This award-winning collection confirms Giorgio Pressburger as a European master of the short story. Each tale is wondrous in its situation and its telling, but each refined truth it contains is hauntingly familiar in its resonance. In the title story, four rabbis on a trip through the mountains offer marvelous interpretations of the similarities between snow and guilt, just before an avalanche, killing three of them, provides the most concrete interpretation of all for the survivor. In other stories, horrors await a scientist who provokes unrequited passion in a young girl; a wheelchair-bound philosopher rails at cosmic injustice; and a man who saves a kitten from death unwittingly changes his life through a random act of kindness. Giorgio Pressburger was born in Budapest in 1937 and later settled in Italy. He is now the Director of the Institute of Italian Culture in Hungary. Among his previous books isThe Law of White Spaces.

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

Edith and Oliver fell in love after meeting in the glitzy world of the music hall in its Edwardian heyday. Edith is a spirited young woman who plays the piano by night; Oliver is an illusionist who dreams of touring the world, of pioneering ground-breaking illusions that will bring him fame and fortune. But their children arrive as the world begins to change, as cinemas crowd the high street and the draw of the music hall wanes. Oliver - drinking too much and haunted by the death of his mother - becomes desperate for one final illusion that will put his name in lights. As he loses his grip on reality, will his family pay the ultimate price? 'Forbes imbues [Edith & Oliver] with such wit and tenderness . . . a pleasure to read' Sunday Times 'Engaging . . . astute . . . striking' Irish Times 'Forbes writes beautifully on the hard, peripatetic reality of theatre life behind the greasepaint and glamour. She is also particularly insightful on the internal torment of a man brought down by the slow growth of self-deception . . . shimmering' Daily Mail