A radical exploration of the power and public (mis)representation of women's bodies, from ancient mysteries to the present day.

Wild and strange stories have been told about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first creation figure, Mother Earth, fell out of popular cultural history and Christianity introduced the birth of woman, Eve, from a crooked rib. Ranging from the empowering to the absurd, ancient tales about the female figure and gendered body parts have not only survived the twenty-first century but continue to influence modern discourse.

The Shrinking Goddess brings together these myths about the female form and traces subsequent male efforts to 'tame' it. Mineke Schipper examines how women's bodies have been represented since records began - the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE - and around the world, from the so-called island of menstruating men in Papua New Guinea to the Japanese supermarkets and European festivals where 'breast puddings' are still considered delicacies. Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power.

The Shrinking Goddess will appeal to readers of Mary Beard, Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Audre Lorde and Marina Warner

The most beautiful love story in the world.--Louis Aragon

The Second World War is raging, and Jamilia's husband is off fighting at the front. Accompanied by Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who was wounded on the battlefield, Jamilia spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to the train station in their village in the Caucasus.

Spurning men's advances and wincing at the dispassionate letters she receives from her husband, Jamilia falls helplessly in love with the mysterious Daniyar in this heartbreakingly beautiful tale.

A classic from the award-winning Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov.

Literary Prozac.--Cosmopolitan

Eduardo Mendoza is one of contemporary Spain's most important writers.--The New York Times Book Review

An accomplished literary novelist who knows how to entertain.--Kirkus Reviews

A shape-shifting extraterrestrial named Gurb has assumed the form of Madonna and disappeared in Barcelona's back streets. His hapless commander, desperately trying to find him, records the daily pleasures, dangers, and absurdities of our fragile world, while munching his way through enormous quantities of churros. No stone is left unturned in the search for his old pal Gurb.

Will Barcelona survive this alien invasion? Will the captain ever find his subordinate? Are there enough churros in Barcelona to satisfy his intergalactic appetite?

Eduardo Mendoza was born in 1943 in Barcelona. He spent some years in New York working as an interpreter for the United Nations before returning to his native city. His other novels include The Truth About the Savolta Case, The City of Marvels, and The Year of the Flood.

A true story of human desperation, shattering in its impact.--Tennessee Williams

Driven by famine from their home in the Rif, Mohamed's family walks to Tangiers in search of a better life. But his father is unable to find work and grows violent. Mohamed learns how to charm and steal. During a short spell in a filthy Moroccan jail, a fellow inmate kindles his life-altering love of poetry.

The distinguished writer Paul Bowles, perhaps best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky, collaborated closely with Mohamed Choukri on the translation of For Bread Alone, and penned the introduction.

Eduardo Mendoza is one of contemporary Spain's most important writers.--The New York Times Book Review

Wonderfully inventive and hilarious.--Guardian

Released from an asylum to help with a police enquiry, the quick-witted and foul-smelling narrator delves deep into the underworld of 1970s Barcelona to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl from a convent school, aided only by his prostitute sister Mercedes.

Eduardo Mendoza was born in 1943 in Barcelona. He spent some years in New York, where he worked at the United Nations as an interpreter. His other novels include No Word From Gurb, published by Telegram in 2007.

A humane, richly rewarding read.--Vogue

...A treasure for Western readers who want to familiarize themselves with the complexities of both Lebanese and Palestinian societies as war zones. The stories also constitute an excellent resource for teachers who are struggling to find material that is not one-dimensional in its presentation of Arab women.-Hala Khamis Nassar, Yale University, in Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

These fascinating and diverse stories reflect the everyday concerns of Palestinians living under occupation. Writers who were children during the first intifada appear alongside those who remember the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war.

In this volume, Palestinian women offer compassionate, often critical, insight into their society in times of hardship and turmoil, yet look beyond to the warmth of human relations and the hope that better times will come.

Jo Glanville is a journalist and radio producer. She has made a number of well-received documentaries about the Middle East and has contributed to many newspapers and magazines on the subject.

A Central European classic to be discovered and relished.--Eva Hoffman

A stunning novel. Funny, nightmarish and jubilant.--Libération

Although it took almost 40 years for Metropole to be translated into English, the book holds up well. In the same way that Kafka becomes relevant again every time you renew your driver's license, Karinthy captures that enduring, horrifying and exhilarating state of being at the mercy of an unfamiliar land.--Jessa Crispin for NPR

I don't know when I've read a more perfect novel-a dynamically helpless hero (in the line of Kafka), and a gorgeous spiral of action, nothing spare, nothing wrong, inventive and without artifice.--Michael Hoffman in TLS Books of the Year 2009

Budai finds himself in a strange city where he can't understand a word anyone says. One claustrophobic day blurs into another as he desperately struggles to survive in this vastly overpopulated metropolis where there are as many languages as there are people.

Metropole is a suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic, and a vision of hell unlike any previously imagined.

Ferenc Karinthy was born in Budapest in 1921. He was a translator and editor, as well as an award-winning novelist, playwright, and journalist.

Choukri is a powerful teller of stories. His telling of oppression is vivid and remarkable.--Morning Star

The story of Mohamed Choukri's life is continued in the sequel to For Bread Alone. In his early twenties, Choukri takes the momentous decision to learn to read and write. When not at school he hangs out in caf s, drinking and smoking kif. Some nights he sleeps in a dosshouse, but mostly he sleeps in mosques or on the street, while local prostitutes take him home, providing some human solace.

Mohamed Choukri is one of North Africa's most controversial and widely read authors.

'Nobody knows how much I owe that man', Primo Levi said of the bricklayer who saved his life at Auschwitz. 'I could never repay him.' Levi was referring to Lorenzo Perrone, who - at great personal risk - smuggled food, letters and clothing to Levi and other prisoners. The soup might contain sparrows' wings, prune stones, or even fragments of pulped newspaper, but it provided Levi with the 500 extra calories he needed to survive each day. Perrone said nothing as he left the mess tin by a half-constructed brick wall.

In A Man of Few Words, Carlo Greppi pieces together Levi's saviour, a near-destitute labourer with minimal formal education. Despite their stark differences, Levi and Perrone's friendship survived the Holocaust and continued until Perrone's tragic death. Levi never forgot Perrone. As his friend withdrew from the world, Levi tried persistently to preserve the memory of this man of few words who had saved his life, but who left few traces of his own behind.

Compassionate, worldly and prescient, Greppi brings to light a universal story about an individual who kept hope alive in one of the darkest times and places known to man.

Altun's prose has a dreamlike urgency--John Ashbery

Fighting the Ottoman invaders in Constantinople, Emperor Constantine XI was killed--his body never found.

Legend has it that he escaped in a Genoese ship, cheating certain death at the hands of the Turks and earning himself the title of Immortal Emperor.

Five centuries after his disappearance, three mysterious men contact a young professor living in Istanbul. Members of a secret sect, they have guarded the Immortal Emperor's will for generations. They tell him that he is the next emperor in line and that in order to take possession of his fortune he must carry out his ancestor's last wishes.

What follows is his journey to the heart of a mystery of epic historical significance.

Selçuk Altun was born in Artvin, Turkey in 1950. He is a retired banking executive, a bibliophile and philanthropist. His novels, Songs My Mother Never Taught Me and Many and Many a Year Ago, were listed amongst the top one hundred translated crime fiction by the International Association of Crime Writers. He lives in Istanbul, Turkey.

The history of an Indian royal family's fall from power in the age of the British Empire.

The Nawab Nazim was born into one of India's most powerful royal families, whose kingdom was three times the size of Great Britain. However, seen as a threat by the British authorities, he was forced to abdicate in 1880, his titles permanently abolished. The Nawab's change in fortune marked the end of an era in India.

The Last Prince of Bengal tells the true story of the Nawab and his family as they sought by turns to befriend, settle in and eventually escape Britain. From glamourous receptions with Queen Victoria to a scandalous marriage with an English chambermaid; and from Bengal tiger hunts to sheep farming in the harsh Australian outback, Lyn Innes recounts her ancestors' extraordinary journey from royalty to relative anonymity.

Visiting the extremes of British rule in the age of empire, this is the compelling and intimate story of one family and their place in the defining moments of recent Indian, British and Australian history.

These are the Faroe Islands as they were some fifty years ago: sea-washed and remote, with one generation still tied to the sea for sustenance, and a younger generation turning toward commerce and clerical work in the towns.

At the post-hunt whale-meat auction, Ketil enthusiastically bids for more meat than he can afford. Thus when Ketil is seventy, he and his wife struggle to repay their debt.

He in Br (1901-1987), novelist and translator, was considered the most important Faroese writer of his generation and is known for his fresh and ironic style.

A marvelously affecting memoir of the war in Lebanon: perfectly pitched and intensely evocative, and all the more powerful for being seen through the eyes of a child.--William Boyd

Delicate and unforgettable.--ELLE

One of the most talented francophone writers of his generation.--Le Monde

All wars are alike. What I experienced in Lebanon, others experienced in France, in Spain, in Yugoslavia, or elsewhere. Yes, all wars are alike, because while weapons change, the men who wage and are subjected to war do not in the least.

Alexandre was eight when Lebanon erupted into a bloody and brutal conflict; he was twenty-three when the guns at last fell silent. After seven years of voluntary exile spent clearing his mind of the unbearable nightmare of civil war, he is now back amongst his family and friends, and the past is quickly catching up with him.

As he reacquaints himself with his bullet-riddled city, Alexandre is haunted by vivid memories, which he sets down with extraordinary imagination and humor.

Part of a successful series that showcases women's writing from around the world.

Indian women's stories have been handed down from generation to generation, enriched and embroidered along the way. This collection reflects the vast and complex cultures of India, through British colonial rule and Partition to the present day.

Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house. Her publications include the award-winning The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India--a magnificent and necessary book, according to Salman Rushdie.

Praise for Songs My Mother Never Taught Me:

A deft, zinging whodunnit which is also a metaphysical puzzle worthy of the Oulipo group. Altun's prose has a dreamlike urgency; his novel is a major achievement.--John Ashbery

This intelligent thriller from Altun, his first to be published in the U.S., nicely evokes modern Istanbul. . . . The lean prose and deft pacing make this more than a routine revenge tale.'--Publishers Weekly

Kemal's friend mysteriously disappears, leaving him a generous allowance and the use of his large house.

He discovers that his new dwelling involves an inheritance of $1.3 million, and a Russian nobleman's missing son. Kemal embarks on a missing person case that will bring chaos and romance to his life.

Clues lead him from Istanbul to Buenos Aires, Boston, and eventually Baltimore, where Kemal visits the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. There in the museum is a poster announcing the Nevar Foundation's offer of $200,000 to the winner of a first novel competition.

Kemal buys paper and a pen. He has decided to enter the Nevar competition with his first mystery novel, called Many and Many a Year Ago.

Sel uk Altun was born in Artvin, Turkey, in 1950. Telegram published Songs My Mother Never Taught Me in 2008. He lives in Istanbul and is a retired banking executive and bibliophile.

This delightful book provides readers a key to more than one secret room of Borges's magical worlds.--Mahmoud Darwish

Alberto Manguel is to reading what Casanova was to sex.--Scotland on Sunday

His stories about Borges . . . are] wrapped in luminous poetry.--The Toronto Star

Winner of the 2003 Prix du livre en Poitou-Charentes.

In 1964, in Buenos Aires, a blind writer in his sixties approached a sixteen-year-old bookstore clerk and asked if he would be interested in a part-time job reading aloud. The writer was Jorge Luis Borges, one of the world's finest literary minds; the boy was Alberto Manguel, who was later to become an internationally acclaimed author and bibliophile.

Manguel's reflections are part memoir, part biography, and all celebration of the living quality of literature. A moving portrait of an enigmatic genius, replete with deep insight into Borges and the writers he most admired.

Altun offers us three delights for the price of one: a brilliantly edgy, witty thriller that rivals Highsmith; a metaphysical puzzle that Borges would be proud to call his own; and a tale of two assassins that conveys, better than any other novel I have read, the way that money talks in Istanbul.--Maureen Freely

A deft, zinging whodunnit which is also a metaphysical puzzle worthy of the Oulipo group. Altun's prose has a dreamlike urgency; his novel is a major achievement.--John Ashbery

After the death of his overbearing mother, the privileged Arda reclines in his wealth, reflecting on his young life and on the life of his father, the famous mathematician Mürsel Ergenekon, who was murdered on Arda's fourteenth birthday. While on the other side of the city, your humble servant Bedirhan has decided to pack in his ten-year career as an assassin.

Their two lives become intrinsically bound in this remarkable thriller that takes us through the streets of Istanbul. We learn that Bedirhan in fact killed Arda's father, and that they share more in common than he or we could imagine.

Meanwhile, Selçuk Altun, a former family friend, is playing a deadly game, providing Arda with clues to track down his father's killer.

Selçuk Altun was born in Artvin, Turkey, in 1950. He lives in Istanbul, and Songs My Mother Never Taught Me is his fourth novel to be published in Turkish. He is a retired banking executive and a bibliophile.

A lovely, strange and very moving novel. The colours and shape develop as you read while the couple's mutual understanding moves forward and upward over the years like two branches of blossom meeting at the top of the tree.--Ruth Padel

Usman and Lydia meet in postwar London and fall in love. But as the years flit by, Usman feels a growing distance between them. When he realizes that he hasn't noticed the buds of the gulmohar tree unfurl, he understands that he has lost sight of his love for his wife.

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in his teens. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Set in the near future, The Ice People imagines an ice age enveloping the Northern Hemisphere. It is Africa's relative warmth that offers a last hope to northerly survivors. As relationships between men and women break down, the novel charts one man's struggle to save his alienated son and bring him to the south and to salvation.

Maggie Gee is the author of The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and The Flood, longlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive--I really loved it.--Zadie Smith

Maggie Gee's account of her life as a writer cuts to the bone as she relives triumphs, rejections, despair and renewal. It's a wonderful book, for its boldness and vigour, and for its piercing honesty.--Claire Tomalin

How do you become a writer, and why?

Maggie Gee's journey starts in a small family in post-war Britain, a long way from the literary world. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries, and has a daughter--but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death, and parenthood--our animal life.

Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original Best Young British Novelists. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange and IMPAC prizes; My Cleaner; The Flood, longlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Ice People. She was the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2004-2008 and is now one of its vice presidents.