A hundred years ago, enlightened people in the western world were outraged by a holocaust in Africa which left millions dead. Conan Doyle wrote a pamphlet on the Congo atrocities which sold 25,000 copies in the first week alone. Yet today not one person in a thousand could say what the fuss was all about, this book tells the story.

Jean le Viste, a newly wealthy member of the French court, commissions the tapestries to hang in his chateau. Nicolas, his chosen designer, meets le Viste's wife Genevieve and his daughter Claude, both of whom take a keen interest in the tapestries. This novel is written by the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels .

Reissue, with new cover, of Anita Shreve's compelling fourth novel - set in German-occupied Belgium in 1943-44.

'Fear and Trembling' tells the story of a young woman who spends a year working at a Japanese firm. She soon learns that at the Yumimoto Corporation hierarchy means everything, and her time there soon turns into a comic nightmare of terror and self-abasement.

Edward Manners - thirty three and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890's Belgian painter Edgard Orst.

It is normal for British travel writers to head south for a destination that is hot, exotic, dangerous, or all three. The author of this book - a mixture of description and low-grade buffoonery - chose a country which is damp, safe and of legendary banality: Belgium.

In 'The Character of Rain', we learn that divinity is a difficult thing from which to recover, particularly if, like the child in this story, you have spent the first two and a half years of life in a nearly vegetative state.

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George.

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

A dark fairytale that will appeal to readers of Perfume or the films of Tim Burton

Offers a history of the monarchy of Belgium, a country artificially created in 1817. This book argues that the pan-European super-state resembles a 'Greater-Belgium' rather than a 'Greater-Switzerland'.

Uncovering hidden gems, this guide provides travellers with what they need to know to make the most of their time in Belgium and Luxembourg. It covers places ranging from the art galleries of Bruges to the forests of Ardennes and gives background information behind their art, history and politics and also the low-down on Belgium's best beers.

When Blanche's mother, who finds her own daughter rather colourless, bookish and dull, is also dazzled by Christa, she soon invites her to stay at the family house. Suddenly Christa can do no wrong and, as Blanche's parents scour their address books for long-lost friends to invite to dinner to meet the newcomer, their friendship sours and Blanche's already negligible self-confidence goes into a ..

Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Rupublic of the Congo was at the centre of the country's defiance towards the exploitation of its Belgian coloniser. Within months of independence he was arrested, tortured and executed. This book reveals the lies that have surrounded the murder.