A sparkling, intelligent novel, first published in 1964 and just re-issued by Faber & Faber. It is set over the course of a decadent fancy dress party on a snowy New Year's Eve, with all the... read more
A neurotic Italian businessman obsessed by his own hypochondria, Zeno Cosini recounts his early years to his psychoanalyst Dr S. With a cigarette clutched permanently between his fingers, he... read more
Insecure but fiercely precocious, the young Sontag devours everything that culture offers up to her. From her early teens through to late twenties, she craves not just the thrill of intellec... read more
In PL's beguiling masterpiece, a dying historian unravels the story of her life. The result is a kaleidoscopic account of the 20th Century, centring on the horror and splendour of Cairo duri... read more
This collection includes his commentary on the events of September 11th, 2001, and also his brave and penetrating piece on Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Cambridge, 1912: a twilight bicycle crash entwines Fred, a young Fellow in the all-male college of St Angelicus, with Daisy, harpooned by a good heart and a poor background. Reason collide... read more
Published in 1954, STW's wonderful last novel depicts an early Victorian merchant family on the Norfolk coast, harried by the good intentions of its flawed paterfamilias. Her coruscating int... read more
Rutter - a literature graduate who notes the etymological link between 'text' and 'textile' - travelled the British Isles researching the social history of wool and knitting. This charming a... read more
"It may be that all borderlands hum with the frequencies of the unconscious; after all, borders are where the fabric is thin". This one is that wild, once barbed strip between Turkey, Bulgar... read more
A cultural history of ice and icy places, written between Northern Greenland and the Bodleian Library, in the Alps and at the Kinross Curling Club. NC, a poet, deftly blends memoir, literary... read more
Jamie has just been named 'the Makar' - Scotland's poet laureate and you can see why in this essay collection: her quiet sentences are so polished they almost glisten. Whether she's windswep... read more
A history and call-to-action by a dynamic new thinker and campaigner, re-centring the importance of grassroots, structural change. Vital reading for the present (and any) cultural moment.
This fictionalised account of his life was one of the last things Kazantzakis wrote before his death. A vivid picture of his childhood in Crete, still occupied by the Ottoman Turks, develops... read more
Volume 3 of the Cairo Trilogy. Cairo's Old City is itself a protagonist in this magnificent saga of the Al-Jawad family and its fearsome patriarch, from 1917 to late in WW2. the Nobel laurea... read more
Volume 2 of the Cairo Trilogy. Cairo's Old City is itself a protagonist in this magnificent saga of the Al-Jawad family and its fearsome patriarch, from 1917 to late in WW2. the Nobel laurea... read more
Volume 1 of the Cairo Trilogy (which can be read on its own just as well). Cairo's Old City is itself a protagonist in this magnificent saga of the Al-Jawad family and its fearsome patriarch... read more
The characters in this affecting and magnificent tale of C19th village life are superbly imagined through exquisite, often very funny dialogue. The characters in this magnificent tale of vil... read more
In his memoirs, Gorbachev wrote that the explosion at Chernobyl's power plant was "perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union." Plokhy's diagnosis is meticulous and his minut... read more
A brilliant, perky novella about the foibles of Professor Timofey Pnin, an eccentric Russian teacher at a school in New England. 'Pninian' should really be part of our daily vocabulary; it w... read more
Two sumptuous novellas, set in the mid-1860s and 1870s, weave together experiences of life, love, loss and connection. The first, 'Morpho Eugenia', does so through the earthly plane of insec... read more
Acute and wide-ranging, these disparate glimpses come together (ha!) to make up a picture not only of the 'Fab Four' but of the new and colourful 1960s' world that they helped to usher in. ... read more
He was a resistance fighter in WW2 Budapest, a travel photographer in South America and an abusive patriarch in 70s New York - but Steven Faludi disappeared from his daughter's life decades ... read more
This marvellous memoir of her youth in Tottenham ends when her theatrical career takes off: forthright, transparent, dry, funny - there is nothing remotely precious about Dame Eileen's accou... read more
Shortlisted for both the Women's Fiction Prize (2022) and the Booker (2021), this stirring novel pulls together the lives of a fictional female aviator in the 1950s aiming to circumnavigate ... read more