Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Railway
Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town`s alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender.
The Stars` Tennis Balls
Ned Maddstone has the world at his feet. He is handsome, talented and about to go to Cambridge, after which he is expected to follow his father into politics. But an unfortunate confrontation with a boy in his school results in a prank that goes badly wrong and suddenly he`s incarcerated – without chance of
Under the Sun – The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin is one of the most significant British novelists and travel writers of our time. His books have become modern-day classics which defy categorisation, inspired by and reflecting his incredible journeys. Tragically, Chatwin`s compelling narrative voice was cut off just as he had found it. `Bruce had just begun` said his friend, Salman Rushdie,
The Price Of Water in Finistere
`In the same way as there`s a partner for every person, there`s a place. All you have to do is find the one that`s yours among the billions that belong to someone else, you have to be awake, you have to choose.` With this conviction in mind, acclaimed Swedish writer Bodil Malmsten abandons her native
Darien Dogs
Jim Rogers once had everything: a successful career, the love of a beautiful woman, a Manhattan penthouse and more money than he knew what to do with. Now it had all gone wrong and he was in a seedy hotel in Panama realising that the prostitute he`d just been with had stolen his wallet. Though
Nine
Pawel, a young Polish businessman, is in trouble; in debt to loan sharks his only hope lies with former friends, many of whom are now prominent in Warsaw`s drug-dealing underground. Embarking on a desperate fool`s-gold chase through the city`s grimy apartments and creaking transport system Pawel struggles for survival as part of a generation adrift
Last Evenings on earth
This is the first collection by the universally acclaimed Chilean author to be published in English and it is an outstanding introduction to Bolano`s writing. Bolano`s narrators are grappling with their own private quests while living in the margins, on the edges, in constant flight from nightmarish threats. His stories are often witty, frequently melancholy
The L-Shaped Room
Lynne Reid Banks` compassionate first novel examines the stigma of unmarried motherhood in pre-pill, pre-Abortion Act Britain…”While the social climate has changed drastically since publication, a transgressive frisson still crackles from the pages” The Guardian. Pregnant by accident, kicked out of home by her father, 27-year-old Jane Graham goes to ground in the sort of
These Old Shades
Under the reign of Louis XV, corruption and intrigue have been allowed to blossom in France, and Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon and proud of his soubriquet `Satanas`, flourishes as well. Then, from a dark Parisian back alley, he plucks L-on, a red-headed urchin with strangely familiar looks, just in time for his
The Old Devils
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.
Trainspotting
A collection of short stories, set in the dark recesses of Edinburgh`s low-life in the late 1980’s, telling a trippy tale of a group of friends who use heroin, and of relationships they develop among themselves, with friends and with people who engage in other destructive behaviours. The collection describes the lives of the leading
The Road Taken
`Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the Twentieth Century.` Those words opened Michael Buerk`s first report on the Ethiopian famine for the 6 o`clock news on October 24th 1984. His reports sent shock waves round the
The Swallows of Kabul
Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen`s dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the
A Matter of Death and Life
Marital troubles? Sick of life? Suicide the answer? Why not get yourself a contract killer? Nothing easier, provided you communicate only by phone and box number. You give him your photograph, specify when and where to find you, then sit back and prepare to die. Murdered, you will be of greater interest than ever you
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco’s modern classic The Name of the Rose”takes place at a truly transcendental time in world history, when mankind was on the verge of ideas and discoveries that would violently throw it into a world more like today`s.The year is 1327- Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William
The Double: Enemy
Watching a rented video, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is shocked to notice that one of the actors is identical to him in every physical detail. He embarks on a secret quest to find his double and sets in motion a train of events that he cannot control. Saramago`s novel explores the nature of individuality and examines
Penguin Lost
Viktor – last seen in Death and the Penguin fleeing Mafia vengeance on an Antarctica-bound flight booked for Penguin Misha – seizes a heaven-sent opportunity to return to Kiev with a new identity. Clear now as to the enormity of abandoning Misha, then convalescent from a heart-transplant, Viktor determines to make amends. Viktor falls in
Distant Star
An unnamed narrator attempts to piece together the life and works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet`s regime in Chile. In the early 1970s Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was a little-known poet living in southern Chile. After the military coup of 1973 that brought in the dictatorship of General Pinochet, he embarked upon
The Moronic Inferno – Writings on America
At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit. Included in a gallery
Money: A Suicide Note
This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is
