Jenny Diski engages with this passionate and confused relationship between 'father and daughter', old writer/young acolyte, possible lovers, using both their voices. Much of their story is about absence of the people they love. In Jenny Diski's hands it becomes a fascinating tale.

A young French woman in Peking in the late 1970s interprets between Chinese professors and Bertolucci for his film The Last Emperor. Afterwards, she follows a disgruntled old professor who tells her about a text believed to be taken directly from Buddha's teachings and inscribed on silk cloth centuries ago. It was written in a now-dead language called Tumchooq (coincidentally, the name of a young Chinese man she has just met), so beautiful in its simplicity it is almost impossible to render accurately in translation.
Puyi, the last emperor and last owner of this relic, ... more

By turn moving and hilarious, this unusual and insightful novel has sold 2.5 million copies in French and is now an international publishing sensation.

In his extraordinary novel Joshua Ferris delineates with great tenderness and a rare and inimitable wit the devastating story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is torn away without explanation or warning. The Unnamed is no less than a shimmering reflection of our times, of the lives we aspire to and the terrifying realisation of what is beyond our control.