What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe World According to Garp
John Irving · 568 pages
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 412 pages
The battle of competing translations, a new publishing phenomenon which began with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, now offers two rival American editions of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Mirra Ginsburg's (Grove Press) version is pointedly grotesque: she delights in the sharp, spinning, impressionistic phrase. Her Bulgakov reminds one of the virtuoso effects encountered in Za
Nazi Literature in the Americas
Roberto Bolano · 272 pages
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino · 260 pages
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking in
Women
Charles Bukowski · 297 pages
Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that woul
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller · 321 pages
A stream-of-consciousness story of a poverty-stricken young American, living in Paris.
Look at the Harlequins!
Vladimir Nabokov · 241 pages
Under the Net
Iris Murdoch · 286 pages
Iris Murdoch's first novel.Iris Murdoch's first novel is a gem - solid and sparkling. Set in a part of London, where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. Meeting again, after some years, an old f
True At First Light: A Fictional Memoir
Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway · 319 pages
"Both revealing self-portrait and dramatic fictional chronicle of his final African safari, Ernest Hemingway's last unpublished work was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953." (From the 1999 hardback edition dustjacket.)
The Nix
Nathan Hill · 640 pages
"An epic novel about a son, the mother who left him as a child, and how his search to uncover the secrets of her life leads him to reclaim his own"--
The Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac · 204 pages
The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s. The book co
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
George Orwell · 264 pages
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through th
Deception
Philip Roth · 208 pages
At the center of the novel are Philip and his lover, an Englishwoman compromised by a humiliating marriage, and the conversation that ensues before and after making love.
Beatrice and Virgil
Yann Martel · 224 pages
Fate takes many forms. . . . When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.With all the spirit and originality that
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Mario Vargas Llosa · 374 pages
Reality merges with fantasy in this hilarious comic novel about the world of radio soap operas and the pitfalls of forbidden passion by the bestselling author of The Storyteller. Sexy, sophisticated, older Aunt Julia, now divorced, seeks a new mate who can support her in high style. She finds instead her libidinous nephew, and their affair shocks both family and community.
Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco · 641 pages
English: An Enthralling Mystery, a breathtaking rollercoaster ride through a world of ideas and aberrations, an adventure into the modern mind. One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, an Adolphe Menjou mustache, wears maroon socks, and once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar
The Murdstone Trilogy
Mal Peet · 313 pages
How hard can it be to write a fantasy trilogy? When YA author Philip Murdstone's star starts to wane, his agent, the ruthless Minerva Cinch, convinces him that his only hope is to write a sword-and-sorcery blockbuster. Unfortunately, Philip is utterly unsuited to the task. In a dark hour, a dwarfish stranger comes to his rescue. But the deal he makes with Pocket Wellfair turns out to have Faustian
Bartleby & Co.
Enrique Vila-Matas · 192 pages
Tells the story of a hunchback who is a failed writer that has no luck with women. He is a self-described "Bartleby", named after the Herman Melville character; someone who, when asked to reveal information about themselves, will respond that they "would prefer not to."
This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Diaz · 240 pages
This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love, as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.
Shoplifting from American Apparel
Tao Lin · 112 pages
Set mostly in Manhattan--although also featuring Atlantic City, Brooklyn, GMail Chat, and Gainsville, Florida--this autobiographical novella, spanning two years in the life of a young writer with a cultish following, has been described by the author as "A shoplifting book about vague relationships," "2 parts shoplifting arrest, 5 parts vague relationship issues," and "An ultimately life-affirming
City of Glass
Paul Auster · 203 pages
A late-night phone call from a stranger involves Quinn, a mystery writer, in a baffling murder case stranger than his novels.
The Fraud
Zadie Smith · 520 pages
Truth and justice tested by a 19th-century author and his cousin, and a fraudulent pretender and his manumitted witness.
Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 202 pages
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.
Ways to Disappear
Idra Novey · 258 pages
When Brazilian novelist Beatriz Yagoda suddenly disappears, her American translator Emma travels to Brazil to solve the mystery while fending off rapacious loan sharks and the washed-up editor who made Yagoda famous.