Category Archives: Travel Guides
Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen
From the bestselling authors of “Why does E=mc2?” comes “The Quantum Universe”, in which Brian Cox, presenter of the BBC`s “Wonders of the Solar System” and “Wonders of the Universe”, and Jeff Forshaw go on a brilliantly ambitious mission to show that everyone can understand the deepest questions of science. But just what is quantum
Edifice Complex
Deyan Sudjic`s “The Edifice Complex: The Architecture of Power” is a fascinating exploration of the language of architecture as an insight into the psychology of power, from tyrants to billionaires. Why do presidents and prime ministers, tycoons and tyrants share such a fascination with grand designs? Is it to impress or terrify, to wield state
Breakfast at Tiffany`s
Truman Capote`s dazzling New York novel Breakfast at Tiffany`s that inspired the classic 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. `What I`ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany`s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and
The Penguin Book of American Short Stories
`American literature and the short story might be said to have come of age at about the same time, and this, along with something in the bustling and energetic American temperament, might go some way towards explaining why the two go together as well as they do`. This title includes twenty-one short stories from some
The Penguin Book of English Short Stories
As far as this superb collection of stories is concerned, the Golden Age of the English short story lies from its first wide acceptance in the middle of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth, a period when there were a great many outlets in Britain for shorter fictions.The Penguin Book of English
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
The `Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories`, edited by novelist and critic Malcolm Bradbury, is a collection of the finest short stories from our best loved authors, including Samuel Beckett, Graham Greene, William Golding, Kingsley Amis, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, J. G. Ballard, William Trevor, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Rose Tremain, Salman Rushdie, Graham
A Room with a View
E. M. Forster`s delightfully satiric comedy of manners “A Room with a View” is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. `You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you…` Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte,
A History Of The World In 100 Objects
Neil MacGregor`s “A History of the World in 100 Objects” takes a bold, original approach to human history, exploring past civilizations through the objects that defined them. Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, “A History of the World in 100 Objects” begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a
Lolita
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady`s twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he`ll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or
Wide Sargasso Sea
`There is no looking glass here and I don`t know what I am like now… Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?`If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman.
Austerlitz
“Austerlitz” is W. G. Sebald`s classic novel of post-war Europe. In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as
My Secret History
`Nothing on the shelf has quite prepared the reader for “My Secret History” …Parent saunters into the book aged fifteen, shouldering a .22 Mossberg rifle as earlier, more innocent American heroes used to tote a fishing pole. In his pocket is a paperback translation of Dante`s “Inferno” …He is a creature of naked and unquenchable
Sunrise With Seamonsters
“Sunrise with Sea Monsters” is Paul Theroux`s immensely entertaining collection of his shorter writings, ranging from sketches to critical essays. Each piece marks a new `confrontation with the world` and throws new light on the political and social climate of diverse cultures such as those of New York, Singapore, Ireland and Malawi. Others give a
My Other Life
The fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of many different guises, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit and life, tragedy and pathos, and imposed an order on it through careful editing. Life, it seems, has no apparent plot and so it can seem messier than fiction; sometimes it seems as if our hero
The Collected Stories
`No one ever sees me write. One of the triumphs of fiction is that it is created in the dark. It leaves my house in a plain wrapper, with no bloodstains. Unlike me, my stories are whole and indestructible.` Theroux`s canvas stretches from London to South-East Asia, from Boston to Paris, from Africa to Eastern
Millroy the Magician
Award-winning writer Paul Theroux tells a bewitching tale of circus magic and hypnotism which seems to hide a more sinister objective in his exquisite novel “Millroy the Magician”. Fourteen-year-old Jilly Farina walks into the tent at the County Fair and finds her life transformed. Fixing her with her hypnotic gaze, “Millroy the Magician” performs astonishing
Sir Vidia`s Shadow
“Sir Vidia`s Shadow” is a book that chronicles bestselling author Paul Theroux`s long friendship with writer V.S Naipaul from its beginning to untimely end with both funny and moving moments and stark honesty. “Both unputdownable and utterly engaging”. (Jonathan Raban, “The Times Literary Supplement”). “I started reading Theroux “Sir Vidia`s Shadow”, the story of his
Fresh Air Fiend, Travel Writings 1985-2000
Whether visiting the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river or crossing the United States in a railway car of unsurpassable luxury, relating his experiments with biblical dieting, or detailing the illneses and diseases suffered in half a lifetime of travel, Paul Theroux, the fresh-air fiend himself, is always an entertaining
The Consul`s File
Award-winning writer Paul Theroux takes us on a journey through small town Malaysia through the eyes of the exuberant Spencer Savage in his breathtaking novel “The Consul`s File”. Spencer Savage, a young American consul, is posted to Ayer Hitam, a small Malaysian town, in the 1970s. Told to close down this remote outpost in the
The Concubine of Shanghai
It`s China, 1907. Sixteen-year-old orphan Cassia is sold by her aunt to a brothel. There, she works as a lowly maid for Madame Emerald until a powerful and dangerous client plucks her from obscurity. Master Chang is the boss of the fearsome Shanghai Triad and he always gets what he wants. Despite her unbound feet
