Peter Owens/ P Owens World Series with Istros

[WndyJW]

https://www.peterowen.com/shop/world-...

Peter Owens is an indie press based in London. They came to my attention due to the World Series project with Istros in which they published 3 books from three countries. In 2017-2018.

From Slovenia:
None Like Her
Panorama
Three Loves, One Death

From Spain (Castilian):
Inventing Love
Nona's Room
Wolf Moon

From Serbia:
Fear and His Servant
The House of Remembering and Forgetting
The Tragic Fate of Moritz Toth

They also have a wider selection of books that would look very nice on our bookshelves.
https://www.peterowen.com/

[Ang]

Thanks, Wendy. Peter Owen is a great publisher. I recently read "Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue" by James Purdy. I spotted it on a shelf and had no recollection of buying it and didn't know the author. It was a Peter Owen publication and I thought it excellent.

[Hugh, Active moderator]

The only Peter Owen books I remember were new editions of a couple of early Hermann Hesse novels that I read a few years before joining GR.

[WndyJW]

That’s great, Ang. Don’t you love finding a treasure on your shelf that has been patiently waiting for you to discover?

I just read The House of Remembering and Forgetting, it was also excellent. I’m now reading Fear and his Servant which is very funny-the devil is narrating the story. I have The Tragic Fate or Moritz Toth.

I didn’t look closely at the site to see if they are publishing original works, but I like the look of the reissued classics I saw.

[Lee]

I just started reading Lote, whose protagonist is interested in photos of Stephen Tennant. I went to Wikipedia for some info on him, which included that he was friends with Edith Sitwell, who was in love with his lover Siegfried Sassoon and thus quite jealous of Tennant. Mainly a poet, Sitwell wrote one novel, I Live Under A Black Sun, a fictionalized biography of Jonathan Swift published in 1937, which was praised by Evelyn Waugh but mostly overlooked and out of print. However it was republished in 2007 by... Peter Owen. Still overlooked though: it has just 21 ratings and 2 exceedingly brief “reviews” on Goodreads.

Had to share as this topic on Peter Owen was just started by Wendy!

[Paul]

Great link!

[Ang]

Ooh, I have that book by Edith Sitwell and published by Peter Owen. This one I do remember buying - it was at the remainder bookshop in Oxford. I love that shop. There's also one in Bristol. I think they are called "The Last Bookshop".

[Ang]

WndyJW wrote: "That’s great, Ang. Don’t you love finding a treasure on your shelf that has been patiently waiting for you to discover? ."

Yes indeed. It is one of the great joys of life.

[WndyJW]

The Apothecary Melchior books sound fun!Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf's Church Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street

I looked deeper into this web site and I foresee many books being added to my TBR

[Margaret]

"I looked deeper into this web site and I foresee many books being added to my TBR" - that's exactly how I felt, Wendy! I'm going to look into the Apothecary Melchior series, we're still hoping to get to Estonia this summer.

[WndyJW]

I loved The House of Remembering and Forgetting and just finished Fear and His Servant.

I think Fear is a five star book, but there is a lot of Serbian, Turkish and Austrian political intrigue that I couldn’t keep straight so my experience of much of it was a 3.5 stars; however, the parts with the devil and his servant, the hunt for vampires, and the last several chapters where the devil talks about “fishmouth,” his nickname for Jesus, the devil’s experience with God and archangel Michael when God was forming the world, were so good that I averaged it to 4 stars.

I know I won’t make it to Estonia this summer, but I plan on getting the Apothecary Melchior books too. I hope you get there and look forward to hearing about your trip, Margaret.

[WndyJW]

I ordered Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf’s Church even though a Goodreads reviewer said the typo were so plentiful they ruined the book for him. He blamed it on lazy editing.