Peter and Natasha's journey starts in drizzle and wind as they scale Croagh Patrick, Ireland's Holy Mountain in Mayo, before setting off immediately afterwards for the Pyrenees in France. There, they start walking the Camino, the Way of St James, to Santiago de Compostela. It is a grueling trek over three mountain ranges; through fields and valleys, villages, towns and cities, to the lush countryside and forests of Galicia, and eventually to Finisterre, the pagan end of the earth. Along the way, they meet a motley collection of other pilgrims with whom they laugh, cry and above all have fun amid moments of high drama, exhilaration and sometimes exhaustion. They run with the bulls and parade in a fiesta; they pray with the faithful, and explore the Camino's rich Christian and pagan history; they stay in its sometimes Spartan pilgrim hostels and appreciate the richness of living simply. "A lovely book for those who have done the Camino, or like me, are thinking of doing it."--The Dubliner. "This is a travel book, certainly, but it is much much, more than that. It's about family and friendship and camaraderie, and it is, in the end, a wonderfully warm story about the bond between a loving adventurous father and his daughter ready to embrace the world."-The Irish Mail on Sunday.

    In a prison in the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela, an artist sketches the famous porch of the cathedral, the Portico da Gloria. He uses a carpenter's pencil. But instead of reproducing the sculptured faces of the prophets and elders, he draws the faces of his fellow Republican prisoners.Many years later in post-Franco Spain, a survivor of that period, Doctor Daniel da Barca, returns from exile to his native Galicia, and the threads of past memories begin to be woven together. This poetic and moving novel conveys the horror and savagery of the tragedy that divided Spain, and the experiences of the men and women who lived through it. Yet in the process, it also relates one of the most beautiful love stories imaginable.

    The Invincible Armada has been defeated. The shadow of the Inquisition looms large. And the Thirty Years' War rages on in Flanders. When a courageous soldier of this war, Captain Diego Alatriste, is forced to retire after being wounded in battle, he returns home to live the comparatively tame - though hardly quiet - life of a swordsman-for-hire. In this dangerous city where a thrust of steel settles all matters, there is no stronger blade than Alatriste's." The captain is approached with an offer of work that involves giving a scare to some strangers soon to arrive in Madrid. But on the night of the attack, it becomes clear that these aren't ordinary travelers - and that someone is out for their blood. What happens next is the first in a series of riveting twists, with implications that will reverberate throughout the courts of Europe

    In '57 the publication of Pagan Spain, marked a profound change in his literary & intellectual life, reflecting a style more suitable for polemic than travel writing. Indeed, as Pagan Spain portrays midcentury Spain as a country of tragic beauty, political oppression, & contradictions, he amalgamates at once polemic, travel narrative, history & journalistic essay. He combines, as well, 1st-person narrative, eyewitness reporting, commentary, anecdotes, vignettes & dramatic monologue. At the time this book was originally published, the Spanish, despite a Catholic heritage, were shown as embracing a primitive, primeval faith. Expanding his comments on this paradox, he fashions a candid portrait of a country scarred by civil war & with an excoriating condemnation of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. In this opinionated travelog he sees himself as a humanist & reporter, a nonpartisan freedom fighter who's ceaselessly probing, tracing, analyzing & denouncing the signs of evil he associates with white patriarchy & Western imperialism. Pagan Spain, less a journalistic account of a people & an exotic locale than it's a sociological critique of a corrupt system of government, is his only nonfiction book on the subject of a European country. It reveals the striking contradictions within himself as well as within Spain. As a black man in the 50s he castigates the West for its colonialism & imperialism, while as an intellectual he embraces the secular humanism of Western Civilization. His conflicted feelings about the West are perfectly suited to his analysis of Spain, a country allied with the West but also removed from it. The book is a daring portrait of a country in turmoil. The introduction by Faith Berry puts Pagan Spain in context with the trajectory of his philosophical thought. She notes how his dissatisfaction with the Franco government was, in part, the result of his disillusionment with the Communist Party, of which he had been a member. Richard Wright wrote Native Son, Uncle Tom's Children, Black Boy, The Color Curtain etc. Faith Berry has written Langston Hughes: Before & Beyond Harlem & is the editor of A Scholar's Conscience: Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-77 & of From Bondage to Liberation: Writings by & about Afro-Americans from 1700 to the Present.

    When British anthropologist Nigel Barley set up home among the Dowayo people in northern Cameroon, he knew how fieldwork should be conducted. Unfortunately, nobody had told the Dowayo. His compulsive, witty account of first fieldwork offers a wonderfully inspiring introduction to the real life of a cultural anthropologist doing research in a Third World area. Both touching and hilarious, Barley's unconventional story—in which he survived boredom, hostility, disaster, and illness—addresses many critical issues in anthropology and in fieldwork.

    Ottavia Salina is called upon by the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church to decipher the scars found on an Ethiopian man's corpse: seven crosses and seven Greek letters.The markings, symbolizing the Seven Deadly Sins, are part of an elaborate initiation ritual for the Staurofilakes, the clandestine brotherhood hiding the True Cross for centuries, headed by a secretive figure called Cato.With the help of a member of the Swiss Guard and a renowned archaeologist, Dr. Salina uncovers the connection between the brotherhood and Dante's Divine Comedy, and races across the globe to Christianity's ancient capitals. Together, they will face challenges that will put their faith—and their very lives—to the ultimate test.

    Her father and his brother worked in the colony of Fernando Po, but these letters tell a different story than the tales of life in Africa that made it to the dinner table. Clarence has no idea what really went on during their time at the cocoa plantations—or why no one in her family has ever returned to the island in all the years since. But the letters suggest that a great love story is buried beneath the years of silence.Setting out from her home in Spain’s snowy mountains, Clarence makes the same journey across the sea that her uncle and father traveled before her. There, she unlocks the painful secrets her family has hidden in the rich African soil. But what she discovers may also be the key to awakening her own listless heart.

    Don Quixote, errant knight and sane madman, with the company of his faithful squire and wise fool, Sancho Panza, together roam the world and haunt readers' imaginations as they have for nearly four hundred years.

    Recording the events and observations of a journey across the length and breadth of the country that he loves dearly, this travelogue brings Portugal to life as only a writer of Saramago's brilliance can. Forfeiting sources of information such as tourist guides and road maps, he scours the country with the eyes and ears of an observer fascinated by the ancient myths and history of his people. Whether an inaccessible medieval fortress set on a cliff, a wayside chapel thick with cobwebs, or a grand mansion in the city, the extraordinary places of this land come alive with the kings, warriors, painters, explorers, writers, saints, and sinners who have fed its rich store of myth and history. Always meticulously attentive to those elements of ancient Portugal that persist today, he examines the country in its current period of rapid transition and growth.Infused with the tenderness and intelligence that have become familiar to his readers, Saramago's Journey to Portugal is an ode of love for a country and its rich traditions.About the AuthorJosé Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922. His work includes plays, poetry, short stories, nonfiction, and seven novels, including Baltasar and Blimunda and The History of the Seige of Lisbon. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Amanda Hopkinson translates contemporary literature, mainly from Latin America, and reviews for leading British newspapers.Nick Caistor, journalist and producer of BBC programs, has translated the work of several authors including Eduardo Mendoza and Juan Carlos Onetti.

    This remarkable book is his odyssey, first written in 1542 as an official report to the king of Spain under the title La Relacion.

    Never far from his closest companion—a stray mule named Valentina whom he is determined to keep for himself after the war—Juan engages in the low-brow drinking escapades, long shots at love, and an otherwise droning existence shared by his compatriots.As he lies, cheats, and steals to protect Valentina during his improbable odyssey home, Juan unwittingly “fights” for both sides—and becomes a reluctant and unlikely hero of the people, exploited by opportunistic journalists desperately trying to convince the Spanish public that the war is under control, when it is anything but….

    Its history reads like a history of pleasure itself. It is also a story of invasions and migrations, of artists and conmen, of drop-outs and love-ins. The Carthaginians established a cult to their goddess of sex there, and named the island after Bez, their god of dance. Roman centurions in need of a bit of down time between campaigns would go to Ibiza to get their kicks. And over the centuries, cultures around the Med have used the island either as a playground or a dump for the kind of people who didn't quite fit in back home, but who you'd probably quite like to meet at a party...This is the history of Ibiza, the fantasy island, framed by one long, golden summer where anything can happen - and it usually does.

    Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town. Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo’s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo’s favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game’s consequences may be all too real. Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño’s papers after his death, The Third Reich is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own—and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces The Savage Detectives and 2666.

    In 1918, when Pla was in Barcelona studying law, the Spanish flu broke out, the university shut down, and he went home to his parents in coastal Palafrugell. Aspiring to be a writer, not a lawyer, he resolved to hone his style by keeping a journal. In it he wrote about his family, local characters, visits to cafés; the quips, quarrels, ambitions, and amours of his friends; writers he liked and writers he didn’t; and the long contemplative walks he would take in the countryside under magnificent skies. Returning to Barcelona to complete his studies, Pla kept up his diary, scrutinizing life in the big city with the same unflagging zest and humor.Pla, one of the great Catalan writers, held on to this youthful journal for close to fifty years, reworking and adding to it, until he finally published The Gray Notebook as both the first volume and the capstone of his collected works. It is a beautiful, entrancing, delightful book—at once a distillation of the spirit of youth and the work of a lifetime.

    He moves to his uncle Manuel’s country estate in the small town of Mágina to write his thesis on an old friend of Manuel’s, an obscure republican poet named Jacinto Solana.The country house is full of traces of the poet—notes, photographs, journals—and Minaya soon discovers that, thirty years earlier, during the Spanish Civil War, both his uncle and Solana were in love with the same woman, the beautiful, unsettling Mariana. Engaged to Manuel, she was shot in the attic of the house on her wedding night. With the aid of Inés, a maid, Minaya begins to search for Solana’s lost masterpiece, a novel called Beatus Ille. Looking for a book, he unravels a crime.