CHOICE CLASSICS – A pick from the enduring classics

A Passage to India (1924) concerns the ‘disconnects’ between Indian natives and British colonials played out around Chandrapore and the Marabar Caves in the days of the Raj. Forster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster) delicately but resolutely sticks the knife into the whole idea of colonial presence in India. The narrative is engaging and the characters memorable, particularly perhaps Miss Adela […]

Sixteen year old Vladimir Petrovich has a new neighbour at his parents’ country estate – the beautiful and alluring Zinaida. With hormones racing what’s a boy to do but fall hopelessly in love? Love and passion is a tricky and complex business, though, and Vladimir must undergo some character development before he comes to grips with

Meet school headmaster Mr. Thomas Gradgrind in his grim Northern mill town, Coketown (based on Preston). His mantra is strictly Utilitarian -‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’ Gradgrind approves of nothing but what is ‘severely workful’. Predictably, this approach to life does not enrich or develop the lives of his daughter

Joseph Conrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad) introduces us to Charles Marlow, an ambitious and adventurous sailor who is employed by an English trading company and sent to an African colony. There he travels up the Congo, visiting the trading stations which barter for ivory with the natives. On his journey he is told about a man named Kurtz whose station is the

Originally published as ‘A La Recherche du Temps Perdu‘ in 1913. In this opening volume of Proust’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust) masterpiece, the narrator seems at first to be launching a fairly traditional life-story. But after the prelude the narrator travels backwards rather than forwards in time, in order to tell the story of a love affair that

Charlotte Bronte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB) gives us plain young governess Jane Eyre who is not long out the orphanage. Plain, perhaps, but spirited, moral, and fiercely independent of mind. How will she succeed in a world in which the odds are so heavily stacked against her? Employed at the remote Thornfield Hall, Jane has to unravel the secrets of her moody master

Dostoyevsky’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dostoyevsky and http://www.fyodordostoevsky.com/) novel of 1880 is so profound it’s hard to summarise. The briefest of outlines would be that it concerns the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a corrupt, loutish landowner, and the aftermath for his sons: the passionate Dmitri, the coldly intellectual Ivan, the spiritual Alexey, and the bastard Smerdyakov. The Brothers Karamazov is

Shortly after the New Year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus). In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his