A Small Revolution in Germany is about growing up, or refusing to accept what growing up means; it's about the small dishonest pacts that people make with their own futures; and it's about the rare and joyous refusal to be disillusioned. Everyone remembers what it's like to be seventeen. The conversations you have; the ideas that burst on you; the kiss that transforms you. And then you grow up, and make a deal with adulthood. A Small Revolution in Germany is about that rapturous moment when ideas, and ideals, and passion crash over one boy's head. And what happens in the decades afterwards? When you see the overwhelming truth when you are seventeen, why should you ever abandon that truth? Spike is brought into a small, clever group of friends, bursting with a passion for ideas, and the wish to change the world. They smash up political meetings; they paint slogans on walls; they long for armed revolution; they argue, exuberantly, until dawn. In the years to follow, they all change...

'A brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers' William Boyd 'An imaginative tour de force' Mick Herron 'Masterful' Telegraph The new novel from the Booker shortlisted author of The Northern Clemency An order is issued. A population may not meet, or touch or speak to each other. They stay inside, and the reality of a few streets in a capital city emerges. An underground river is discovered; an urban grove of pomeloes emerges. The imagination reaches out, and makes sense of the world. By the sea, two men walk into a future of uncertain violence. There is time now to see the human dramas within a hundred yards (an abduction, a quiet breakdown, an outbreak of violence, a young mind beginning to stretch itself); to wait for the weather to change; to understand that what lies underneath this part of the city are seasonally wet pastures and woodlands. Written in four parts, To Battersea Park explores the strata and...

From the Man Booker–short-listed author of The Northern Clemency, a family and a nation—Bangladesh—are forged through storytelling, conversation, jokes, feuds, blood, songs, bravery, and sacrificeIn late 1970 a boy named Saadi is born into a large, defiantly Bengali family in eastern Pakistan. Months later the country splits in two, in what will become one of the most ferocious twentieth-century civil wars. Saadi tells the story of his childhood and of the ingenious ways his family survived the violence and conflicts: from his aunts stuffing him endlessly with sweets to stop marauding soldiers from hearing him cry, to street games based on American television shows; from the basement compartment his grandfather built to hide his treasured books, pictures, and music until after the war, to the daily gossip about each and every one of the relatives, servants, and neighbors. Scenes from Early Life is a beautifully detailed novel of profound empathy—an attempt to capture the collective memory of a family and a country. At once heartbreaking and surprisingly funny, Scenes from Early Life is based on the life of Philip Hensher’s husband, and as such it is at once a memoir, a novel, and a history. As this remarkable writer brings the past to life, we come to feel, vividly and viscerally, that Saadi’s family—and its struggles and triumphs—are our own. ReviewPraise for* Scenes from Early Life "Scenes from Early Life is a triumph, an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative virtuosity. It deserves to be garlanded with many prizes, and nowhere more so than in the Indian subcontinent." —Amitav Ghosh, author of River of Smoke and Sea of Poppies "[Hensher] does for Bangladesh what Salman Rushdie did for India with Midnight’s Children." —Phil Baker, The Sunday Times *(London) "Hensher has created a greater thing than just a record of childhood, or war. It probably isn’t Zaved’s story anymore, but it’s great just the same." —Bella Bathurst, *The Observer "One of the most delightful and engaging descriptions of family life to have been published for many years . . . Saturated with gentleness, humour and affection." —Amanda Craig, The Independent on Sunday "Hensher proves himself a literary god of small things, from chillies drying on [Saadi’s] grandfather’s balcony to the oppressive clutter of Saadi’s parents’ first marital home . . . As this book movingly shows, appropriation is sometimes an act of love." —Adrian Turpin, Financial Times "A richly depicted saga of childhood joys and sorrows . . . This is [Hensher’s] most purely pleasurable novel to date." —Michael Arditti, The Daily Mail *"A book suffused with tenderness, yet altogether free from sentimentality. One feels the writing has been a labour of love. Perhaps this is why the experience of reading it is so delightful." —Allan Massie, The ScotsmanAbout the AuthorPhilip Hensher is a columnist for The Independent, an arts critic for The Spectator, and one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. He has written one collection of short stories, a book on handwriting called The Missing Ink, and eight novels, including The Mulberry Empire, King of the Badgers, and The Northern Clemency, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in South London and Geneva.

The things history will do at the bidding of love On a warm Sunday afternoon, Nazia and Sharif are preparing for a family barbecue. They are in the house in Sheffield that will do for the rest of their lives. In the garden next door is a retired doctor, whose four children have long since left home. When the shadow of death passes over Nazia and Sharif's party, Doctor Spinster's actions are going to bring the two families together, for decades to come. The Friendly Ones is about two families. In it, people with very different histories can fit together, and redeem each other. One is a large and loosely connected family who have come to England from the subcontinent in fits and starts, brought to England by education, and economic possibilities. Or driven away from their native country by war, murder, crime and brutal oppression – things their new neighbours know nothing about. At the heart of their story is betrayal and public shame. The secret wound that overshadows the...

Writing by hand is something that has shaped and revealed our humanity for thousands of years. In a world where people are increasingly swapping pens, letters and love-notes for typing text messages with their thumbs, 'The Missing Ink' is itself a love le

TELEGRAPH, INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015Hilarious, exuberant, subtle, tender, brutal, spectacular, and above all unexpected: these two extraordinary volumes contain the limitless possibilities of the British short story.This is the first anthology capacious enough to celebrate the full diversity and energy of its writers, subjects and tones. The most famous authors are here, and many others, including some magnificent stories never republished since their first appearance in magazines and periodicals. The Penguin Book of the British Short Story has a permanent authority, and will be reached for year in and year out.This volume takes the story from its origins with Defoe, Swift and Fielding to the 'golden age' of the fin de siècle and Edwardian period. Edited and with an introduction by Philip Hensher, the award-winning novelist, critic and journalist.

The bestselling novel from the Man Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Northern Clemency and King of the Badgers. 'The Mulberry Empire' is a seemingly straightforward historical novel that recounts an episode in the Great Game in central Asia – the courtship, betrayal and invasion of Afghanistan in the 1830s by the emissaries of Her Majesty's Empire, which is followed by the bloody and summary expulsion of the Brits from Kabul following an Afghani insurrection (shades of the Soviet Union's final imperial fling in the very same country in the 1980s). The novel has at its heart the encounter between West and East as embodied in the likeable, complex relationship between Alexander Burnes, leader of the initial British expeditionary party, and the wily, cultured Afghani ruler, the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan. For those who enjoyed William Dalrymple's 'Return of a King', 'The Mulberry Empire' is a must-read.

Hilarious, exuberant, subtle, tender, brutal, spectacular, and above all unexpected: these two extraordinary volumes contain the limitless possibilities of the British short story.This is the first anthology capacious enough to celebrate the full diversity and energy of its writers, subjects and tones. The most famous authors are here, and many others, including some magnificent stories never republished since their first appearance in magazines and periodicals. The Penguin Book of the British Short Story has a permanent authority, and will be reached for year in and year out.This volume takes the story from the 1920s to the present day.Edited and with an introduction by Philip Hensher, the award-winning novelist, critic and journalist.

The new novel from Booker Prize-shortlisted Philip Hensher – his most ambitious and daring novel yet. In this astonishing novel, various narrative strands are drawn together into a compelling symphonic whole. In a third-century desert settlement on the fringes of the Roman Empire, a new wife becomes fascinated by a cult being persecuted by the Emperor Diocletian. In 1922, Christian, a young artist, travels to Weimar to begin his studies at the Bauhaus, the avant-garde confronting conservative elements around it. With postwar Germany in turmoil, while the Bauhaus attempt to explore radical ways of thinking and living, Christian finds that love will change him forever. And in 1970s London Duncan uses his inheritance to establish the country's first gay bookshop, whatever the neighbours think and despite persecution from the police. Delving deep into the human spirit to explore connections between love, sanctity, commitment and virtue, Philip Hensher takes as his subject small groups...

After the success of The Northern Clemency, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us another slice of contemporary life, this time the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of a small English town. After the success of The Mulberry Empire and The Northern Clemency, which was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of the small English town of Handsmouth. Usually a quiet and undisturbed place situated on an estuary, Handsmouth becomes the centre of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. The town fills with journalists and television crews, who latch onto the public's fearful suspicions that the missing girl, the daughter of one of the town's working-class families, was abducted. This tragic event serves to expose the range of segregated existences in the town, as spectrums of class, wealth and lifestyle are blurred in the investigation. Behind Handsmouth's...