The "inner darkness of the commercial age", with its self-confident hypocrisy and inability to "connect", confronts Bloomsbury-esque ideals and characters in this intimate masterpiece from 1... read more
This slim modernist novel written in 1939 is unforgettable. A young English woman returns to Paris after a long absence to take stock of her life. A study in bleakness, sadness and isolati... read more
Blaise Pascal famously said that 'all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".
In 1790 a young French aristocrat living in Turin is confined to a ... read more
First published in 1908, the brilliance of this superb novel is undiminished. A love story, or rather two, that starts in the Pension Bertolini in Florence. Catering for English tourists, it... read more
A slim, irresistible coming-of-age story in the tradition of Bonjour Tristesse and Call Me By Your Name, in which the arrival of two American brothers wreaks havoc on an English family over ... read more
DON'T PANIC! And console yourself that as gloomy as things seem, at least the Earth hasn't been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Self-isolation doesn't mean you can't trav... read more
Susanna, a stylish self-made woman and arch-observer of her Viennese neighbours, has secrets of her own to hide in the years before WWI. A more grown-up and melancholic novel than Ibbotson's... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A young dancer escapes a stifling existance in Cambridge to join a corps de ballet en route to the Manaus Opera House, on the ba... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A struggling opera company is hired for a single performance at an Austrian castle, but their under wardrobe mistress has somethi... read more
The story of a young girl growing up just before WW2: the late Morrison's first novel, published in 1970, still outstanding in its fiftieth anniversary year. In telling the 'how', she makes... read more
A story about a young woman in New York, newly married and nervous. Offill has mastered the curious genre of autofiction by shattering her books into deliciously pithy paragraphs: overheard ... read more
A brilliant tale of lexicographers whose lives are influenced in surprising ways by mountweazels. (Mountweazel, noun: a fake entry deliberately inserted into a dictionary or work of referenc... read more
A short novel about an ageing Irish republican, father to four and newly remarried, who has lost touch with his past. As he slopes towards his end, the landscape, villages and communities wh... read more
Two women in their mid twenties, stifled by marriage and the monotony of Hampstead society, come across an advertisement in The Times: 'To Those Who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small m... read more
This year's slim winner of the International Booker Prize is stunningly brilliant. Set during the Great War and narrated by a Senegalese soldier fighting for France on the Western Front, it ... read more
A delightful extended riff on books and reading from a man with various pseudonyms (Jennie Walker, Jack Robinson...). Its subtitle is 'A book about books, mostly. And bonfires, cliches, dyst... read more
This electric new translation of Kleist's novella of 1810 reminds us why it was so admired by writers such as Rilke and Kafka. MH brilliantly renders the austere yet wild narrative about a C... read more
The Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins descends on seventeen-century Essex, where he finds himself oddly fascinated by a 'peculiar' young woman. A historical novel with real bite, which rec... read more
A neglected Irish girl is fostered out to her mother's sister for the summer in this perfect, understated story. Almost too short even to be called a novella. Keegan is short-listed for this... read more
"...It was on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs Protheroe's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim...". Every adult and every childs needs to have Thomas's words and image... read more
The names have changed and the shamelessness causes the eyes to pop even further, but the threats to the freedoms Vidal loved and fought so hard to defend were already vivid in these excoria... read more
Another themed anthology from Daunt Newest in the Daunt Books series (At the Pond, In the Kitchen), this brings together essays from various Sandoe's luminaries (Penelope Lively, Francesca W... read more
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.