BLAKE MORRISON

Intimate and disconcerting, compelling and comic, an anatomy of the way things are, ISouth of the River/I is the big British novel for our times - and a tour de force. It opens on the 'new dawn' of Labour's election victory in 1997, and ends five years later. But this is not so much 'state of the nation' as state of our souls, marriages, families, hopes and careers - a sharp and sexy portrait of a dysfunctional group of characters, all different yet connected. There's Nat, failed dramatist and reluctant lecturer, falling for a younger woman; Anthea, an eco-friendly lost soul obesessed with foxes; Libby, hardworking mother and advertising executive, the family breadwinner; Harry, Nat's friend and ex-pupil, a journalist on a local paper, with a guilty secret of his own; and Jack, Nat's blimpish but unexpectedly poignant uncle, who lives for fox-hunting, and runs a failing engineering company in East Anglia. Beneath the bright familiar world of Blair's Britain, there's a dark undertow of political and personal disillusion, of mythologies and urban myths that circle round our apparently comfortable lives. South of the River, a tale of five people, two rivers, and many Englands, metropolitan and rural, black and white, is gloriously readable and brimming with art and life.

First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's And When Did You Last SeeYour Father? is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a bestseller, and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. This new edition includes a new afterword by the author. And When Did You Last See Your Father? won the Waterstone's/Volvo/Esquire Award for Non-Fiction and the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1993.

En torno al año 1400, en una Europa castigada por la peste y poblada de ricos burgueses, hijas concupiscentes y aprendices astutos, nació Gutenberg, el hombre que inventó la máquina herética destinada a cambiar el curso de la historia: la imprenta. Apasionado de las maquinas, simpatico y visionario timador, Gutenberg lo aposto todo dinero, honores, y el amor de una mujer- por llevar adelante su sueño.

Johann Gutenberg, maestro impresor, simpático y visionario timador, dicta su «testamento» o «justificación» a un joven amanuense a quien su invento ha dejado sin trabajo. Sus palabras conjuran la vistosa Europa del siglo XV, castigada por la peste: una Europa de ricos burgueses, hijas concupiscentes, aprendices astutos, amanuenses descuidados y artesanos pioneros del oficio de imprimir. Sobre todos ellos destaca la inquietante figura de Gutenberg, un hombre que lo apostó todo por el invento más importante del pasado milenio.