As explosive and immediate today as when it was originally published in 1933, 'Man's Fate' ('La Condition Humaine'), an account of a crucial episode in the early days of the Chinese Revolution, foreshadows the contemporary world and brings to...
They took everything from me. Everything.’ So says the central character of Nightspawn, John Banville’s elusive, first novel, in which the author rehearses now familiar attributes: his humour, ironies, and brilliant knowing. In the arid setting...
Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s magnificent Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied and self-destructively naive protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life.
Having left a wife and a livelihood in...
Fifty years after World War III, the residents of New Orleans struggle daily just to survive. Despite being surrounded by the waters of the Mississippi, latent radiation and pollution have made clean drinking water hard to come by. So Rue has...
Alan Hollinghurst’s tour-de-force debut, The Swimming-Pool Library, was a literary sensation. Edmund White called it “the best book on gay life yet written by an English author.” The Village Voice described it as “buoyant, smart,...
Flight Lieutenant Silk, a twice-decorated Lancaster pilot in WW II, rejoins the R.A.F. and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And...