his film The Last Emperor. Afterwards, she follows a disgruntled old professor who tells her about a text believed to be taken directly from Buddha's teachings and inscribed on silk cloth centuries ago. It was written in a now-dead language called Tumchooq (coincidentally, the name of a young Chinese man she has just met), so beautiful in its simplicity it is almost impossible to render accurately in translation. Puyi, the last emperor and last owner of this relic, allegedly tore the silk in two with his teeth while being flown to Manchuria by the Japanese, and threw the fragments from the plane. Only half of the mutilated manuscript was recovered, and the reader, like the narrator, must wait till the end of the novel to discover the rest. When the complete text is finally pieced together, its message is devastatingly simple, and all the more poignant because it has taken such sacrifice and effort to decipher. Comprising ancient texts and fables, stories within stories, and a young man's desperate search for his father's legacy, this brilliant novel, covering almost a century of China's history, has the modernity and tenderness of the film, Lost in Translation