LITERARY BENT – Writing at its best

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Naboko held the unique distinction of being one of the most important writers of the twentieth century in two separate languages, Russian and English. Known for his verbal mastery and bold plots, Nabokov fashioned a literary legacy that continues to grow in significance. In Pale Fire (1962), Nabokov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabokov) offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures:

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Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Miller_(novelist) and http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andrew-miller) extraordinary first novel, Ingenious Pain (1997), concerns the curious defect that seems to be the source of Dr. James Dyer’s ‘genius’ for the knife. It is his inability, since birth, to feel physical pain. Drive a pin through his hand, tear off a thumbnail, break his leg, flog him raw: he feels

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Lanark by Alasdair Gray

From its first publication in 1981, Lanark by Alasdair Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_Gray and http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk/) was hailed as a masterpiece and it has come to be widely regarded as the most remarkable and influential Scottish novel of the second half of the twentieth century. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide-ranging concerns, its playful narrative conveys at its

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Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan

Andrew O’Hagan (http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andrew-ohagan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_O’Hagan) has been a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and Granta magazine. Our Fathers (1999), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. In the novel we meet Hugh Provan who has been a Modernist hero. A dreamer, a Socialist, a

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Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

Edith Pearlman (http://www.edithpearlman.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Pearlman) writes intelligent, perceptive, funny and  beautiful stories. She is the author of three previous collections, Vaquita,  Love Among the Greats and How to Fall.  Her themes are the predicaments — odd, wry, funny and painful — of human life. Her characters are sophisticated, literate, relatively affluent and often musical. They travel, they read, they go to

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