Across Sicily with The Thousand

The 1860 Expedition of the Thousand, in which a group of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, landing on the west coast of Sicily and advancing to its capital Palermo in a bid to liberate the island from Bourbon rule, is perhaps the defining moment of the unification of Italy, and a testament to the bravery, resilience and vision of the country's last condottiere.

Drawing on a wealth of contemporary diaries and other first-hand accounts by the protagonists of the events, and interspersing them with his own penetrating remarks, best-selling author Tim Parks retraces the journey of the "Mille" through the ragged landscape of Sicily under the blazing summer heat, bringing back to life an entire world in all its intricate complexity. Along the way he revisits old controversies and provides answers to many unresolved questions - as well as offering a vivid commentary on the Italy of today. A voyage through the thrilling history of the expedition of the thousand which led to the unification of Italy in 1860. Written by one of the most accomplished British writers. Tim Parks is the author of nineteen novels, including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, Sex Is Forbidden and, most recently, Hotel Milano, all of which have been translated into many languages. As well as being a novelist and the author of several works of non-fiction, Tim is the acclaimed translator of books by Moravia, Calvino, Machiavelli and other Italian writers. He's a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. AS CA GU MP PH PR US UM VI GB 49019900 WTL 20,00 O60617 Alma Books 9780714551302 Bel Canto Maltz, Albert 27.05.2026 ENG 14,99 UVP 288 Kt Paulette Bonnard, a "little blackbird" gifted with a lyrical soprano singing voice, is a graduate of the Paris Conservatory. Her father was a strict Catholic - her mother is a Hungarian Jew. Paulette identifies with neither faith, but she perceives the creeping anti-Semitism infecting France in the late 1930s. Married in September 1939, days after the outbreak of the Second World War, Paulette lives alone in a Paris slum, working in a camera shop but pouring her passion into voice-training lessons to drown her longing for her husband, a sergeant in a tank brigade under the command of Colonel Charles de Gaulle. When the city falls to the Nazis in 1940, Paulette joins the Resistance, earning her bread by performing in cabarets for lecherous German officers - but her few remaining certainties are shattered when she is arrested for espionage and faces deportation to a concentration camp.

Completed shortly before the author's death in 1985, and undiscovered for more than forty years, this moving, richly historical novel is Albert Maltz's final testament, and consolidates his place as one of the finest American writers of the twentieth century.

Calder Publications was founded by John Calder in 1949, and became known for the edgy and avant-garde writers it was proud of having in its list. Calder Publications, an imprint of Alma Books, offers a list of books which will challenge and stimulate the serious readers.