Category Archives: Travel Guides
West End Front: : The Wartime Secrets of London`s Grand Hotels
The Ritz, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge`s – during the Second World War they teemed with spies, con-artists, deposed royals and the exiled governments of Europe.Meet the girl from MI5 who had the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas; the barman who was appointed the keeper of Churchill`s private bottle of
Trickster Travels – In Search of Leo Africanus
Acclaimed historian Natalie Zemon Davis`s accessible and dramatic biography was widely hailed as a masterpiece and tells the story of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-century Moroccan who embodies the rich and complex exchanges between Europe and Africa during the Renaissance. “Trickster Travels” offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan
Bliss
Peter Carey`s astonishing novel is a fast-moving extravaganza, both funny and gripping, about a man who, recovering from death, is convinced that he is in hell.
On Canaan`s Side
`As they used to say in Ireland, the devil only comes into good things`. Narrated by Lilly Bere, “On Canaan`s Side” opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Dublin, at the end of the First World War, and follows
The Dead Yard – A Story of Modern Jamaica
The Dead Yard is a merciless look at the real Jamaica, the side the tourists rarely see. Since its independence from Britain in 1962, the country has sunk into a cesspit of gang warfare, drug crime and poverty. Haunted by the legacy of imperialism, its social and racial divisions seem entrenched. Its extraordinary musical tradition
Lost Cosmonaut
`Lost Cosmonaut` documents Daniel Kalder`s travels in the bizarre and mysterious worlds of Russia`s ethnic republics. Profane yet wise, honest and yet full of lies, this book is a blackly comic tour of the most alien planet in our cosmos: Earth.
Wrong About Japan: A Father`s Journey with His Son
In 2002, twice Booker-winning author Peter Carey travelled to Japan, accompanied by his twelve-year old son Charley, on a special kind of pilgrimage. In a stunning memoir-cum-travelogue Peter Carey charts this journey, inspired by Charley`s passion for Japanese Manga and anime, and explores his own resulting re-evaluation of Japan. Although graphically violent and disturbing, the
Lights Out in Wonderland
Gabriel Brockwell, aesthete, poet, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent, is looking to end it all with one last journey of excess. Taking in London, Tokyo, Berlin and the Galapagos Islands, “Lights Out In Wonderland” documents Gabriel Brockwell`s remarkable global odyssey. Committed to the pursuit of pleasure to obliterate all previous parties, Gabriel`s adventure takes in a
The Janissary Tree
A concubine is strangled in the Sultan`s palace harem, and a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city`s crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, the eunuch Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire.
Seven Tenths – The Sea and its thresholds
`Seven-Tenths` is James Hamilton-Paterson`s exploration of the sea. A blend of literature and science, it is here brought back into print in a new edition which includes the acclaimed essay `Sea Burial.`
Hav
Hav gives us Jan Morris at her most delightful and most suggestive. The city is a magical place – yet behind its arcane splendours are darker implications. The traditional Roof Race is peculiarly exciting, the waterfront is picturesque, the wistful call of a trumpeter from a distant rampart is wonderfully evocative, and every street corner
Newton and the Counterfeiter
Already famous throughout Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, Isaac Newton decided to take on the job of running the Royal Mint. And there, Newton became drawn into a battle with William Chaloner, the most skilful of counterfeiters, a man who not only got away with faking His Majesty`s coins (a crime
Housekeeping
Acclaimed on publication as a contemporary classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, orphansgrowing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America.Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother. Steeped in
Mission to China
In the sixteenth century, the vast and sophisticated empire of China lay almost entirely unknown to Western travellers. As global trade expanded, this land of reputedly boundless wealth, pale-faced women, and indecipherable tongues began to feed the fantasies of European merchants and adventurers. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, saw in this great people millions of souls
Tales from Firozsha Baag
In Tales from Firozsha Baag, Rohinton Mistry brilliantly captures the crowded, throbbing life of India. In the novel’s eleven intersecting stories, Mistry reveals the rich, complex patterns of life inside a Mumbai apartment building. The occupants – from Jaakaylee, the ghost-seer, through Najamai, the only owner of a refrigerator in Firozsha Baag, to Rustomji the
Golden Hill
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2016Winner of the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2017Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2017Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2017Shortlisted for the Authors` Club Best First Novel Award 2017Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year 2017A
Such a Long Journey
Such a Long Journey was Rohinton Mistry’s first novel, shortlisted for the *1991 Booker Prize*, and eventually winning the *1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize*. Set in Bombay against the backdrop of war in the Indian subcontinent and the birth of Bangladesh, ‘Such a Long Journey” tells the story of the peculiar way in which the conflict
Red Plenty
The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called `the planned economy`, which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed
A Fine Balance
Set in mid-1970s India, A Fine Balance is a subtle and compelling narrative about four unlikely characters who come together in circumstances no one could have foreseen soon after the government declares a `State of Internal Emergency`. Like much of Mistry’s other work, it engrosses the reader and engages them in such a way that
That They May Face the Rising Sun
`That They May Face the Rising Sun` was the last novel from John McGahern, one of Ireland`s greatest novelists. Joe and Kate Ruttledge have come to Ireland from London in search of a different life. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters
