Fans of Lee Child (http://www.leechild.com/) and his detective Jack Reacher will be delighted that the author has delivered again in 2015. Here is a summary of the detective’s 20th adventure to tempt you away from doing anything useful. Jack Reacher wants to know how a town could come to be called ‘Mother’s Rest’. But no one will tell him. […]
Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/dec/21/artsandhumanities.highereducation) — known as W.G. Sebald or Max Sebald — was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been
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Alistair Moffat was born and bred in the Scottish Borders. A former Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Director of Programmes at Scottish Television, he now runs the Borders Book Festival. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books and is a former Rector of St. Andrews University. In this new single volume
Alan Furst (born February 20, 1941, http://www.alanfurst.net/) is an American author of historical spy novels. He has been called ‘an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene’, whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to
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André Philippus Brink, (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015, http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andra-brink) was a South African novelist. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and was a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. His 1979 novel A Dry White Season is as startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, even knowing
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In Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28) the eponymous anti-hero is informed of the death of his wife. Shakespeare then gives him one of the classic soliloquiys in all literature. It is a despairing reflection on the brevity and futility of human life. ‘She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such
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Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami ) is a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (being three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Birdcatcher) is an
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Alan James Hollinghurst, FRSL, (born 26 May 1954, http://literature.britishcouncil.org/alan-hollinghurst and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hollinghurst) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize for this novel, The Line of Beauty. The summary is
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If your preference is for the controversial, try reading The Elementary Particles (2000) by Michel Houellebecq (http://www.houellebecq.info/english.php and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq). This edition was a translation from the French by Frank Wynne. It has otherwise been translated as ‘Atomised’. The summary is simple enough. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love
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