Robert Coover’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Coover) controversial best-seller, The Public Burning (1977) has since emerged as one of the most influential novels of our time. The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and […]

In the swinging culture of sixties’ London, Canadian Mortimer Griffin is a beleaguered editor adrift in a sea of hypocrisy and deceit. Alone in a world where nobody shares his values but everyone wants the same things, Mortimer must navigate the currents of these changing times. Richler’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Richler) eccentric cast of characters include the gorgeous Polly,

This book by Mervyn Peake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn_Peake) is set in the huge castle of Gormenghast, a vast landscape of crumbling towers and ivy-filled quadrangles that has for centuries been the hereditary residence of the Groan family and with them a legion of servants. The Groan family is headed by Lord Sepulchrave the seventy-sixth Earl of Groan. He

Three stories are told in this book by William Styron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Styron): a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman’s past – one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction. Made into a memorable

Heaven, reported St John in Revelation, was a cubical city 12,000 furlongs high made of ‘pure gold, like unto clear glass’. That was 1,900 years ago, and Heaven as it is today has changed out of all recognition. This book is the account of a recent journey to the metropolis at the nerve-centre of the

This novel from Norman Mailer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer) was over a decade in the making. Swiftly Ancient Evenings (1983, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Evenings) pulls its reader inside a starnge fictional frame of consciousness. A soul or body entombed is struggling to burst free, desperate not alone for light and air but for prayer and story – promised comforters that have been treacherously withheld

This is an addictive read, combining the tantalising page turning plotlines of a blockbuster with the erudition of Anthony Burgess and the light comic touch of Alison Lurie. Robertson Davies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2441/the-art-of-fiction-no-107-robertson-davies) introduces us to more than just a novel. He creates for us a world populated by scholars, priests, witches and itinerants, whose journey leads to

In 1969, Philip Roth’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roth) most famous character, the sex-obsessed Alexander Portnoy confessed to his analyst: ‘What I’m saying, Doctor, is that I don’t seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds – as though through fucking I will discover America.’ That was 40 years ago, but