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
Had Mrs Gaskell lived in Japan and a century later, she might have written this intimate portrait of four sisters of good family living in Osaka in somewhat straitened circumstances. Their e... 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
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 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 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
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 laureate's masterpiece is also availa... read more
It's 1939 and Josef Kavalier has just arrived in New York, smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Prague in the body of a Golem. In Brooklyn he meets his cousin Sammy Clayman and the two dive headlon... read more
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
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.
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
A selection from all stages of the late Polish poet's life and writing career. In clear, often humorous writing, his Eastern European sensibility connects with themes of human experience bot... 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
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
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
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
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
A brilliant historical novel whose subtitle 'A Romance' is deliciously deceptive. Sontag follows Sir William Hamilton (rechristened as 'The Cavalier' for the entire book), whose expat exploi... 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