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Set during the American Civil War, 'Cold Mountain' is a masterpiece of fiction that combines political history, adventure and romance with a luminous evocation of a vanished America in all its savagery and splendour. Wounded and disillusioned by the fighting, a Confederate soldier deserts his post to walk back to Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada, the woman who is waiting for him. The hard, snowy trek across the disintegrating South brings him into contact with slaves, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and cruel. Ada, meanwhile, has learned to survive in a different world where old certainties have vanished. As their stories intertwine, 'Cold Mountain' asserts itself as an authentic American odyssey, powerfully emotional and spiritual.
Price: EUR 9.90
Vintage This thought provoking work from Graham Greene develops the theme of Russian roulette and broadens it into a fascinating complex parable about human greed, hate, compassion and salvation. Dr. Fischer, the notorious toothpaste millionaire, despises the human race since his wife betrayed him. So he sets out to test people he deems worthy of his challenge by discovering how far they will go for material posessions and how much self-respect they are prepared to lose in the process. The narrator, his son-in-law, is the only participant capable of resisting the lure. At the last of his infamously demeaning dinner parties, Dr. Fischer tempts his guests through a deadly version of the Book of Revelations and there is an unexpected finish. Green cleverly juxtaposes his characters so that no-one appears wholly good or evil. Dr. Fischer himself personifies all the pride, greed, and unforgiving aspects of a devil incarnate, but simultaneously arouses our compassion and involvement in his tragic plight.
Will is thirty-six but acts like a cool teenager with no particular goal or purpose in life. He goes to all the right parties, reads the right magazines, even finds a fool proof way of scoring with women, but he feels hollow and unreal even to himself. Then he meets Marcus, his opposite number, the oldest twelve year old in the world. Marcus listens to Mozart, looks after his depressed mother and wears all the wrong clothes. Between this unlikely pair develops a strong attachment when Marcus turns to Will for support. Perhaps if Will can teach Marcus how to be a kid and have fun, Marcus will help Will grow up and learn responsibility. This wonderfully sardonic look at 'boys', both young and old, is both heart-warming and funny!
Price: EUR 8.90
As a brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography,'On the Road' influenced a whole generation of young people on both sides of the Atlantic during the 50's and early 60's. It tells the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty as they take off on their motorbikes across the United States in their hedonistic search for release or fulfillment through drink, sex, drugs and music. The book itself is an explicit exploration of personal freedom and describes, in vivid detail, the lives of the 'Beat Generation', their restlessness, disillusionment and feelings of alienation, created by constantly chafing at the well worn limits of the American Dream.
Price: EUR 13.90
Arguably one of the best polemics ever written, 'Animal Farm' is a brilliant expose of the betrayals and perversions behind any impetus for social justice. It is the story of a revolution that went wrong and looks at what factors contributed to that failure. Each animal protrays a particular human trait- gullibility, honesty, laziness, pride- and each trait is set off against each other to see which animal wins the day. The pigs win the day because they resemble most the oppression they sought to eliminate, through their very similarity to men themselves! 'Animal Farm' is not a particularly hopeful fable but its message is so illuminating in its very simplicity of style and unerring accuracy that it remains a classic for all time.
(Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) When an ageing patriarch of a rich, thriving farm in Iowa decides to retire, he offers his land to his three daughters. For Ginny and Rose, who already live on the farm with their husbands, the offer makes sense and they view it as a just reward for all their hard work over the years. But the youngest daughter, Caroline, rejects the offer. Angered by her insubordinate behaviour, her father cuts her out of the inheritance. His action sets off an explosive series of events, uncovering past secrets buried on the farm which point to implicit abuse between father and daughters. Jane Smiley brilliantly uses the plot in Shakespeare's tragedy 'King Lear' as the basis for this subtle, dark examination of patriarchy and the women caught and bound by its power and limitations.
Price: EUR 12.30
'The Pearl' is a flawless parable about wealth and its pitfalls. When Kino, an impoverished Mexican pearl-diver finds 'The Pearl of the World', he believes his life will be transformed for the better. He will marry Juana and their son, Coyotito, can attend school. Impassioned by his dream, Kino is first oblivious to the greed, fear and envy the pearl arouses in his neighbours, until he is forced to confront both his own and their violence. Written with a haunting and lyrical simplicity, 'The Pearl' sets the values of the civilised world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.
A hopeful teenager called Felicia crosses the Irish Sea to England to find Johnny, the father of the child she is expecting. This story, which won the Whitbread Book Award, is her journey, traced with vivid and heart aching simplicity as she searches for the ever elusive Johnny, but encounters instead the seemingly harmless but very dangerous Mr. Hilditch, the podgy canteen catering manager, collector, befriender and destroyer of homeless young girls. The mounting tension in their relationship is exquisitely crafted as we are led unwittingly into the tragic, hidden world of the psychopath, his unbearably cruel mother, and whose possible redemption lies in the hands of a sensitive, warm hearted seventeen year old girl.
Price: EUR 12.90
This beautifully written, lyrical novel explores the lives of six characters, their interconnectedness and individuality, while following their outward lives from childhood to youth and middle age. Woolf charts their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. She also uses waves as a metaphor for the ever changing ebb and flow of life, its swelling emotions, constant movement and gravitational pull. On the last page, Woolf likens the wave to creativity and the ever present fight against inertia and death: 'And in me too the wave rises. It swells, it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new idea, something rising beneath like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying...'
Price: EUR 4.50
In this brilliant analysis of power behind the medical profession, Amis creates a doctor as an alter ego and lives that myth, the benign aspects with the malevolent. Only a writer as agile and provocative as Amis can give us a novel that not only rethinks history but reverses time itself! He presents us with Dr. Tod T. Friendly, and reverses his life by starting with his death. He then traces Friendly's life as a doctor and man, but always in reverse, moving him back in time until Auschwitz where Friendly, now under the name of Dr. Unverdorben, describes his participation in the extermination of the Jews. Here the reader experiences first hand the atrocities seen through the eyes and thoughts of a German doctor.
With the sensuous eye and profound sense of history, John Berger tells the story of a wedding. But the wedding takes place at a time and place where everything has changed and nothing is certain anymore. We are introduced to Ninon and Gino, bride and bridegroom. Their story and those of their respective parents are told by a blind Greek peddler who hears everything: waterfalls, the roar of a motorcycle, the chat of computer hackers and the music Ninon will dance to at the wedding. Through his senses, we witness a secret tragedy behind the events but are led through it by a sure and compassionate hand.
Two thousand years ago, four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for the salvation of their souls. In the blistering heat, sand and barren rocks, they encounter an evil merchant called Musa who holds them under his tyrannical power. But there is another faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean, who is thought to be dull witted but with the power to perform miracles. In this wonderfully imaginative and intelligent book, which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year, Jim Crace re-enacts the story of Jesus' ordeal in the desert with some very creative twists and turns.
