When Matthew Lewis's "The Monk" was published in 1796, readers were shocked by this gripping and horrific novel. Lewis's story, which drove the House of Commons--of which he was a member--to deem him licentious and perverse, follows the abbot...
Winner Betty Trask award 1992
Shortlisted for Booker Prize 1993
Set in post-war Hungary between 1944 and 1956, this ferociously funny and bitterly sad story follows the fortunes of two young men in the pursuit of sex and the avoidance of work and...
Iris Murdoch's richly peopled novel revolves round a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their household in Dorset. The novel deals with love in its two aspects, the self-gratifying and the impersonal;...
Bulibasha is the title given to the King of the Gypsies, and on the East Coast of New Zealand two patriarchs fight to be proclaimed the king. Tamihana is the leader of the great Mahana family of shearers and sportsmen and women. Rupeni Poata is his...
France’s preeminent fiction writer is frequently credited with a kind of literary magic, an ability to craft stories with such precision and detail that readers are caught off guard by the powerful currents of emotion and imagination that lie just...
Augusto Monterroso is widely known for short stories characterized by brilliant satire and wit. Yet behind scathing allusions to the weaknesses and defects of the artistic and intellectual worlds, they show his generous and expansive sense of...