Not just bar-room belles and pioneers wearing thin the soles of their boots on their immense journeys to the west, but Chinese laundresses and displaced native Americans too. Real stories, w... read more
An important book about historical accountability, which was sparked by the author's discovery that a convicted Nazi who had been dead for 50 years was about to have his crimes pardoned in a... read more
After comparing the great emperors of antiquity, Lieven turns to the Habsburg, Russian, Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese emperors. Imperial in ambition and achievement.
Subtitled 'a true story of Russian money-laundering, state-sponsored murder, and surviving Vladimir Putin's wrath': BB's exposé of the Magnitsky affair and its subsequent international rami... read more
Argues that the West's strategy with China has failed: trade and contact with the West have left it more aggressive, repressive and threatening than ever.
An ambitious book that traces the collapse of empires and their ramifications in contemporary Eurasian geopolitics - in particular Iran, China, Turkey and Russia.
An original and entertaining book on the smoke and mirrors of the modern consumer's world - case studies that take apart our ideas of the real and the fake, of appearance and deception.
Turkel was born in a Chinese 're-education' camp, and finally got to the US where he trained as a lawyer, specialising in Uyghur activism. This is his account of China's horrendous oppressio... read more
A cerebral and determined young woman at Harvard vigorously explores the gaps between life and art: an entertaining and lively sequel to Batuman's wonderful The Idiot.
A very clever debut from a distinguished hand in the art world: a Cambridge don rather stuck in his ways is repelled by an outbreak of modern art in his quad. Wafted on a cloud of academic d... read more
A Crimean War hero's divorce & remarriage causes two lines of descendants, who meet up again one summer in Devon in the 1970s. Ructions ensue. Shrewdly observed and compelling.
A rollocking historical novel set in Renaissance Venice: an artist sets his heart on a miraculous new pigment, only to find himself caught up in conspiracies, a love affair, violence, obsess... read more
A new technology that can download a person's memory and then allows it to be shared - all of it - has taken the world by storm. Clever, funny, disconcerting.
Against the backdrop of WW2 and its aftermath, a young Italian woman marries and moves to her husband's village in the south. Ginzburg's characteristically limpid prose harbours may details ... read more
A Yorkshire childhood, remembered in lockdown, collides with immense global forces. Hunters in the Snow, Hildyard's previous novel - her first - was excellent.
A young woman in Tokyo takes a few tentative steps outward after years of isolation. Kawakami's unsettling lyricism and candour about ordinary modern lives have made her one of Japan's most ... read more
A powerful debut novel set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles: a young woman embarks on an affair with a married man, and - inevitably - there are consequences, sharpened by the layerin... read more
A second novel from the author of Preparation for the Next Life, in which a young man confronts his estranged father and protects his ailing mother. Lish's writing is spare but precise, wit... read more
A new novel by the author of The Heavens which recalls Usula le Guin's flawed Utopia in which one person's constant suffering pays for the perpetual bliss of all others.
A retired Vietnam veteran receives a package in the post that shows him that he has more to do before he is done with the past. A desert crossing blurs with his inner journey - a very fine n... read more