Charlatan. Guru. Master of disguise. Ahead of his time, wise beyond his years, a simple opportunist or the great pretender; however you choose to see him, one fact is certain: Dr Ragab is a mysterious man. Talked about by pretty much everyone in 1920s Cairo, only a few get the chance to make his acquaintance, and fewer still -- one person, in fact -- get to study his life lessons. Hertwig is that lucky soul. Or not so lucky, perhaps: not when he finds himself, at the very end of the second world war, imprisoned in a bunker in Germany by a gang of thugs. To make matters worse, it's not just any bunker; it's the family bunker, built to be 100% escape-proof. And yet .

Dr Ragab's Universal Language

Un livre culte, lauréat du prix Somerset Maugham et du prix William Hill du meilleur livre de sport de l'année. À la dérive dans Tokyo, enseignant l'anglais à des minettes japonaises, Robert Twigger aboutit à une révélation sur lui-même : il n'est pas en forme et il n'est pas courageux. Pour échapper à ce déclin physique et moral, Twigger décide de s'initier aux arts martiaux japonais, et se joint au stage de formation d'aïkido de la Police Anti-Émeute de Tokyo au Yoshinkan Dojo. Une année d'entraînement intensif, une formation particulièrement éprouvante où l'esprit du budo et les moments de grâce surgissent au milieu des chutes répétitives, des membres cassés et des kimonos tachés de sang. Mais Twigger n'est pas que combattant, il est écrivain et poète. Son regard distancié sur la formation, sur le groupe de ses compagnons, sur lui-même, nous entraîne dans une quête initiatique pleine d'humour et une exploration fascinante du Japon contemporain.

Senshusei

Best-selling author of Angry White Pyjamas travels across the Rocky Mountains by canoe
Fifteen years before Lewis and Clark, Scotsman Alexander Mackenzie, looking to open up a trade route, set out from Lake Athabasca in central Northern Canada in search of the Pacific Ocean. Mackenzie travelled by bark canoe and had a cache of rum and a crew of Canadian voyageurs, hard-living backwoodsmen, for company. Two centuries later, Robert Twigger decides to follow in Mackenzie's wake. He too travels the traditional way, having painstakingly built a canoe from birchbark sewn together with pine roots, and assembled a crew made up of fellow travelers, ex-tree-planters and a former sailor from the US Navy. 
Several had tried before them but they were the first people to successfully complete Mackenzie's diabolical route over the Rockies in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Their journey takes them to the remotest parts of the wilderness, through Native American reservations, over mountains, through rapids and across lakes, meeting descendants of Mackenzie and unhinged Canadian trappers, running out of food, getting lost and miraculously found again, disfigured for life (the ex-sailor loses his thumb), bears brown and black, docile and grizzly.

Livres