Josephine Hart

"To read this tale of mutual obsession is like being abducted. Josephine Hart has managed to create a portrait of psychological and erotic obsession that is so compelling as, for a brief moment, to suck all the oxygen out of the air."

Damage

A sheltered young artist at the turn of the century obsessively paints the image of a man whose face she has only seen in her mind's eye

The Stillest Day

Ruth smiles, but beneath the surface nurses a hatred as powerful as the sea, and as sharp as the coldest of blades. The object of Ruth's malevolence is her cousin, Elizabeth - orphaned at nine months and raised by Ruth's parents as their own - whose very presence stole Ruth's birthright as only child. From this twisted sense of betrayal grows an envy, dark as night, from which there can be but one refuge: Elizabeth's destruction.

Skaza

Envidia

A man's obsession with his late wife takes a new turn when he meets an uncompromising, manipulative playwright whose favored theme is death

Oblivion

This audiobook is an anthology of poems by WH Auden,TS Eliot, Philip Larkin, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, RudyardKipling, Sylvia Plath and W B Yeats, introduced by Josephine Hart andread by a cast of famous actors: Ralph Fiennes, Edward Fox, IanMcDiarmid, Helen McCrory, Sir Roger Moore, Harold Pinter, ElizabethMcGovern, Harriet Walter, Sir Bob Geldof, Sinead Cusack, Grey Gowrie,Rupert Graves and Juliet Stevenson.'The idea is simple,' says Josephine Hart as she introducesthe poets and takes us through their life and writings, 'anunderstanding of the life and philosophy of the poet illuminates thepoetry and therefore makes the experience of reading or listening toeach poem more intense.'Whether you believe, like Robert Frost, that poetry is a way ofcatching life by the throat or, like Eliot, it is one person talkingto another, nobody does it better than the poets whose work and lifewill feature in this publication.

How to Read Poetry and Why

Catching Life by the Throat

Il peccato

The death of a teenage boy in a small 1960s Irish community finds the youth's mother struggling through her grief, his sister embracing her memories, and their German neighbor meditating on the wider implications of loss.

The Truth About Love

L'oblio

Un uomo che ha svolto una brillante carriera politica, ha sposato una donna intelligente e bella e saputo svolgere il ruolo di figlio, marito, padre, politico sempre con ottimi risultati, incontra una misteriosa donna che esercita fin dal primo istante un potere straordinario su di lui. Un dominio sessuale e psicologico di fronte a cui soccombe.

Il danno

Two shocking novels of destructive obsession from a New York Times–bestselling author and “a remarkable talent” (The Washington Post Book World). Sin: Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth’s shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow older, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she’s most vulnerable: She will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin. Written in Hart’s concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate—and the destruction and tragedy it begets. “The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination . . . a tour de force.” —The New York Times Damage: Hart’s debut novel, a New York Times bestseller, is “a taut, sinister tale” of a man’s desperate obsession and scandalous love affair (Vanity Fair). He is a man who appears to have everything: wealth, a beautiful wife and children, and a prestigious political career in Parliament. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming—and ultimately catastrophic—relationship with his son’s fiancée. “A passionate, elegant, ruthless story.” —Iris Murdoch “Damage is a masterpiece.” —The Washington Post

Two Novels

Sin and Damage

In una innominata cittadina dell’Irlanda contemporanea un ragazzo salta in aria nel giardino di casa. La versione ufficiale è che “stava fabbricando un razzo”, il sospetto è che fosse un bombarolo legato all’Ira. La madre viene ricoverata in un ospedale psichiatrico in stato di choc. La famiglia fa quadrato intorno all’amour fou di questa madre per il figlio compianto. La figlia Olivia decide di sacrificare gli anni dell’adolescenza, e solo quando vede la situazione migliorare, col ritorno della madre a un’apparente normalità, lascia l’Irlanda per l’Inghilterra per fare l’attrice. Farà ritorno sull’isola per assistere alla morte del padre e aiutare la madre in quella circostanza.Poco a poco, tutte le ferite aperte dalla morte violenta del ragazzo sembrano rimarginarsi.La verità sull’amore è il sesto romanzo di Josephine Hart, il suo romanzo più ambizioso, che segna il suo grande ritorno in Irlanda. Se Il danno mostrava come un uomo apparentemente stabile ed equilibrato poteva essere letteralmente distrutto da una romantica ossessione, qui si procede in senso contrario, per mostrare come il cuore si può rimettere insieme dopo essere stato spezzato. La verità sull’amore è un coraggioso e imperdibile romanzo psicologico sul dolore e sull’elusività della consolazione: sul cuore, le sue ragioni, le sue regole segrete.“La tessitura ambiziosa e poetica di una antica tragedia famigliare in una tragica storia, e storie, dei nostri tempi. Josephine Hart è tornata a casa in trionfo.” John Banville

La verità sull'amore

* Second anthology of poems following CATCHING LIFE BY THE THROAT

How to Read Poetry and why : Poems from Eight Great Poets

Words that Burn

The author of Damage and The Stillest Day returns with a chilling and powerful psychological novel about one man's attempt to confront the terrors of his past living on a small farm in Ireland. Reprint.

The Reconstructionist

Păcatul

Iubire otrăvită

It's dangerous . . . and that's the truth about love . . . A young man shields his terrible wounds from his mother; a husband believes he can love his grief-stricken wife back to life; a young girl puts her own life on hold until her family can find their way back from blinding pain; a man surrenders to the helplessness of obsessive love. Set in Ireland, this brilliant, intense story is about a family named O'Hara who chose to remain in the place of their loss, and the stranger from Germany who has run from his. It's about love - for another, for a country, for family - and survival, and it's remarkable.

Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel Damage, had what she called 'a long love affair' with poetry. It was an affair that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age of sixty-nine in 2011. She said 'I was a word child' growing up in Ireland 'a country of word children where life was language before it was anything else'. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline,'a route map through life'. In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer, began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own admission, Josephine Hart gave 'dead poets society' . But she also gave them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in their own right. Life Saving leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry matters.

Josephine Hart

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