Μυθιστόρημα

From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. Even with his improvised bat (the Collins Classic edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not so adept, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis Team and stalwart of the Kardomah coffee bar, his game improves. Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

This novel, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. Maggie is unable to adapt to her community or break free from it, and the result, on more than one level, is tragedy.

When our heroine Ophelia is promoted to Vice-storyteller by Farouk, the ancestral Spirit of Pole, she finds herself unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight. Now that her powers-and the threat they present to the secretive denizens of this new world-are known to all, she is forced to reveal the nefarious plots that have been brewing beneath the golden rafters of Citaceleste and to throw herself into the political machinations of the Pole. In this perilous situation, the only person she may be able to trust is Thorn, her enigmatic fiance. As one after another influential courtier vanishes in suspicious circumstances, Ophelia again finds herself unintentionally implicated in an investigation that will lead her to see beyond Pole's many illusions to the heart of the formidable truth.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Upton Sinclair earned a reputation as a prolific writer, committed socialist, and political activist. He gained enormous popularity when his eloquent 1906 novel The Jungle exposed conditions in the U.S. meat-packing industry, and years later, he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his series tale, Dragon's Teeth. In The Money Changers, Sinclair explores the Wall Street panic of 1907 in novel form, exposing greed and corruption within the American system. Originally published a century ago, it's a cautionary tale with a theme that could have been ripped from today's headlines. Allan Montague is a prosperous New York lawyer trying to help an old friend from Mississippi who's just moved to the city. Young widow Lucy Dupree, whose beauty makes men's hearts skip a beat, is eager to move forward and establish herself in the right social circles. As a favor, Montague offers to help Lucy sell a block of stock. But with that one transaction, they unwittingly become tangled in a web of unscrupulous power brokers who've concocted a daring scheme to manipulate the stock market for personal gain. If their plan succeeds, a rival trust company will fall, sparking a Wall Street bloodbath . . . and financial chaos throughout the world!

"A masterpiece of the Gothic genre, The Monk tells the story of the Capuchin friar Ambrosio and his fall from grace through desire, greed and lust. Favourably reviewed at first, the novel was later so widely and raucously denounced for its perceived licentiousness, blasphemy and corrupting influence that Lewis had to remove controversial passages from future editions. Unsurprisingly, amidst this furore, the book was immensely popular with the reading public.

Suffused with eroticism, and focusing on the corrupting influence of power, The Monk pioneered a shocking new form of Gothic novel, where elements such as mob violence, incest and brutal murder replaced the gentler horrors of earlier practitioners of the genre."

Charles Strickland, a conventional stockbroker, abandons his wife and children for Paris and Tahiti, to live his life as a painter. Whilst his betrayal of family, duty and honour gives him the freedom to achieve greatness, his decision leads to an obsession which carries severe implications. Inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satiric caricature of Edwardian conventions and a vivid portrayal of the mentality of a genius.

Dickens's final novel, left unfinished at his death, is a tale of mystery whose fast-paced action takes place in an ancient cathedral city and in some of the darkest places in nineteenth century London. Drugs, sexual obsession, colonial adventuring and puzzles about identity are among the novel's themes. At the centre of the plot lie the baffling disappearance of Edwin Drood and the many explanations of his whereabouts.

'Splendid ... le Carre shows how endowed he is with the gift of storytelling' The TimesAldo Cassidy is a cautious man. He has a pleasant family, drives a safe, expensive car and wears luxurious clothes.

But his soothing existence is upended when he meets Shamus and Helen - a dazzling, bohemian couple who are everything he is not. As he is drawn into their reckless and unpredictable orbit, all that Cassidy thought he understood about his orderly life begins to unravel. Told with le Carre's lacerating wit and penetrating observation, The Naive and Sentimental Lover is an acerbic satire of middle-class hypocrisies.

'Le Carre is the equal of any novelist now writing' Guardian

When her grandmother learned of Ashima's pregnancy, she was particularly thrilled at the prospect of naming the family's first sahib. And so Ashima and Ashoke have agreed to put off the decision of what to name the baby until a letter comes...'

For now, the label on his hospital cot reads simply BABY BOY GANGULI. But as time passes and still no letter arrives from India, American bureaucracy takes over and demands that 'baby boy Ganguli' be given a name. In a panic, his father decides to nickname him 'Gogol' - after his favourite writer.

Brought up as an Indian in suburban America, Gogol Ganguli soon finds himself itching to cast off his awkward name, just as he longs to leave behind the inherited values of his Bengali parents. And so he sets off on his own path through life, a path strewn with conflicting loyalties, love and loss...

Spanning three decades and crossing continents, Jhumpa Lahiri's much-anticipated first novel is a triumph of humane story-telling. Elegant, subtle and moving, 'The Namesake' is for everyone who loved the clarity, sympathy and grace of Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut story collection, 'Interpreter of Maladies'.

'Brilliant. A Citizen Kane of a novel' Daily Telegraph__________________________________Meet John James Todd:Scotsman, auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - and 'subversive element'Born in 1899, John James Todd is one of the great, failed geniuses of the last century. His reminiscences, collected in The New Confessions, take us from Edinburgh to the Western Front, the Berlin film-world in the Twenties to Hollywood in the Thirties, Forties and beyond. Suffering imprisonment, shooting, marriage, fatherhood, divorce and McCarthyism, Todd is a hostage to good fortune, ill-judgement, bad luck, the vast sweep of history and the cruel, cruel hand of fate . . . __________________________________'A magnificent feat of storytelling and panoramic reconstruction' Observer'Paced and plotted with sinewy, unfailing skill . . . Boyd has given us a work of rich, ripe and immensely enjoyable entertainment' Sunday Times'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Independent