After a problematic start, Andrei Makine is getting better with every new book. His earlier setbacks were partly due to the snobbery of the French, who did not believe that a Russian could write better than they could in their own language. When...
Enter the world of Evie Steppman, born into the dying days of the British Empire in Nigeria. It's loud and cacophonous. Why? Because Evie can hear things no one else can. Although she's too young to understand all the sounds she takes in, she hoards...
Late on night, the body of a young man is delivered to the morgue of an Italian town. The next day's newspapers report that he was killed in a police raid, and that went by the obviously false name "Carlo Nobodi." Spino, the morgue attendant on duty...
The Egoist by George Meredith recounts the story of self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne and his attempts at marriage; jilted by his first bride-to-be, he vacillates between the sentimental Laetitia Dale and the strong-willed Clara Middleton....
“A fine book, a rich, achingly painful story that is made for all of us who have ever felt a hunger for the mountains. Few books have so accurately described the way stony heights can define one’s sense of joy and rightness. And it is an...
Some people will tell you that world-class fame is better than living to a contented old age. Other people disagree. One of those other people might possibly be the protagonist of The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging...
Opening on the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, on the remote north-west coast of England, The Electric Michelangelo is a novel of love, loss and the art of tattooing. Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, it is an exquisitely rendered...
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the...
Told from the precocious perspective of fourteen-year-old Peter, The Elephant Keepers' Children is about three siblings and how they deal with life alongside their eccentric parents. Peter's father is a vicar, his mother is an artisan, and both are...