C.K. STEAD

Max Jackson, a New Zealander living and lecturing in Paris, has a complicated arrangement with his estranged French wife, Louise. In love with his younger Sorbonne colleague Sylvie, he finds himself entangled with Helen, a troubled young English student.When a Cezanne painting goes missing from Louises apartment, the boundaries he has struggled to maintain threaten to collapse.Infused with literary musings and the spirit of Paris, The Necessary Angel is as much an ode to the power of literature as a nuanced exploration of love, fidelity and the balance of power within relationships.

Max Jackson, a New Zealander living and lecturing in Paris, has a complicated arrangement with his estranged French wife, Louise. In love with his younger Sorbonne colleague Sylvie, he finds himself entangled with Helen, a troubled young English student.

Spanning three years in the life of the writer Katherine Mansfield during the First World War, this novel follows the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack Middleton Murry and her struggle to write the 'new kind of fiction' which she felt the times demanded. She is restless, constantly on the move, in and out of London, to and from France, even, once, into the war zone to be with her French lover, novelist Francis Carco. For a short time, Mansfield is able to behave as though the war is merely 'background', but her ardent relationship with her brother, who arrives from New Zealand to fight in France, makes detachment impossible - as does her love for Jack's Oxford friend Frederick Goodyear, also a soldier. The war's shadow remorselessly darkens all their lives, but only increases Mansfield's determination to break through as a writer. While sticking scrupulously to what is known about Mansfield's life and those of her friends (a cast that includes D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, Lady Ottoline Morrel and Virginia Woolf), this novel is extraordinary in taking the reader beyond the point of biography into the mind, emotions and sensibility of its subject. It is a sharp, subtle and appealing portrait of the person of whose work Virginia Woolf wrote: 'It was the only writing I was ever jealous of.'

Mike Newall, maduro profesor en Oxford, filósofo, especialista en Wittgenstein y divorciado trata de rehacer su vida. Cuando fallece su colega y compatriota neozelandés Donovan ODwyer, profesor de Historia y leyenda viviente de las tabernas que frecuentan los universitarios, Mike asiste al funeral y hacedeterminadas promesas a la viuda. Despues de la ceremonia le revela a su viejo amigo el jurista Bertie Winterstoke un secreto que ODwyer se llevo a la tumba. Durante la segunda guerra mundial, cuando los paracaidistas alemanes cayeron sobre Creta y echaron a los britanicos, ODywer era oficial del contingente maori, y uno de los soldados a su mando murio en estremecedoras circunstancias. Los deudos cuando se enteraron lo consideraron responsable y lanzaron contra el militar una makutu, la maldicion maori. Winterstoke le exige a Mike que se lo cuente todo, y durante varios dias Newall procura hacerlo. Pero la vida de ODwyer esta extrañamente entretejida con la suya. Poco a poco, a traves de una serie de hilos argumentales entretejidos y bellamente narrados, se establece una reflexion sobre la memoria y sus lagunas, el lenguaje y sus limitaciones. Hasta que Mike Newall descubre la manera de hacer que descansen los fantasmas de ODwyer... y los suyos propios.

La verdadera historia de Jesús contada por quien fue su mejor amigo: Judas Iscariote.Un Judas ya anciano recibe la visita del discípulo Tolomeo, y entonces sobrevienen los recuerdos. Amigo de infancia de Jesus, Judas fue siempre mas esceptico que el Mesias, al que consideraba excesivamente mistico. Sin embargo, lo siguio como discipulo, e incluso fingio que lo traicionaba por orden del propio Jesus, para asi auspiciar la creacion de un mito. Un libro extremadamente original y controvertido que concede un papel muy distinto al apostol maldito.