![]() | Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
Buy new: £5.22 / Used from: £0.01 this one is actually called Reading in the Dark; also a masterpiece, should be a big, major book but it doesn't shout and not that many have heard
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![]() | No Bones by Anna Burns
Buy new: £4.52 / Used from: £0.01 A storming writer, whom few seem to have heard of ... the Russian roulette scene is one of best scenes in modern literature
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![]() | Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear v. 1 (Your Face Tomorrow Trilogy) by Javier Marias
Buy new: £6.39 Man's a genius, but not that well-known in English-speaking world. Really funny too - read 30pp even if maddened by an initially nutty-seeming style and you will not be able to stop
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![]() | Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility by Michel Leiris
Buy used from: £14.18 The best name of any book, the best cover of any book, and maybe the best book of any book. Read it for the little cross-heads: "HURT FOOT, BITTEN BUTTOCK, CUT HEAD'.
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![]() | Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalamov
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £7.18 Best book about the Soviet gulag, in short, pared-down stories. Read Berries - 3 pp. - and know you've read one of best stories of 20th century
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![]() | The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories
Buy used from: £0.01 Amazing writers not that well known in Britain; introduced me to Pauline Melville, whom I love
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![]() | Wide Sargasso Sea (Bloomsbury Classic) by Jean Rhys
Buy used from: £28.00 Another great book of 20th century, short, brilliant, and in a fiercely minor key; this pocket sized hardback edition is nice and not expensive - a must
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![]() | Poems and Fragments (Poetica) by Friedrich Hölderlin
Buy used from: £16.92 The best translations of Holderlin, great German Romantic poet - if there was one book on this list I'd reccomend it's this one
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![]() | Like by Ali Smith
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 The best writer in Britain. Better known for the awesome Hotel World, but this is my favourite book by her.
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![]() | The Passion According to G.H. (Emergent Literatures) by Clarice Lispector
Buy used from: £12.24 Yet another little-known major classic of 20th century, this one by a Brazilian writer (who was born Jewish in the Ukraine). Woman faces cockroach - philosophical without pretention
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![]() | Simone Weil: An Anthology by Simone Weil
Buy new: £7.59 / Used from: £6.12 She's wonderful - wonderful thinker, wonderful human being, wonderful woman, wonderful writer - on fire.
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![]() | A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia: And Other Stories by V Pelevin
Buy used from: £22.47 Modern Russian writer hated by some in Russia who built a giant fake toilet bowl outside the Kremlin and threw in books by him and others - what tribute!
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