Granta Publications

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.

Not a Novel gathers together the best of Jenny Erpenbeck's non-fiction. Drawing from her 25 years of thinking and writing, the book plots a journey through the works and subjects that have inspired and influenced her. Written with the same clarity and insight that characterize her fiction, the pieces range from literary criticism and reflections on Germany's history, to the autobiographical essays where Erpenbeck forgoes the literary cloak to write from a deeply personal perspective about life and politics, hope and despair, and the role of the writer in grappling with these forces.Here we see one of the most searching of European writers reckoning with her country's divided past in all its complexity, and responding to the world today with insight, intelligence and humanity.

Compassionate, caring, green: this is how David Cameron presented himself before the election. Once in Downing Street, he threw off his disguise. The laid-back old-school Tory emerged as the leader of a party on a break-neck mission to fulfil Margaret Thatcher's vision. Polly Toynbee and David Walker, previously sharp dissectors of the Blair and Brown record, report that despite confusion and economic failure the Tories core commitment is unchanged. Looking in detail at the government's policies during their first two years in power, Toynbee and Walker warn in this lively analysis that by the next election the welfare state may be in irrecoverable ruins - unless the Tory mission to downsize and diminish the publish realm is brought down first by Cameron's incompetence.