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
Written in 2015 by the chess grandmaster and human rights activist, this passionate indictment of Russian kleptocracy is also a warning against the complacency of Western democracies in the ... read more
Reframes an unruly passage of Lawrence's life - from Cornwall in 1915, to Italy and Central America - into a neat Dantean triptych: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. Whether you loathe or ado... read more
Casey's first novel, recently reissued, is set on an imaginary island off the west coast of Ireland. It traces the conflict between traditional rural values and those of the Swinging Sixtie... read more
Dedicated to her friend Tirzah Garwood, this is a deliciously charming and funny mix of commonplace book and diary from the 1950s, illustrated with woodcuts not by Tirzah as intended (she ha... read more
Simms and Medd were part of the mass-release of Allied prisoners when Italy surrendered in 1943. Their escape story - and the bravery and kindness of the Italians who helped them on their ... read more
Refracts an abusive relationship through a range of genre and fairytale tropes. A haunting work that is part-memoir and part-literary theory.
There is also a paperback edition of this boo... 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
The great Russian poet became a master of the English language in his long American exile: these essays evoke his youth in post-WW2 Leningrad with memorable portraits of his parents, in whom... 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
Tesson practised living in extreme cold on the shores of Lake Baikal a few years ago, memorably and entrancingly recounted in Consolations of the Forest. Here he has renounced both solitude ... read more