Bøker utgitt av Peter Owen Publishers

"For over half a century Michael Leonard has proved to be one of Britain's most versatile and popular artists. Born in 1933, by the late 1960s he had come to public attention as a talented illustrator, with his images featuring prominently in the Sunday Times Colour Magazine and on book covers. By the mid-1970s he had devoted himself to fine art and since then has been regarded as one of Britain's leading photorealistic painters, especially acclaimed for his nudes, which combine precise brushwork and luminous intensity with abstract qualities of design. He has appeared in group exhibitions as well as one-man shows internationally. His series 'Portraits in Time' shows his sitters depicted in the style of the Old Masters, while in the mid-1980s he was commissioned to paint the Queen's picture to celebrate her sixtieth birthday; his portrait of her now hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery. Apart from portraiture, he has long been celebrated as a wonderfully assured painter of landscape and dynamic studies of the human form and as an illustrator and photographer. Patrick Bade's intimate yet comprehensive study of the artist's career reveals his artistic development in all its variety. Lavishly illustrated with paintings, drawings and photographs, this is a seminal book for admirers of his work"--

The first English translation of the 2017 European Union Prize for Literature winner Nabil, a Palestinian exile who has made his life on the Mediterranean island of Malta, has his equilibrium shattered when he receives a phone call telling him that his father has died in Jordan. This news releases a flood of memories centered on the unending tragedy of the Arab world. As he reflects on his father's death Nabil is forced to confront his Palestinian roots. Born in 1967, he was involved in the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians at the end of the Six-Day War. Like so many of these displaced and disenfranchised people, his family spent years moving around the Middle East, including neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. And when Nabil finally settles on Malta he discovers in its hybrid culture of east and west a pale shadow of home. Nabil's meditations expand to encompass the entire Arab world, with its colonial past, its postcolonial legacy, its fragmentation, human suffering and political turmoil. Part stream of consciousness and part history of the Middle East, Exodus of the Storks is an ambitious literary achievement, as Walid Nabhan movingly evokes the Arab experience. It is a novel for our times of international upheaval and displacement.

"Nymans is one of the National Trust's most popular properties, a vision of English tradition amid a landscape of rolling woodland. Yet appearances can be deceptive. The manor house is just a hundred years old, and the Messel family who built it were not English aristocracy but German Jewish immigrants. The vision was their triumphant creation. From Refugees to Royalty is the first book to chart the extraordinary journey of the Messel family from their roots in Germany to their new life in England. At the heart of the story lies an astonishing irony. The earliest Messels were turned into refugees by an edict of the British royal family, when George III issued a decree expelling the Jews. Two hundred years later, the wheel came full circle when the youngest Messel, Tony Armstrong-Jones, walked down the aisle with Princess Margaret, four times great-granddaughter of George III. John Hilary is a great-great-grandson of Ludwig Messel, who founded the garden at Nymans. In this beautifully illustrated book, full of colour, heartache and celebrity, he documents the rich cultural legacy of the Messels as world-famous designers, collectors, scientists and architects"--Publisher's description

"Do You Mind If I Smoke?" is the astonishing and often hilarious life story of a national treasure, told for the first time in a special edition hardback book to be published on the eve of actress Fenella Fielding's 90th birthday this November.

Roll up! Roll up! See the wondrous new face of Circus Mania, 250 years in the making! Full of the remarkable tales of circus life that made it a classic on its first outing. Learn about the origins of the circus from Roman times, to the colourful characters that make the circus the international phenomenon it is today. Circus Mania 2.0 is bigger, better and couldn't be timelier. Two hundred and fifty years after Philip Astley invented the circus it has never been more diverse and captivating, the global success of the spectacular Cirque du Soleil just one testament to its enduring and universal appeal. In Britain alone there are traditional family circuses for kids and arty shows for adults, circuses in tents and circuses in theatres, circuses with animals and circuses without, the Circus of Horrors for clubbers, the comedy-based Circus Hilarious and cabaret-style hybrids on the burlesque circuit and this form of entertainment is popular around the world. What all circuses have in common are the extraordinary skills, dedication and lifestyle of those involved a unique strain of performers who blend the discipline of sports stars with the razzmatazz of showbiz; itinerant entertainers who have often had circus blood in their families for generations; world-class gymnasts who risk death twice daily, serve on the tea stand in between shows and help take down the big top afterwards. Circus Mania is a journey into this unique world, each chapter an access-all-areas pass to a different circus, talking to the trapeze flyers, clowns, animal trainers and showmen about their lives, work and customs and offering insight into the development of this traditional entertainment from the earliest times.

From the international best-selling author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon comes a dazzling new work of historical fiction. The Gospel According to Lazarus retells the story of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of his childhood friend whom he resurrected - how and for what purpose are the mysteries at the centre of Lazarus's narrative.

Ahead of the global threats and tragedies of today is a common barrier to their solution - it is the spirit that has defined the age we live in: competition. The Simultaneous Policy Solution, the 'SIMPOL Solution', shows us how through cooperation we can overcome the problems we face today and tomorrow.

Part of the Peter Owen World Series. A new novel from internationally renowned author of My Father's Dreams. When a family move out to the countryside to restore a dilapidated farmhouse, progress is halted by the arrival of their chaotic relatives. Flisar handles the absurd events like no other writer, imbuing the smallest incidents with meaning.

First full biography of an international figure, recently in the news after her successful libel case against Andrew Marry, who described her as a terrorist in The Making of Modern Britain Internationally famous for starting one of the first women's refuges in the modern world, Erin Pizzey is a controversial but hugely-respected activist with enemies on the left and the right, a pioneering figure in the maelstrom of seventies politics, and a key witness of the era. Here, she tells her story in full for the first time. The daughter of a diplomat, Erin Pizzey was born in China in 1939. One of her formative experiences was seeing her parents and brother being put under house arrest by the Maoists in 1949. This instilled a hatred of totalitarian regimes and for a short time Pizzey even worked for MI6 in Hong Kong. Once relocated in the UK, Pizzey was soon swept up by sixties radicalism and the early days of the emerging Women's Liberation Movement. Opening a small community center for maltreated women in Chiswick in 1971 was to bring Pizzey to the front line of what was becoming a national issue in a time when feminists were still treated with hostility and derision by right-wing figures, but also when left-wing radicals scorned anyone, like Pizzey, who put humanity before ideology. By the mid-1970s, Pizzey found herself under bomb threat and picketed by feminists for allowing men to staff refuges: this led to a long exile from the UK where she kept up her activities and achieved international recognition, while also reinventing herself as a best-selling writer. Erin Pizzey's life and trials have been unique; her story is a compelling one, vital to any understanding of a more revolutionary age and burning issues that still resonate today.

Oscar Nemon (1906-1985) is one of the 20th century's greatest sculptors, as testified by his iconic portraits of elder statesmen and major figures displayed all over the world. His flamboyant personality charmed those who came in contact with him, including Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud and Queen Elizabeth II. His daughter Aurelia reveals the stories behind his artistic and personal encounters with presidents, prime ministers, royalty and others. She chronicles her father's life from humble origins as a Jew in modern-day Croatia to his refuge from the Nazis in southern England and the life and career he made for himself in and around London. The result is an intimate biography of an artist, husband and father.

A memoir of enlightenment, politics, commerce, arts and science, written in 1868 during a time of revolution.

Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island strongly recalls The Island of Dr. Moreau and is therefore Wells at his best and most fantastic. Being the Story of a Gentleman of Culture and Refinement who suffered Shipwreck and saw no Human Beings other than Cruel and Savage Cannibals for several years. How he beheld Megatheria alive and made some notes of their Habits. How he became a Sacred Lunatic. How he did at last escape in a Strange Manner from the Horror and Barbarities of Rampole Island in time to fight in the Great War, and how afterwards he came near returning to that Island for ever. With much Amusing and Edifying Matter concerning Manners, Customs, Beliefs, Warfare, Crime, and a Storm at Sea. Concluding with some Reflections upon Life in General and upon these Present Times in Particular.

Originally published in French as La forece de dire non in 2012.

Paperback edition of this major literary biography of H.G. Wells. 'An excellent biography: authoritative, comprehensive and crisply written' David Lodge.

Revised and updated edition of the book looking at Christie's 11 day disappearance in 1926.

A "song man" blinds his daughter to keep her from following her half-brother, who ran away due to the art's rigorous training. The girl forgives her father before his death, and through this act, she deepens her insight into the nature of human existence, and, as her father had insisted would happen, elevates the art of her p'ansori singing.

Suguro is an eminent Catholic novelist, respectably married and on the cusp of old age. So when a drunken woman approaches him at an awards ceremony claiming to know him from his regular visits to Tokyo's red-light district, she must surely be mistaken.

Cocteau's breakthrough novel on the horrors of World War I. Too young to fight, Thomas assumes a noble ancestry, adds a few extra years to his age, and becomes a soldier. In this guise, he meets the society star Princess de Bormes and her impressionable daughter Henriette. While the princess pursues charity work with the wounded, Henriette falls in love with Guillaume. However, Guillaume, resplendent in army uniform and issued with a shiny revolver, is lost like a child in a fantasy land of their own creation. At the novel's denouement, he clings to his imposture, but in mind, if not body, he has grasped the real meaning of war. This visionary novel is a "hymn to the cult of youth" in which World War I battlefields become an exaggerated spectacle where fiction and reality are inseparable.