 | Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Buy used from: £3.00 A modern classic from a brilliantly evocative Yemen-resident Arabist
|
 | The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
Buy new: £5.64 / Used from: £3.50 Intimate and barely believable travel tale from Afghanistan immediately post 9/11
|
 | If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (Vintage classics) by Italo Calvino
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.56 Precocious novel offering a wonderful parody of mass audience publishing
|
 | Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £4.45 Hypnotic literature on the borderline of fact and fiction. Read them all.
|
 | Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Buy new: £6.49 / Used from: £0.89 A masterful piece of literature and a treasure trove of information - Dan Brown should cower in awe
|
 | Pnin (Penguin Modern Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: £5.73 / Used from: £3.41 Teasing, gently mocking account of American suburbia/academia in the 1950s
|
 | Bugles and a Tiger: My Life in the Gurkhas (Cassell Military Paperbacks) by John Masters
Peerless authentic account of coming of age into early adulthood as Gurkha officer in late 1930s.
|
 | Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-west Frontier by Charles Allen
Buy new: £7.66 / Used from: £0.01 Derring do and other tales from fathers of Empire in 19th Century India
|
 | Henry Porter: Three Great Novels: Remembrance Day, A Spy's Life, Empire State: "Remembrance Day", "A Spy's Life", "Empire State" by Henry Porter
Buy used from: £4.89 Best of the modern day spy thriller genre - Empire State particurlarly compelling
|
 | London Fields by Martin Amis
Buy new: £6.71 / Used from: £0.99 Allegedly quite a "male" book due to the allure of the central character, but still best of his output ("Experience" also unmissable). Great pastiche of London and the British
|
 | Staring at the Sun (Perennial Fiction Library) by Julian Barnes
Buy used from: £0.23 There are few poor Julian Barnes books but I would recommend this is a good entry point to his output. Some haunting ideas hidden in here.
|
 | Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £2.99 Strange but compelling biography of dogmatic, inventive 60s radical
|
 | The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru
Buy new: £6.57 / Used from: £0.01 One of the best new novelists - a gritty and clever spiral of East meets West over the course of a hundred years
|
 | Goodbye to All That (Essential Penguin) by Robert Graves
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £3.41 Harrowing but ultimately uplifting read - triptych with Sasson's "Diaries of a Fox Hunting Man/Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" and Regeneration by Pat Barker.
|
 | A Spy by Nature by Charles Cumming
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 This is the first work in his modern spy trilogy - it works well at capturing a certain London set in the last 10 years. The twist is that these ordinary people are wrapped up in extraordinary events
|
 | Amazing Disgrace by James Hamilton-Paterson
Buy new: £12.99 / Used from: £0.01 Wonderfully silly, pun-tastic and naughty. A great Summer read - much more fun than "Cooking with Fernet".
|
 | Speak for England by James Hawes
Buy new: £4.95 / Used from: £0.01 Another wonderfully silly Summer book - a great antidote to our times.
|
 | A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Kennedy Toole
Buy new: £5.92 / Used from: £2.87 Baffling, haunting and memorable. 1930s America through the eyes of a great comic character
|
Listmania!
