In A Farewell to Arms (1929) a young American volunteer goes to Italy during the First World War. This is a love story interwoven with a savage indictment of the brutalities of war. It is all the more remarkable given the coolness and impartiality of tone with which the author delivers the narrative. One may not warm […]
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Interested in sex? No? OK, you need not read this recent history of social attitudes towards the grisly function. Philip Larkin famously wrote in ‘Annus Mirabilis’ Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. The observation is both
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Written by an anonymous English monk during the late fourteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing is a sublime expression of what separates God from humanity and is widely regarded as a hallmark of Western literature and spirituality. It stands in the tradition of the ‘Via Negativa’. This suggests that one must give up all conceptual
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Le Grand Meaulnes is a modern French classic. François Seurel, the narrator, is the son a village schoolmaster in the Sologne, a region of lakes and sandy forests in North Central France. A new boy Augustin Meaulnes, who comes from a poor background, arrives in class but soon disappears. Later he returns from an escapade
American thriller writer Clive Cussler (http://clive-cussler-books.com/) has seen over 50 titles published under his name. He has had 17 consecutive titles reach The New York Times fiction best seller list. His fiction leans toward the fantastical and glamorous and is powerfully plot driven. In this outing of 2012 we are introduced to the greatest advance in American defense
Simon Kernick (http://www.simonkernick.com/about/) has been steadily building a reputation for himself as a thriller writer over the last decade. As in many an episode of ‘Spooks’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooks) the authorities have a limited time to prevent the unimaginable happening. The brief synopsis for this 2013 title is as follows. It’s 8am and an explosion blasts through a cafe in
Ever since the publication of Bravo Two Zero in 1993 SAS Sergeant Andy McNab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_McNab) has had an ardent following for the gritty realism of his military action thrillers. The gripping 2012 follow-up to the bestselling War Torn has the following synopsis. Writing with Kym Jordan, Andy McNab has created a stunning sequel to his bestselling novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man This is Joyce’s semi-autobiographical portrait of his alter ego Stephen Dedalus as he struggles free from his Irish Catholic heritage and of his eventual abandonment of Ireland. The portrait begins with Stephen as a young child, listening to the talk around the dinner table of Irish
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The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age The Professor of Human Biology at Stanford (http://nathanwolfe.net/) tells a chilling tale. The virus has probably been around since the evolution of the first cell. This is a teensy bit longer than humans have been around. Three and a half billion years longer, actually. So
