LINDA GRANT

It's 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's life.The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness - in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales?From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, The Story of the Forest is about myths and memory and about how families adapt in order to survive. It is a story full of the humour and wisdom we have come to relish from this wonderful writer.Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Award Ceremony - 22 June 2023

In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.

Alix, arrogant, middle-aged and angry comes home to the derelict port of Liverpool as her mother lies dying. Irritably resigned to living alone for the rest of her life she suddenly finds herself erotically attracted to a stranger. Joseph is an American architect who has come to the city to build a hotel. Refusing to accept that his wife has left him or the trauma of a war he once fought in, the question is whether these survivors of the battles of the Seventies are meant for each other or not. And what happened to a factory in Dresden which long ago made the perfect face cream ...'Perhaps her most accessible novel to date ...Grant's prose is blunt, honest, yet often beautiful and bitingly funny. Equally comfortable discussing concepts of justice and grooming routinme, the voices Grant creates are striking and authentic. Her characters are irascible, witty, fierce, and full of the contradictions and blind spots that make them wholly human. This is a compelling and satisfying novel' Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room

The Second World War is over, a new decade is beginning but for an East End teenage brother and sister living on the edge of the law, life has been suspended. Sent away to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Kent to learn the way of the patient, they find themselves in the company of army and air force officers, a car salesman, a young university graduate, a mysterious German woman, a member of the aristocracy and an American merchant seaman. They discover that a cure is tantalisingly just out of reach and only by inciting wholesale rebellion can freedom be snatched

Evelyn Sert decide, en involuntaria imitación de millares de refugiados de todo el mundo que quieren empezar una vida nueva en un país nuevo, marcharse a Palestina, la tierra prometida. Luego de un breve y poco romántico paso por un kibutz, recala en Tel Aviv, una resplandeciente y cosmopolita ciudad sin pasado, en los caldeados años previos a la creación del Estado de Israel. Con una rara habilidad para los disfraces, Evelyn se hace pasar por la sufrida y cristiana esposa de un soldado siempre en servicio mientras recopila información sobre los residentes británicos de Tel Aviv para su novio, miembro de uno de los grupos radicales sionistas más violentos.Con esta novela, ganadora del premio Orange de ficción del año 2000, Linda Grant nos trae una historia sobre desplazamientos e identidades, sobre el idealismo y la practicidad, y sobre la oportunidad de librarnos de nuestro pasado en una sociedad que está por construir.«Sobresaliente». -The Times«Una novela rebosante de ideas: sobre el idealismo, la ruptura de los sueños y la lucha por pertenecer». -Guardian

'If you go back and look at your life there are certain scenes, acts, or maybe just incidents on which everything that follows seems to depend. If only you could narrate them, then you might be understood. I mean the part of yourself that you don't know how to explain.' In the early Seventies a glamorous and androgynous couple known collectively as Evie/Stevie appear out of nowhere on the isolated concrete campus of a new university. To a group of teenagers experimenting with radical ideas they seem blown back from the future, unsettling everything and uncovering covert desires. But the varnished patina of youth and flamboyant self-expression hides deep anxieties and hidden histories. For Adele, with the most to conceal, Evie/Stevie become a lifelong obsession, as she examines what happened on the night of her own twentieth birthday and her friends' complicity in their fate. A set of school exercise books might reveal everything, but they have been missing for nearly forty years. From summers in Cornwall to London in the twenty-first century, long after they have disappeared, Evie/Stevie go on challenging everyone's ideas of what their lives should turn out to be.

Alix, arrogant, middle-aged and angry comes home to the derelict port of Liverpool as her mother lies dying. Irritably resigned to living alone for the rest of her life she suddenly finds herself erotically attracted to a stranger. Joseph is an American architect who has come to the city to build a hotel. Refusing to accept that his wife has left him or the trauma of a war he once fought in, the question is whether these survivors of the battles of the Seventies are meant for each other or not. And what happened to a factory in Dresden which long ago made the perfect face cream ...'Perhaps her most accessible novel to date . Grant's prose is blunt, honest, yet often beautiful and bitingly funny. Equally comfortable discussing concepts of justice and grooming routinme, the voices Grant creates are striking and authentic. Her characters are irascible, witty, fierce, and full of the contradictions and blind spots that make them wholly human. This is a compelling and satisfying novel' Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room

It is April 1946. Evelyn Sert, 20 years old, a hairdresser from Soho, sails for Palestine, where Jewish refugees and idealists are gathering from across Europe to start a new life in a brand new country. In the glittering, cosmopolitan, Bauhaus city of Tel Aviv, anything seems possible - the new self, new Jew, new woman are all feasible. Evelyn, adept at disguises, reinvents herself as the bleached blonde Priscilla Jones. Immersed in a world of passionate idealism, she finds love, and with Johnny, her lover, finds herself at the heart of a very dangerous game.

Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, "The Clothes on Their Backs" is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all. Linda Grant was finalist of the Booker 2008 award.

'If you go back and look at your life there are certain scenes, acts, or maybe just incidents on which everything that follows seems to depend. If only you could narrate them, then you might be understood. I mean the part of yourself that you don't know how to explain.' In the early seventies, a glamorous and androgynous couple known as Evie/Stevie appear out of nowhere on the isolated concrete campus of a new university. To a group of teenagers experimenting with radical ideas, they seem blown back from the future, unsettling everything and uncovering covert desires. But their mesmerising flamboyant self-expression hides deep anxieties and hidden histories. For Adele, who also has something to conceal, Evie becomes an obsession - an obsession which becomes lifelong after the night of Adele's twentieth birthday party. What happened that evening and who was complicit are questions that have haunted Adele ever since. A set of school exercise books might reveal everything, but they have been missing for the past forty years. From summers in 1970s Cornwall to London in the twenty-first century, long after she has disappeared, Evie will go on challenging everyone's ideas of how their lives should turn out. With her hallmark humour, intelligence and boldness Linda Grant has written a powerful and captivating novel about secrets and the moments that shape our lives.

A brilliant novel about the London of today - a shifting, exciting, dangerous place where people search for the meaning of home. Peopled with wonderful characters and, as is usual for this author, a

Durante toda su infancia, Vivien Kovaks, una niña sensible, tímida y retraída, vive aislada tanto del pasado como del presente. Sus padres, emigrantes húngaros en una Inglaterra hostil, creen en que lo mejor es pasar inadvertidos hasta llegar a ser invisibles, y al mismo tiempo se niegan a hablarle a su hija del país que dejaron. Le ocultan, por ejemplo, su origen judío, y le ocultan también cuál es la verdadera historia de Sándor Kovaks, ese misterioso tío que se presenta una mañana con un traje impactante, un reloj de diamantes en la muñeca y una extravagante mujer del brazo. El padre de Vivien expulsa a su hermano con una violencia inaudita, y ahora Vivien quiere saber qué ocurrió. ¿Cuál es el verdadero motivo de la pelea entre su padre y su tío? ¿Y por qué Sándor Kovaks aparece retratado en los periódicos como un criminal inmisericorde? Al tiempo que crece y lucha por escapar de un hogar opresivo, Vivien va averiguando más cosas sobre la biografía de su misterioso tío, hasta que, inevitablemente, sus senderos se cruzarán. También va dándose cuenta de hasta qué punto la ropa que vestimos, y la personalidad que escogemos, definen nuestra manera de enfrentarnos al mundo. Contra el glamoroso trasfondo de Londres en la década de los setenta, La ropa que vestimos, finalista del premio Man Booker de ficción 2008, es una novela sobre la supervivencia, tanto la cotidiana como la heroica, y la historia de una mujer frente a las complicaciones y las traiciones que acompañan el deseo de vivir.