Showing results by author "Lloyd Jones" in Literature & Fiction

Once upon a time, the kingdoms of Wales were rife with magic and conflict—and 18-year-old Mererid 'Mer' is well-acquainted with both. As the last living water diviner, she can manipulate water with magic—a unique elemental power many would kill to possess. For years, Mer has been running from the prince who bound her into his service—and forced her to kill thousands with her magic. Now, all Mer truly wants is a safe, quiet life, far from power and politics. But then Mer's old handler—the king's spymaster—returns with a proposition.

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Award, 2007.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2007.
Bougainville. 1991. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens.

In the middle of summer, omnipresent heat radiates as a group of elderly people are remembering their youth. The story focuses on two sisters, Leokadia and Helena, who live together in a retirement home not far from Warsaw. These are not ordinary stories they are sharing, because both of them were imprisoned as children in Auschwitz during World War II.

It begins with a tantalizing clue: a recent photograph taken of Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man - one of the most priceless masterworks ever plundered by the Nazis, which disappeared and was believed destroyed. Now, with proof of its existence, the Polish government wants it back. One wrong move and it could vanish forever. Because bound together with the missing artwork are secrets that have remained buried for a reason.

This is a story about a woman. And the truck driver who mistook her for a prostitute. The old man she robbed and the hunters who smuggled her across the border. The woman whose name she stole, the wife who turned a blind eye. This is the story of a mother searching for her child. This is a story you cannot stop thinking about.

A powerful allegorical tale about humanity and dignity and the ease with which we can justify brutality. Two mysterious strangers appear at a hotel in a small country town. Where have they come from? Who are they? What catastrophe are they fleeing? The townspeople want answers, but the strangers are unable to speak of their trauma. And before long, wary hospitality shifts to suspicion and fear, and the care of the men slides into appalling cruelty.

A woman washes ashore in Sicily. She has come from North Africa to find her son, taken from her when he was just days old by his father and stolen away to Berlin. With nothing but her maid’s uniform and a knife stashed in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers – some generous, some exploiting – to guide her passage north. These strangers tell of their encounters with a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat – each account a different view of the truth, a different truth.

Lloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered – a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world. The grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice.

Then she lifts the Fish up from the bassinet and holds him out to me. ‘Go on, take him.’ And to the Fish she says, ‘This is your uncle.' I manage to clap my hands either side of the fish bundle. But I feel like I am holding an expensive glass. Once you’re told not to drop it, all you can think of is the glass shattering across the floor. When the baby is born in a shabby caravan at a beach campground, it’s clear he is not like other babies. But the family will try hard to protect and love and accept him. Perhaps all the more to make up for letting his troubled mother down.

Instinctieve moederliefde. Dat is het enige waar Ines haar doorzettingsvermogen uitput en zich door niets of niemand laat tegenhouden om haar ontvoerde zoon weer in haar armen te mogen sluiten. De Tunesische Ines komt via Italië illegaal Europa binnen om naar Berlijn af te reizen. Onderweg ontmoet ze mensen waarbij ze genoodzaakt is om hun te vertrouwen, ze is inmiddels helemaal alleen. Door de mysterieuze verhalen van deze vreemden, moet Ines zelf de waarheid proberen te achterhalen. Maar of dat haar naar haar zoon zal leiden, is nog maar de vraag.

Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip is a modern tragedy set on a tiny copper-rich tropical island embattled by internal strife. After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's island, there comes a time when all the white people have left. Only Mr Watts remains, and he wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley; the kids call him Popeye behind his back. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons and no books left to learn from - except for Mr Watts' battered copy of Great Expectations, 'by my friend Mr Dickens'....

There is a thin wall between our world and that of the Fae. During times of war, it is easily stepped through. The passions and emotions stirred by violence and combat bleed over, and the supernatural often awake from long slumber to meddle in mortal affairs. But there have always been those among us who have been willing to meet the supernatural threat with cold steel, burning hearts, and grim determination.