{"title":"Lola Lafon","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"little-communist-who-never-smiled-book-lola-lafon-9781781255148","title":"The Little Communist Who Never Smiled","description":"The Montreal Olympics, 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the floor of the Montreal Forum and into history.  Twenty seconds on the uneven bars is it all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The judges award her an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics.  In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon weaves an intricate web of truth and fiction around Comaneci's life, from her discovery by legendary gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi up to her defection to the United States in 1989.  Adored by young girls in the West and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceausescu regime, Comaneci was a fearless, fiercely determined child whose body would become a battleground in the Cold War story of East against West. Lafon's novel is a powerful re-imagining of a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics and destiny.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49510589202705,"sku":"GOR007629433","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49647502393617,"sku":"GOR009242290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1781255148.jpg?v=1772274029"},{"product_id":"reeling-book-lola-lafon-9781787703582","title":"Reeling","description":"An impassioned novel on the consequences of sexual exploitation and the dead ends of forgiveness   13-year-old Cléo lives a drab existence with her parents in a suburb of Paris.   Her life changes when she is offered the chance to obtain a scholarship – issued by a mysterious Foundation - to realise her dream and become a modern jazz dancer. But there is more to the Foundation and their suave representative than meets the eye. Soon Cléo finds a trap has closed in on her, and she’s fallen prey to a sinister system in which she’ll eventually become complicit.    Over 30 years later, a cache of images surfaces on the internet and exposes the Foundation’s exploitative, hidden purposes. The police put out a call for witnesses, and Cléo, now with a successful career as a dancer behind her, comes to realise the past has come back to haunt her. As her sense of self diffracts into multiple, contrasting images, there’s no way out but to confront her double burden as victim and predator.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49576806514961,"sku":"GOR012866366","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49849568002321,"sku":"NGR9781787703582","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50236069806353,"sku":"GOR013895293","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53334893789457,"sku":"GOR014855332","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1787703584.jpg?v=1759225933"},{"product_id":"la-petite-communiste-qui-ne-souriait-jamais-book-lola-lafon-9782330051204","title":"La Petite Communiste qui ne souriait jamais","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49619518161169,"sku":"GOR007894959","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50834812305681,"sku":"GOR009144861","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52710041190673,"sku":"GOR014592038","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2330051204.jpg?v=1751252748"},{"product_id":"we-are-the-birds-of-the-coming-storm-book-lola-lafon-9780857421890","title":"We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm","description":"We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm is a wild novel that oscillates between fiction and reality. The story centers on two young women: Voltairine, a dancer who no longer dances but whose body is still haunted by the movement of dance, and her soulmate Emile, a young woman recovering from unexpected cardiac arrest. The girls are inseparable, and both their lives have been shattered by the horror of rape. The opening of the dreamlike novel sets a bleak stage as Voltairine watches Emile lying in a hospital bed, her temperature dropping to dangerous levels. Voltairine is filled with sorrow and faces the blunt reality that her soulmate is going to die, chronicling each minute in her diary. However, Emile ultimately survives the attack. Later, at the cinematheque, Voltairine and Emile meet a young girl, whom they call \"the little girl at the end of the lane,\" who is obsessed by the Haymarket Affair of 1886. She's an odd girl, obsessed with words, scribbling pages of notes throughout the movie screenings. She helps draw the pair out of their state of painful helplessness, and eventually the trio openly rebels against the newly elected oppressive regime of barbarian kings who rule their society. We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm explores repression, revolt, and madness, telling a story that is not only revolutionary but also cautionary-of three women who let their spirits fly like birds as the daunting storm ascends.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49638775882001,"sku":"GOR006144881","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857421891.jpg?v=1750704165"},{"product_id":"chavirer-book-lola-lafon-9782330139346","title":"Chavirer","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50023710621969,"sku":"GOR011077325","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2330139349.jpg?v=1750999341"},{"product_id":"reeling-book-lola-lafon-9781609457310","title":"Reeling","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRayAnne's next adventure takes our intrepid heroine, haunted by her beloved grandmother's death, to New Zealand to film a new season of her all-women fishing talk show\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e What stage of grief is it when your grandmother's ghost keeps popping up on your electronic devices? Denial? For RayAnne that seems to be the stage for launching the second season of \u003ci\u003eFishing \u003c\/i\u003e--in New Zealand. Ready or not, she is taking public television's first all-women fishing talk show on the road, putting the cold Minnesota winter in the rearview mirror--which, it turns out, Gran is haunting, too.\u003cp\u003eAfter a challenging first season, and RayAnne's serendipitous ascension to host, there's a lot at stake. With camera-wielding twins Rongo and Rangi along as crew and tour guides, RayAnne and her indefatigable producer Cassi set out across New Zealand in search of noteworthy women who fish: a skipjack boat captain navigating sexist harbors; a writer of historical suffragette fiction, which is, apparently, a thing; a reclusive Māori octogenarian who ties fishing flies for dignitaries. Their stories, and a good dose of the country's history, are almost enough to take the edge off RayAnne's homesickness and grief, to say nothing of jetlag--and it doesn't hurt to discover a bird dog who fishes, an anti-fashionista, a pair of sisters fishing their way through recovery, and . . . a Hobbit? Meanwhile, the romantic and family entanglements she left behind at home haven't exactly come untangled in her absence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose who met RayAnne in \u003ci\u003eFishing \u003c\/i\u003e, Sarah Stonich's first outing with the intrepid, accidental talk-show host, will encounter familiar and unexpected pleasures in her latest antics--and a story whose lighthearted surface and surprising depths will charm readers who now find her for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50310285787409,"sku":"CIN1609457315G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51039248711953,"sku":"NIN9781609457310","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1609457315.jpg?v=1751309991"},{"product_id":"the-little-communist-who-never-smiled-book-lola-lafon-9781609806910","title":"The Little Communist Who Never Smiled","description":"An award-winning novel powerfully re-imagines a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics, and destiny. Montreal 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the floor of the Montreal Forum and into history. Twenty seconds on uneven bars is all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The electronic scoreboard, astonishing spectators with what has happened, shows 1.0. The judges have awarded an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics, though the scoreboard is unable to register anything higher than 9.9. In \u003ci\u003eThe Little Communist Who Never Smiled\u003c\/i\u003e, Lola Lafon tells the story of Comaneci's journey from growing up in rural Romania to her eventual defection to the United States in 1989. Adored by young girls in the west and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceausescu regime, Comaneci's life was scrutinized wherever she went. Lafon's fictionalized account shows how a single athletic event mesmerizes the world and reverberates across nations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50385786011921,"sku":"CIN1609806913G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50918483493137,"sku":"GOR010596552","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1609806913.jpg?v=1750799143"},{"product_id":"quand-tu-ecouteras-cette-chanson-book-lola-lafon-9782234092471","title":"Quand Tu Ecouteras Cette Chanson","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51406495023377,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51406495088913,"sku":"GOR014261068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2234092477.jpg?v=1750869232"},{"product_id":"mercy-mary-patty-book-lola-lafon-9782330081782","title":"Mercy, Mary, Patty","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51450809155857,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51450809450769,"sku":"GOR009270129","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2330081782.jpg?v=1751415359"},{"product_id":"when-you-listen-to-this-song-book-lola-lafon-9780300275889","title":"When You Listen to This Song","description":"A quietly powerful exploration of memory and forgetting, from one of France’s leading feminist public intellectuals  “A labyrinth of looping, interlocked narratives which spiral out beyond the Annex as the night progresses. . . . The penultimate pages of this elegiac book are a sword-thrust to the heart.”—Laurel Berger, Irish Times   In 2021, the award‑winning French writer Lola Lafon was granted permission to stay overnight—alone for ten hours—in the Annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. Lafon’s visit to this space, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, evoked the confinement and constant danger suffered by the Franks, and the family’s ghostly presence as well. “The night was inhabited, lit by reflections,” Lafon writes. “Some urgency still dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered.”   Exploring the many stories told about Anne Frank, Lafon tries to find the precocious girl at the heart of the venerated and exploited myth, a disciplined writer whose famous diary is in fact a wonderfully constructed literary work. 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