**LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024**'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you.'In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history. Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. The telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own. Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson'Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness, ' Los Angeles Times

A Dictator Calls - Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024

If you've taken part in job interviews and are still waiting to receive that illusive job offer, this is the book for you. You'll learn why jobs are sometimes offered to candidates less qualified than you, or with little or no previous experience. The TOP TIPS in this book will give you confidence in your ability to perform well at the INTERVIEW. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.  One of life's simple rules. During my research for this book I found ignorance on BOTH sides of the table, with both INTERVIEWEES and INTERVIEWERS attempting to wing it. What began as a self-help guide for INTERVIEWEES has ended up being a check list for INTERVIEWERS as well. Chapters include TOP TIPS on preparation, how to read a job advertisement, how to identify what the recruiter is looking for, plus 50 of the most frequently asked questions with how best to respond. There is a list of Do's and Don'ts for you to read as a refresher on the day of the interview.

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