Author:Ildefonso Falcones

1748, Seville: Caridad, a recently freed Cuban slave, wanders the streets of the city. Her master is dead and she has nowhere to go. When she meets Milagro Carmona - a young, rebellious gypsy - the two women are instantly inseparable. Milagros introduces Caridad to the gypsy community, an exotic fringe society that will soon bring them love and change their life forever.
From the tumultuous bustle of 18th-century Seville to the theatres of Madrid, THE BAREFOOT QUEEN takes us into the murky world of tobacco smuggling and ther persecution of the gypsies.
Showing us the birth of Flamenco, it is a historical fresco filled with characters that live, love, fight and suffer for what they believe.
Sensational... Another exemplary tale of suffering from one of the best writers of our time, who dares to articulate our incomprehensible existence, and manages it with extraordinary and sensitive eloquence
—— The Times[Slow Man] finds the Nobel laureate on top form... A consummate writer of fiction
—— ObserverCoetzee is a unique voice; no novelist explores the ideas and the power of literature and the sense of displacement so boldly. Slow Man will add to his immense reputation
—— Independent on SundayRemorselessly human, it is also funny and touching: Coetzee the artist remains the complete novelist
—— Irish TimesA tremendous and startling novel... Coetzee is a novelist who cares about every word. Slow Man confirms him as among our greatest living authors
—— The TimesA mixture of penetrating insight and brittle wit that forces our attention on common terrors we don't want to think about: the fragility of health, the loneliness of old age, the limits of medical care
—— Ron Charles , Washington PostDisplays all his expected pitch-perfect restraint, the language diamond clear
—— Tim Adams , ObserverA sutble and moving delineation of their [Rayment and Marijana] unequal relationship and of the pains of unrequited love
—— Anthony Daniels , Mail on SundayA novel seeded with literary allusions, ironies and fictive presences...many-layered
—— Christopher Hope , GuardianFull of the deftest psychological touches and some acutely realised brooding on the old fictional firm of memory and desire, Slow Man's code "if code it is" stays resolutely, and tantalisingly, uncrackable
—— D J Taylor , IndependentSophie McManus has a shrewd eye for telling gestures and an ear for cruel speech and kindness.She is an incisive, surprising prose stylist, and her debut novel, The Unfortunates, heralds an exciting new talent with an old soul.
—— Christine Schutt, author of PROPSEROUS FRIENDSIs Sophie McManus the next Emma Straub?
—— New York ObserverCohen, a key member of the United States' under-40 writers' club (along with Nell Freudenberger and Jonathan Safran Foer), is a rare talent who makes highbrow writing fun and accessible
—— Marie Claire[Cohen has] manifold talents at digging under and around absurdity... Language - not elision - is the primary material of Cohen's oeuvre, and his method of negotiating his way toward meaning is like powering straight through a thick wall of words... The reward is an off-kilter precision, one that feels both untainted and unique
—— Rachel Kushner , The New York Times Book ReviewLike [David Foster] Wallace, Cohen is clearly concerned wtih the depersonalizing effects of technology, broken people doing depraved things, and how the two intersect in tragic (and, sometimes, hilarious) ways. The franticness with which he writes about these themes is, at times, Wallace-esque
—— The Boston GlobeWhat dazzles here is a Pynchonesque verbal dexterity, the sonic effect of exotic vocabulary, terraced sentences robust pusn and metaphors and edgy, Tarantino-like dialogue
—— Review of Contemporary FictionIn Mr. Cohen’s hands, a meme is a matter of life and death, because he goes from the reality we all know—the link, the click—to the one we tend to forget: the human. . . . Cohen is ambitious. He is mapping terra incognita
—— The New York ObserverEnthralling… Awe-inspiring
—— SkinnyCohen is immensely clever, witty, and indeed funny. He also knows about technology, and thus his novel deals with the world in the age of the internet
—— Colm Toibin , Daily Mail summer readingBook of Numbers brilliantly and rigorously examines a question that confronts literature today: What does the explosion of information from the internet mean for the future of storytelling?
—— Matthew Zeitlin , BuzzfeedFascinating...for chutzpah alone, Cohen's chaotic fantasia certainly impresses
—— ObserverFrequently amazing, [it is] the first work of fiction to engage fully with the internet and its influence on modern living
—— New ScientistThere are wonderful things here cloaked with an invisibility spell, tucked away in the middle of the book, where only the stubbornest seeker after enchantment will find them
—— Adam Mars-Jones , London Review of Books






