Vagabond Voices

21/12/2024

Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2022, THE LAST WOMAN BORN ON THE ISLAND is currently on sale at £7.95 (20% off)! More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/the-last-woman-born-on-the-island

From the legend of the White Cow to the HMS Iolaire disaster in 1919 to the knitting of Eriskay ganseys, Sharon Black maps the past and the present of Scotland. What is the difference between the lost and the merely forgotten? Who is this last woman, and is her island one that we know?

Cover art by Mark Mechan at Red Axe Design.

19/12/2024

🇱🇻 This we have a rags-to-riches classic, Andrejs Upīts’s novel Gold! At £10.00 (20% off!), Gold is hot off the press and translated by Uldis Balodis - if you're looking for a tale from another time this Christmas, this could be the gift for you.

In a Latvia still under Tsarist rule and on the brink of the First World War, the Sveilis family, poor yet hardworking, suddenly inherit great wealth. And it is this wealth that leads them on a journey that peels far away from all expectations and cliché, into a world ruled by desire and disappointment. Upīts is forensic in his naturalistic analysis of a society contending with extremes of both wealth and poverty, and how this is undermining what is left of a moral society – perhaps as topical now as it was then.

More at: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/gold

GOLD by Andrejs Upīts translated from Latvian by Uldis Balodis Pages: 460 ISBN: 978-1-913212-37-7 Dimensions: 210 × 140 × 33 mm Publication: 16 September 2024

18/12/2024

Jenni Daiches' BORROWED TIME is an exercise in gratitude, exploring life's happiest, saddest and most mundane moments with equal measure.

Sonia leaves her Yorkshire home after her husband's death for a rundown railway carriage in the Scottish Highlands. With her 70th birthday approaching, she feels that she must make the most of life, and Scotland is where she feels she needs to be: here, she is the eccentric white-haired woman who lives with two dogs in a railway carriage. Here, she is an outsider, and is free to examine and reinvent herself.

More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/borrowed-time

14/12/2024

Here's what Estonian literary scholar Maarja Vaino has to say about "I Loved A German" - a diary of romance, a tragedy of class and race and nation: this is one of celebrated author A.H. Tammsaare's final works and a bestseller in his native Estonia.

Get it now from our website at £10.36 (20% off!):
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/i-loved-a-german

13/12/2024

Our Tammsaare translations have been selling, so here's a lesser-known work of his - "I Loved A German" is a diary of romance, a poignant tragedy of race and nation, and one of celebrated Estonian author A.H. Tammsaare's last and best-known works.

Get it on our website now at £10.36 (20% off!):
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/i-loved-a-german

12/12/2024

This , a showerthought from A. H. Taamsaare...

Have you read "I Loved A German"? A diary of romance, a tragedy of class and race and nation; one of celebrated author A.H. Tammsaare's final works and a bestseller in his native Estonia - get it now from our website at £10.36 (20% off!): https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/i-loved-a-german

11/12/2024

A review of Kathrine Sowerby's THE SPIT, THE SOUND AND THE NEST – three novellas set over a winter, a day and a week.

More on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/the-spit-the-sound-and-the-nest

09/12/2024

You'll find a collection of three novellas in THE SPIT, THE SOUND AND THE NEST, set over a winter, a day and a week. In each story, the past weighs heavily on the present.

Find out more and get your copy from our website:
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/the-spit-the-sound-and-the-nest

07/12/2024

❄️ Fancy something wintry, something short? 'The Spit, the Sound and the Nest' is a collection of novellas that take place over a winter, a day, and a week – embrace the season with some suitably atmospheric reading...

More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/the-spit-the-sound-and-the-nest

05/12/2024

From A HAPPY LITTLE ISLAND by Lars Sund (translated from Finland Swedish by Peter Graves):

As the scribe sat in front of his page, a world formed in his head, an island. He named it Fagerö, and populated it with an assortment of characters.The people of Fagerö were often divided against each other but united in their appreciation of their island.

Then the dead bodies began to arrive.

The island was changing, and the small-town quirkiness becoming less restrained. And the bodies kept arriving, forcing Fagerö’s inhabitants to confront the truth that, even on their remote island, the world’s horrors and injustices could not be ignored.⠀

A HAPPY LITTLE ISLAND, in all its vivid peculiarity, is available from our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/a-happy-little-island

03/12/2024

FAULT LINE is a poetry collection by Gerry Loose, and a map of the faults that divides humans from their environment. From Loose's territory of the Gare Loch in Argyll, he addresses the outstanding beauty of the land around him that sits at odds with the Faslane submarine base on its eastern shore - home of the UK’s nuclear arsenal...

Find out more and get FAULT LINE from our website:
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/fault-line

30/11/2024

🍂 "And I think I remember this synchronous November..."

As November winds to a close, here's an excerpt to bid it goodbye from Kathrine Sowerby's HOUSE, HOWEVER: a collection of sixty-two poems that in the words of the late Gerry Loose "animates a world we ignore, she reinvents a world with a compelling internal logic": a portrait of objects and emotions from many angles.
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If you like the sound of this poem, the book is available here:
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/house-however

28/11/2024

Magnus Florin's 'Siblings' is the short story of a claustrophobic family, narrated by the eldest brother to nine children. He is keen, capable and obedient to his parents, and it is his duty to care for his lesser siblings. When their parents are dead, he will be in charge, and he will give to them the controlling love he has been taught to give. Of course they will resist him. But how can they, with the bonds that tie them together? This is a society ruled by law.

But Sweden is changing around them: softening. Will this older brother soften too, or will his fists remain iron, his mind bound to loveless laws?

Get Magnus Florin's Siblings (translated by Harry Watson) at £3.98 (50% off!):
https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/siblings

26/11/2024

🍁 Five days left in our Autumn Sale! With twenty titles up to 60% off, most of them at £8.00 or less, we have crime thrillers, sharp satires, surreal utopias and memoirs of things that could have happened - take a look through and see what sings to you in our sale catalogue:
https://us6.campaign-archive.com/?u=e2e17cbb3133d39010ded73a0&id=6ce2a36368

22/11/2024

🌈 Happy Friday, everyone! It’s almost the weekend and what better way to unwind than with some poetry? HOUSE, HOWEVER is a collection of 62 poems that examines the elusive – each poem suggestive, rhythmic and intelligent.⠀

“In these poems – portraits of objects and emotions – Kathrine Sowerby animates a world we ignore, she reinvents a world with a compelling internal logic" –Gerry Loose

Find it on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/house-however

21/11/2024

This , Uldis Balodis' translation of Zigmunds Skujiņš' "Nakedness" is on sale at £6.97 (30% off)!

The scene is Latvia, in the '60s, and Sandris is a young man just out of military service. He goes straight to the town of Randava to surprise Marika, the beautiful woman with whom he’s been corresponding for some time. Yet when Sandris arrives at her door, he is greeted by unexpected news: Marika claims that she has never written to him, and none of her flatmates will admit to sending the letters.

But one of Marika’s flatmates convinces him to stay a little longer, and soon he realises he is trapped in a web of confusion. Each strand he unpicks only traps him further, and soon he begins to realise that perhaps his own secrets and lies will be revealed...

More on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/nakedness

20/11/2024

🍁 The days grow short, and so does the time on our Autumn Sale... with twenty titles up to 60% off, most of them at £8.00 or less, we have crime thrillers, sharp satires, surreal utopias and memoirs of things that could have happened - take a look through and see what sings to you. Link in bio!

20/11/2024

Obligatory reading from Symour Hersh, I'm afraid. I have nothing more to add to it. David Lammy and Keir Starmer should be ashamed of themselves, and it would be good for them to read this, because this is what genocide looks like. Anyone who doesn't raise their voice in some manner is complicit. Hersh is a well-known figure and it is so important that people like him are speaking up.

A report from inside Gaza