They Were Counted (104 page)

Adrienne rose from the bed and walked slowly to the window. From far, far away she thought she could hear music, but it sounded like a funeral march or the sad songs that accompany the dead to their last resting place. Perhaps it was only the echo of some distant siren. Her heart throbbed, beating unevenly as if it were about to stop for ever.

Adrienne just stood there by the window, looking fixedly into a distance that for her did not exist. She never touched the
curtains
but just stood there, alone, staring into nothing, her
nightdress
in shreds and in front, where Balint had buried his head, it clung to her thighs wet with his tears, and cold to the touch, for from outside the open window the early morning breeze had just begun.

The voluminous folds of the fine white netting floated around her, veiling her face, her dishevelled, unruly hair, her naked shoulders, until she was entirely covered.

She might have been wrapped in a shroud …

Heir to Knole and a peerage, novelist, discerning critic and brilliant pianist, the intimate of Bloomsbury writers and painters, Edward Sackville-West was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Through diaries and previously unpublished letters, we see a life dogged a chronic ill-health and a masochistic psychological make-up.

‘Nobody can fail to respect the skill and industry which De-la-Noy has
devoted
to bringing Eddy Sackville-West back to life in this elegant and
sympathetic
biography’ –
Sunday
Times

American novelist Hopkins arrived in Tangier at the age of twenty-four and ended up spending almost two decades in Morocco, mixing with a wide cast of characters, Paul and Jane Bowles, William Burroughs, David Herbert and Malcolm Forbes among them.

‘Hopkins writes as powerfully of place as of people, capturing the steamy bustle of the Kasbah market and the awesome mystery of the Sahara’ – Michael Arditti,
Daily
Mail

The latest novel from the author of
Eastern
Exchange
is a light-hearted look at the barriers and frustrations in close attachments – especially those
doubtful
partnerships in which communication is entirely physical.

‘If there is one thing to bring out the candid in Haylock, it is the ins and outs of intimate intercourse’ –
The
Times

‘For those with a fascination for eccentric lives, Haylock’s book is a little gem, the record of an extraordinarily interesting life’

– Ian Buruma,
Sunday
Telegraph

A three-generational saga of a Sri Lankan family’s search for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and riven by
ethnic
wars.
Winner
of
the
Sagittarius
Prize 1998
and
shortlisted
for
the
Commonwealth
Writers
Prize
1998

‘Haunting … with an immense tenderness. The extraordinary poetic tact of this book makes it unforgettable’ – John Berger,
Guardian

A literary mystery set among secret Jews living in Lisbon in 1506 when,
during
Passover celebrations, some two thousand Jewish inhabitants were
murdered
in a pogrom.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
.

‘Remarkable erudition and compelling imagination, an American Umberto Eco’ – Francis King,
Spectator

Every night for twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, a man recently diagnosed with HIV writes a letter home to a friend. He describes not only the kaleidoscopic journey he has just made from Switzerland across northern Italy to Venice, but reflects on questions of mortality, seduction and the search for paradise.

‘Dessaix writes with great elegance, with passion, compassion, and sly wit. Literally a wonderful book’ – John Banville

‘This poetry collection reads like it’s been written by a sexually charged Philip Larkin. Both witty and scathing, it avoids the tender eroticism often employed when discussing sex and instead goes straight for the jugular’ –
D>tour
Magazine

In August 1960, a number of ill-assorted guests gather at a small hotel on the Danish island of Møn. Among them is Elisabeth Danziger, whose happy memories of growing up in a brilliant and gifted family are overshadowed by darker ones, over which she struggles to achieve control.

‘A memorable and poignant novel made all the more heartbreaking by the quiet dignity of its central character and the restraint of its telling’ – Shena Mackay

‘It is hard to pinpoint what makes these stories so unsettling. Their worlds – some border territory between genteel suburbia and dreamland – are
imagined
with an eerie thoroughness. The inhabitants are all out of kilter, and terrifyingly fragile; spinsterish middle-agers paralysed by sexual fear;
anxious
children in the centre of parental power games. Russell Taylor’s abrupt, elegantly engineered anticlimaxes leave the reader with the
disquieting
feeling of waiting for the other shoe to fall’ – Sam Leith,
Observer

A compelling recreation of the life of Isabelle Eberhardt.

‘A tantalizing enigma, Berger and Bielski’s filmic approach is appropriate to her literally dramatic life, and the symmetry of the imagery is an
indication
of the artistry of this work’ –
Observer

Lovers want to know the truth, but they do not always want to tell it. For some East Germans, the fall of Communism was like the end of a long and painful love affair; free to tell the truth at last, they found they no longer wanted to hear it.

‘When Ali’s imagination goes wild he is superb’ –
New
Statesman

For almost six decades Brodrick Haldane moved among the rich and the famous, photographing everybody who was anybody, including the Queen Mother, Bernard Shaw, the Aga Khan and Margaret, Duchess of Argyll.
Time
Exposure
is a witty and charming portrait of an age peopled by
extraordinary
characters.

‘The original society paparazzo, snapping the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson in exile, Charlie Chaplin and a youthful JFK’ –
Sunday
Times

Karl is a handsome adolescent in Vienna between the wars. He has every
advantage
, but all is not as it seems in a situation full of political tensions and erotic undercurrents.

‘An absorbing read’ – Sebastian Beaumont,
Gay
Times

The last work of new fiction Acker published before her death from breast cancer in late 1997,
Eurydice
is Acker’s response to her diagnosis. Its ‘raw truth is shot through with surprising lyricism and tenderness’ –
Observer.
The collection also includes Acker classics such as ‘Lust’, ‘Algeria’ and ‘
Immoral
’, on the banning in Germany of
Blood
and
Guts
in
High
School.

‘Kathy Acker’s writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame. Acker is a landmark writer’ – Jeanette Winterson

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. Write for a free catalogue.

C
ount Miklós Bánffy
(1873–1950) was variously a diplomat, MP and foreign minister in 1921–22 when he signed the peace treaty with the United States and obtained Hungary’s admission to the League of Nations. He was responsible for organising the last Habsburg coronation, that of King Karl in 1916. His famous
Transylvanian Trilogy,
They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided
was first published in Budapest in the 1930s.