Even the Dogs Jon McGregor Bloomsbury, London, 2010 This is the back cover blurb for Even the Dogs: “On a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, a man’s body is found lying in his ruined flat. Found, and then taken away, examined, investigated and cremated. As the state begins its detailed, dispassionate [...]
The Museum of Innocence Orhan Pamuk Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009 This beautiful novel by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk uses the story of a rich Turkish man’s selfish love of a shop girl as a metaphor for the struggles of a Westernizing society that clings to its traditional view of women as chattel. In [...]
A Farewell to Arms — Hemingway Library Edition Ernest Hemingway Scribner, New York, 2012 Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms when he was thirty years old and it was an immediate success. Dubbed his bleakest novel, it was also his first bestseller. When this novel, set during the Italian campaign of World War 1, came [...]
Postcards Annie Proulx Fourth Estate, London, 1996 This is the first edition/first printing of the Fourth Estate Compact Classic edition of Postcards. It is in fine/fine condition and is signed in Proulx’s typical tiny autograph on the title page. At only 6″ x 4″, and with its wood grain patterned dust jacket, it is attractive and [...]
The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch Chatto and Windus, U.K. 1978 This novel, to my mind, is Iris Murdoch’s masterpiece. The cover art is called The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a famous woodblock print done in 1831 by Japanese artist Hokusai. The Sea, The Sea, which won the 1978 Booker Prize, is the story of [...]
On Chesil Beach Ian McEwan Alfred A. Knopf, Canada, 2007 This is one of my favourite short novels of all time. From a writer of so many wonderful works of fiction, it is hard to pick a favourite, but On Chesil Beach is at or near the top of the list for me. It was [...]
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon Random House, New York, 2000 The New York Review of Books called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Chabon’s magnum opus. It won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for several other major awards, including the Pen/Faulkner Award and The National Book Critics Circle [...]
On Chesil Beach — Limited Edition Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape, London, 2007 As I promised in an earlier post, here is one of the slipcased limited editions of McEwan’s excellent On Chesil Beach. This one is the cloth and paper bound edition limited to 1200 signed copies. There was also a full leather edition limited [...]
The Swimming Pool Library Alan Hollinghurst Chatto and Windus, London, 1988 This novel, with its many references to the early twentieth century gay English writer Ronald Firbank, won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Edmund White called it ‘…surely the best book about gay life yet written by an [...]
It’s Fine by Me Per Petterson Harvill Secker, London, 2011 Here is another engaging work of fiction by Norwegian novelist, translator and bookseller, Per Petterson. This is a unique and heartfelt take on the coming of age story. It is, of course, written in Petterson’s tender and understated style — so much so that its [...]