I’ve given up, and I’m not afraid. Only there’s something I would like to understand. And I don’t think anyone can explain it. You see, I know it’s the end for me. I know it, but I can’t quite believe it, I can’t feel it. It’s so strange. There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that it’s something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now it’s over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, and it isn’t that they are indifferent, it’s just that they don’t know, they don’t know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there’s something about it that they should understand. I don’t understand it myself, but that’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?

Ayn Rand, We the Living

Meine Gedichte brauche ich dazu nicht mehr; in meinen Bücherregalen ist das alles viel besser gesagt. Aber was würde mit einem passieren, wenn das schon ein Grund wäre, etwas aufzugeben? Wo blieben wir alle? So schreibe ich weiter, doch oft genug erscheint es mir grau und papieren gegen den Abendhimmel, der jetzt über den Dächern weit und apfelfarben wird, während der violette Aschenregen der Dämmerung schon die Straße füllt.

Erich Maria Remarque, Der schwarze Obelisk

Amazon Kindle e-book reader

Reading this post recently, I found myself asking why ebooks haven’t really taken off as a medium. Certainly more recent efforts, such as Amazon’s Kindle, have helped to reignite the market after a rather dubious development period over the past decade or so, but if one compares the ubiquity of mobile phones or digital audio players, e-books are entirely missing from the landscape.¹

In purely utilitarian terms, should the technology ever be fully and appropriately used, ebooks have a lot to offer over their paper counterparts. There are far fewer requirements and resources needed for production, and distribution is much easier. Whilst a device on which to read ebooks might outweigh a single volume, additional books add nothing, and in terms of transporting books en mass, ebooks are clearly in favour. The ability to flick through a paper volume might be lost in the electronic form, but this is clearly compensated for by vastly improved tools for search and cross-referencing. Likewise combining other forms of media such as video and audio is a perfectly reasonable conception with ebooks, that the paper variety can’t really compete with on any level. They’re also more easily manipulable, in terms of being able to zoom, highlight or simple leave your own annotations about the place. All of which is to say nothing of the potential advantages for newspapers and other periodicals.

Yet although the technology is certainly in a position to deliver an entirely new experience for readers, the potential has not really been tapped to any great extent, and in fact it would appear as though it is being deliberately held back. Tempting as the current technology may appear, there are still many questions left unanswered that prevent any real rapid transfer. Can books somehow be backed up to prevent possible corruption? What happens to the titles previously bought should one buy a different reader? When buying a paper book, customers can feel confident that their purchase is physically in their position, to use as they see fit. Even simple, everyday acts that we would normally take for granted with a paper book,² such as photocopying pages or lending it  to a friend, suddenly become problematic when dealing with the ebook equivalent. And what about being able to sell a book on when you’re finished with it? In addition, the recent case of Amazon withdrawing books sold for their Kindle reader,³ including deleting the items from user’s devices, highlights yet one more issue that users face when choosing between paper and electronic formats.

The current situation reminds me very much of that surrounding the invention and spread of mp3s in the later 1990s. Whilst the format gained in popularity and notoriety in the years following its publication in 1994-5, the music industry treated the news entirely as a threat to its position, and sought to localise and stifle the Internet phenomenon. When one considers that it wasn’t until mid-2003 that today’s largest online music retailer iTunes opened its e-doors, it becomes clear just how difficult working against such conservative forces can be. It’s an interesting phenomenon, given that most technological advances are met with very early attempts to capitalise upon them, that such an opportunity went virtually ignored and even shunned for almost a decade, before a success story could be made out of it. Perhaps all that is needed to really revolutionise the world of publishing is that mp3 format of ebooks, a format that will provide readers both the security of ownership that a regular paper equivalent manifests, combined with every advantage today’s technology can provide. That format for books has nothing to do with size and ease of distribution, as it did with music, rather a format that will open up a digital format to all publishers, and make the rather fledgling e-publishing market explode.

1. According to The Guardian in April 2008, ebooks accounted for less than 1% of the total publishing market, albeit this share has no doubt increased since.
2. Though with the potential to infringe upon copyright laws.
3. Pictured above. Image by davidking via Flickr.

“The Liar” by Stephen Fry

The Liar

This wasn’t really one on my reading list, rather something I was asked to read for my opinion. I read Fry’s autobiographical Moab is my Washpot some time ago and found it a fairly interesting tale, though wasn’t particularly attracted enough to turn to his works of fiction. Fry’s reputation obviously precedes him, and despite The Liar being his first work of fiction, came with some reasonable acclaim and decent reviews.

Plunging in, it quickly became clear how much the plot owes to Fry’s own life (at least judging from what was revealed in Moab). At every turn I was reminded of snippets of that work of autobiography, stretched and bedecked with fansifications from Fry’s extremely fertile mind. Whilst I’ve no doubt many of the characters are based on real people, the book very much feels aloof from reality and announces itself as such. But such an approach doesn’t make a book bad. What The Liar lacked was anything to appeal to it beyond the language. Plot, such as there was, often became confusing, with frequent unmarked jumps of scene and timeframe. Whilst they weren’t so outrageous as to get the reader lost, they did sometimes require a bit of backtracking, particularly when picking the book up again. Added to that were some sections in italics in which the characters’ identities were disguised, and whilst they may have been intended like so much corn flour to thicken the plot, they were abstract in the utmost and entirely destroyed come the book’s final revelations. To my mind, the problem was that the story tried to offer too much, instead of focusing on being a lighthearted yarn. It’s a work of fiction, and tries to be funny with it, but I felt the few openly amusing moments were all too infrequent on account of making the plot out to be something that much more than it was.

As his first work of fiction, I can’t claim that Fry did a particularly bad job. It was interesting enough to make me want to finish it, and whilst at times the unexpected time jumps and secluded identities made the plot a little confusing, the ultimate lightness of the storyline meant that this wasn’t too much of a problem. The writing itself is of course interesting and pleasant to read, as one would expect from such an eloquent and vociferous character. This itself was enough to carry the story to its rather overinflated conclusion, but the book was ultimately a disappointment. Perhaps I should’ve been more wary of the fact that some of the highest words of praise on the book’s jacket came from Fry’s longtime friend Hugh Laurie:

It’s very unfair. It took Joseph Heller seven years to write Catch 22. Stephen seems to have knocked this one off on a couple of wet Wednesday afternoons in Norfolk.

A couple of wet afternoons, indeed, and any comparison to Catch 22 is rather a tad on the optimistic side! Only for the die-hard Fry fans, I can only assume his later works show a more mature hand, but for those who expect novels to deliver what they promise, I recommend reading Moab is my Washpot, the original version of The Liar, sans the guff.

“Slow Man” by J.M. Coetzee

Slow Man

Coetzee is an author I’d never picked up before, but given the reputation thought I should try on for size. And the opening third of the book certainly appealed to me. The writing is concise, descriptive, and at times you might say beautiful. And the story appeals for its simplicity: an active, elderly man loses a leg in a cycling accident, and has to deal with this sudden change in his life. Not only has his whole way of life been affected by the alteration, but he is sharply introduced to the way society views him, an old man, perhaps even before he became emasculated.

Then come the people in his life. The early introduction of helpers with whom he has to become accustomed promises much of the story, and indeed starts off as an interesting exploration. All of which is sent completely out of the window with the appearance of Elizabeth Costello. As an author who appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the story, it’s difficult to know exactly how to deal with her. Is she supposed to embody Paul, the main character’s inner thoughts? Or perhaps she’s supposed to be Coetzee himself, and the ensuing discussions which take place principally between Paul and Elizabeth are a form of dialogue that investigate the very nature of the author’s relation to his subject? Who the fuck knows. I’m afraid to say, I don’t. It’s a very rare book indeed that I start and don’t manage to get through to the end, and for a book as short as Slow Man, it says rather a lot that I didn’t. The character of Elizabeth is irritating in the extreme; her presence, quite baffling. In the end I found myself put off by the combination of these two factors and moved on to other things. Perhaps those interested more in writing than reading will find more to earn from reading this book, but for myself it was off-putting.

What began as an intriguing, well-styled look at such everyday relations was completely spoiled by this aggravating and unexplained intrusion. I can only assume it was all something I didn’t understand, else Coetzee’s acclaim stems from his other works.

“City of the Beasts” by Isabel Allende

City of Beasts

Moving on up from Coetzee should’ve been easy, but unfortunately I made a mistake with this work from Isabel Allende. Another author I’d never previously got around to reading, I picked this book up on a whim from the library shelves, and took it as being a ‘dead cert’ after the disappointments of Slow Man. What I hadn’t realised however (and what wasn’t particularly clear from the cover—a fact a lot of Amazon reviewers also agreed with), was that City of the Beasts is a book for young adults.

Such as it was, I actually got through a fair few chapters before giving up, which may be a good sign at least as far as recommending this book to the intended age group. The subject matter is probably sufficiently interesting, the sense of adventure reasonably acute, and the writing free-flowing and inviting enough to appeal to children of the right age. Of course the main character is a child, and the other main protagonists are suitably bland figures lacking in much depth that is probably well-suited to a younger mind. There was no way I could stomach forcing myself through to the end, however. I’m still very much of the opinion, as the wonderful and very sadly missed Linda Smith remarked, that adults who wish to ‘read’ books like Harry Potter in public should at least have the decency or common sense to disguise it with something more appropriate like pornography.¹ Not that there’s anything wrong with children of the right age reading it, but I honestly fail to see the appeal or sense in reading trivialities, largely no doubt on the basis that it is popular, when there’s such a wealth out there to choose from.

Whether City of the Beasts really lives up to such expectations then, you’ll have to find out elsewhere. But for me this was just another sad disappointment in a month of poor reads.

“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith

White Teeth

Fortunately, this month of bad picks was finally rescued by Zadie Smith’s surprisingly excellent first novel. I’d originally intended to read this book on the recommendation of a friend almost ten years ago, and it was just by chance that I finally got around to picking it up now. After the thorough disappointment of the previous books, I suppose anything with half a plot and a few interesting characters would have sufficed, but White Teeth lived up to its reputation as the award-winning bestseller it is advertised as.

The book follows the tribulations of a handful of families thrown together in the London melting pot, taking snippets out of their lives as the decades roll by. Described by some as a ‘serious comic novel’, Smith certainly approaches her subject in a light-hearted manner, weaving plenty of humourous little moments into what is otherwise a fairly serious look at the issues of multiculturalism in late-twentieth century Britain. Despite the large cast of characters, the different generations and jumps back and forth in time, Smith does a good job of keeping the reader aware of what’s going on, and it never felt unnecessarily confusing or convoluted. There are occasional threads in the story that appear to have little meaning or significance in the overall plot, and could have been left out to save a few pages, but the writing is so attractive that it didn’t detract from the overall goal.

Whether White Teeth would have come so highly acclaimed had it not been published when it was, however, is another matter entirely. Although perfectly readable, and highly entertaining, the book is not without its fair share of problems. The novel is built upon the strength of its characters, and Smith has what has elsewhere been described as a Dickensian tendency to deliver a rich array of supporting players, each of them individual, each as important as a major character. Whilst it was clear to see where the adjective had sprung from, Smith’s minor characters don’t quite have that sublime combination of simplicity and depth of Dickens, yet worse is the fact that some of her major characters felt rather more wooden than these throwaway roles. Smith’s guiding light, however, is not a man like Dickens but rather Salman Rushdie. The few references thrown in along the way are only the more glaring hints that it is this style which Smith is trying to emulate. White Teeth appeals at heart as a contrastive and comparative look at dealing with the gray areas of multiculturalism, from different perspectives and different generations, yet there are clear signs that Smith was attempting to turn the novel into an epic along the lines of Midnight’s Children, spanning more generations and decades, entwining key historical events. The only thing really missing was the magic realism of Rushdie. Yet where others have lambasted the mimicry, I rather enjoyed the similarity, because Smith is far from being just a mockingbird, and her own unique voice was a pleasure to read.

For a first novel, White Teeth certainly illustrates a lot of promise and potential in Smith’s writing. Many complained that the book did not deserve the praise it received, and they certainly are justified in pointing out certain problems in the overall picture. But personally, I found any complaints I had were niggling and temporary, and thoroughly enjoyed the style, the characters and message of this debut novel. I only need wait and see now whether it takes me another decade to pick up another Zadie Smith or not.

“Murray Walker: Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken” by Murray Walker

Unless I'm Very Much Mistaken: Murray Walker

Normally I wouldn’t review an autobiographical work such as this, let alone read one. I have little patience for most self-eulogies, but occasionally I find myself tempted, and for a man like Murray Walker, I gladly make an exception.

I should perhaps first make clear that I’m not the greatest motor racing fan. Particularly when I was younger, I was perhaps aware that it went on, and would occasionally make a mental note of the results when such would appear on the news, but this was usually limited to a few races a year, and I don’t believe I ever actually sat down to watch a race. Yet I was nevertheless aware of this man’s presence. He really was the Voice of Formula 1 like no man perhaps ever again shall be. With British television being as it was, sports coverage was for many years dominated by the BBC. As the independent stations began to take a keen interest, and of course the cable and satellite subscription services became popular, after some competitive bargaining the BBC was left with scant coverage of generally fairly lesser ranking events for some years. Formula 1 moved over to ITV, but unlike in pretty much every other instance, at least that springs to mind, that voice of commentary went with it!

And that’s pretty much where I came into F1 racing I think. For whatever reason, with the move to ITV I finally found myself taking the time on a Sunday afternoon to put my feet up and watch the coverage from wherever the event happened to be. That might have principally been down to the terrible television signal we had for the BBC stations at that time. Either way, it’s testament to the man’s presence that perhaps without really knowing his name or who he was, I knew Murray Walker’s voice like I knew my own father’s. Whoever was in the run, wherever the action took place, the scene wouldn’t be complete without his commentary.

Formula 1 is a sport that virtually cannot exist without commentary. If you’ve ever watched a race with the sound off, you’ll perhaps understand what I mean. Since the action doesn’t always happen in front of your eyes, and the nature of the race means that the full stretch of track can have important events happening at once, motor racing does at times seem singularly unsuited as a spectator sport. Perhaps the reason why the Americans took to the circular track form to make it more spectator-friendly. With cars pitting, crashing, overtaking and lapping, the order can get very confusing, very quickly, till the viewer has hardly more clue about who’s leading the race as a boxing fan knows who’s winning a fight on points.

Which is where Murray Walker seemed perfectly made for his job. As a motor racing enthusiast and son of a fairly successful motorcycle racer, he had the opportunity early in life to take up the commentator’s microphone. From humble beginnings blossomed a long-standing career, as private passion first accompanied then replaced his regular work in advertising. And what a fortune for those of us on the receiving end. His genuine enthusiasm for the sport turned Formula 1 seasons into thrilling epics akin to gladiatorial fights. When something happened on the track, you’d know instantly just how important that was, and what that meant for the race and the championship. Throwing in some extra tidbits of information from races and seasons past, even the relatively quiet moments of a Grand Prix would be filled with something informative, an important accessory in a sport in which for large periods of time, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that nothing of any import was happening. When someone at the back of the field was making progress, you’d hear; when someone made a pitstop, you’d understand what that meant for the ones around him; when someone set the fastest lap, you’d know how that compared to previous years or previous fastest laps. All these little hints and titbits made his commentary all the more engaging and informative, but kept the viewer exactly on the button in an otherwise incredibly detailed sport.

Of course, given such details and the speed with which things happen in motorsport, people make mistakes, and Murray Walker was infamous for them. The very title of his autobiography indicates as much. Whilst some might argue that his ‘Murrayisms’ detracted from the commentary and were indications that he was losing it towards the end of his career, I couldn’t disagree more. There was always something harmless about his gaffs, something comical and endearing, that neither detracted from what he was trying to say (at least most of the time—there were occasions when it was difficult to work out what he was on about) nor interrupted the wonderful flow of enthusiasm he conveyed. A few of his more illustrious Murrayisms are on this blog’s Quote Collection—a full list could exhaust a post of itself!

After reading this book, I had originally planned to write a separate post about this wonderful man. However, since I’d already decided to write about some of my recent reads, it seemed more appropriate to append it to this post. One final thing that became clear from reading Murray Walker’s autobiography was how great a gentleman he really was. So much was fairly clear from his commentary, and I can hardly imagine a harsh word spoken by him about any of the competitors, even when all around him were screaming abuse for one reason or another. When accusation of cheating or unsportsmanship were floating around, Murray would always give the benefit of the doubt, and it’s not difficult to see why he was so well liked by his colleagues and associates. Although some of his thoughts and opinions might not be everyone’s cup of tea, he was deserved of every accolade he received, and more besides. A true pillar of sport commentary, F1 hasn’t been the same without him, and whilst rumours abound about his return with the shift of F1 coverage back to the BBC, I think it would be wrong of him to take any role greater than the one of website commentator already revealed.

1. YouTube links to Linda Smith’s Room 101 possibly available here: 1, 2, 3.

In many ways, this book is little out of the ordinary, or at least its subject matter isn’t. Over the past few centuries this world has produced many remarkable personages: daring adventurers, shocking geniuses, revolutionary thinkers, and in this instance, plain hard-working pioneers. The age of discovery was perhaps particularly fertile in producing such remarkable characters, and a complete survey of the eighteenth century could easily fill a small library.

Which is precisely why Sobel’s book is so charming. In a period so active, a society so effervescent with ideas, Sobel has picked one lonely character, and one particular problem, and distilled a story that any layman can pick up and read. Despite the prominent cast of characters, the Isaac Newtons and Edmund Halleys, James Cooks and astronomers royal, the book in its entirety stretches to just 175 pages, and that in a fair spaced typeset. This brevity is precisely the book’s strength. The story needs no embellishment, it virtually tells itself, each iteration of John Harrison’s timepiece carried its own chapter heading in his life, each page a new development in the search for accurately keeping longitude at sea. Where many other books of this sort ramble on for a few hundred more pages about things entirely unpertinent to the theme, Sobel’s Longitude is concise and self-explanatory. What longitude is, how it proved such a problem to calculate, what rival solutions to the problem were being developed, and how John Harrison managed to essentially solve the riddle in one swoop, in a manner completely against the contemporary views of the time, all are clearly outlined and explained in this wonderfully distilled book.

The book is for the most part concerned with the fundamental inner workings of the brain revealed to us through curiously specific medical conditions, often brought about by severe physical traumas such as strokes. Some of the findings are, perhaps, fairly well known by now, yet I’ve no doubt that many will still be quite shocking to most readers. However, Ramachandran keeps the presentation of both old and new findings fresh, in his natural inquisitive approach to each individual problem. His curiosity and novel attitude in dealing with many of these strange rarities of medical science at times remind one of the naïve questioning of a young child, who by approaching problems from altogether unexpected angles can come up with profound thoughts and solutions that would not normally strike an adult.

In the form of this popular presentation of at times rather technical science, Ramachandran is liberated to explore the themes discussed to the very brink of conjecture. In such a young area as neuroscience, there is no doubt that such speculation is a necessity, in the face of such a formidable lack of experimental evidence, yet the author does an excellent job of keeping the focus on the actual cases available, leaving the more madcap suggestions and ponderings to the footnotes. The relations of his own personal investigations mark the highlight of the book, with a jocular style that only adds an extra gleam to the clearly sparkling prose that Ramachandran uses to relate what he is so clearly very passionate about. Many of the topics covered are extremely precise in scale, and thereby perhaps quite difficult to relate, but by relegating any complicated elaborations to the endnotes, the book remains perfectly readable despite the occasional paragraph gleaming with words of Greek origin. The text is also punctuated with small tests that the reader can try out for themselves, alone or with the aid of a partner, to get some sense of the kind of symptoms under investigation. Whilst these little optical illusions and sensual tricks obviously cannot replicate the bewildering changes that some of Ramachandran’s patients have suffered, they do help to illustrate some of the hidden workings of the brain on a more tangible scale to the everyday reader.

However, these aforementioned endnotes can, as a result of their extensiveness, cause something of a problem, if like myself you’re a reader who checks endnotes as and when they crop up. Not only does that result in a lot of flicking back and forth between the main text and the endnotes, but when doing so to read an endnote that is itself two pages long, it’s quite easy to lose thread of the narrative. In addition, since there is no way of telling whether that endnote is merely a citation reference, an entertaining anecdote, or some detailed explanation of the particular brain anatomy under discussion, it does leave one wondering whether a couple of dedicated appendices, along with a set of regular footnotes or endnotes for citations, would not have been preferable.

Whilst this popular science medium allows Ramachandran plenty of scope for hypothesis and exploration of his topics, I couldn’t help get the impression that his conjectures on occasion got rather more “off topic” than would normally be the case. He himself at times corrected himself whilst taking a tangent that led him into the realms of evolutionary biology, for example, no doubt hearing in his mind the criticism of colleagues and friends working in those particular fields. Yet his similar forays into religious and philosophical areas went rather much more unchecked, and the book could probably have been lightened somewhat, had these more meandering speculations been left out.

For my own part, Phantoms in the Brain was an interesting read, highlighting numerous facets about the human brain that are yet to be properly explored. Ramachandran’s writing is entertaining and informative, yet not quite as well distilled as it probably should be. However, it is clear from the experiments and investigations he himself has undertaken, that his mind is extremely sharp, and he is not afraid to test out his theories, nor expound them to the greatest extents of conjecture in this little book. I was personally rather disappointed with his conclusion, in that despite the discoveries laid out in the main part of the book, Ramachandran felt it necessary to expound his own theories of the ‘self’ and share his ideas on qualia.¹ Each chapter unveiled another brain process of which we were perhaps previously unaware, each piece pointing to a subconscious that makes up a far more significant part of ourselves than we either realise or, far more importantly, care to admit. Almost as an apology, however, Ramachandran appeared to feel it necessary to reinforce his belief in consciousness, free will, and the self, arguably inspite of the evidence he himself had accrued, ideas which jar with my own personal philosophy.

It is perhaps unfair to say that future research will clear up some of the many questions left, since there are only questions left to be answered in this vast area of unexplored scientific territory. Ramachandran’s book offers a glimpse into that vast, uncharted land that does well to follow in the footsteps of those other great pioneers he was hoping to emulate. And he is clearly already on the way to following them outside of the literary field.

1. Ramachandran, V. S. and Hirstein, W. (1997), “Three laws of qualia; What neurology tells us about the biological functions of consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4:5-6, 429-57.

As for getting through the list, I doubt very much if I’ll even read 1001 books before I die, let alone fiction books, or the particular ones from this list. However, I have ticked off a few titles already, and no doubt as many of them coincide with titles on my reading list I’ll be able to whittle the list down a little further. Titles I’ve read to date are in bold.

2000s

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia – George Saunders

1900s

Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Amongst Women – John McGahern
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
London Fields – Martin Amis
The Book of Evidence – John Banville
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter – Nadine Gordimer
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
W, or the Memory of childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow
V. – Thomas Pynchon
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Counterfeiters – André Gide
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s

Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s

Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Pamela – Samuel Richardson
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700

Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

In this matter, the Internet must have been a major boon to many sellers. By opening themselves up to such a vastly larger market, second-hand book stores can be guaranteed an extra income stream. But at what cost? How can resellers make themselves known on the Internet market, and whilst open to such massive competition, remain profitable? It’s pretty clear on the face of things that Internet prices for second-hand books are much reduced from their on-shelf equivalents. In Chapters’ new premises in Dublin, the second-hand book section prices are so ‘astronomical‘ such that you can occasionally find copies of the books cheaper in their own new books section. The same book on Amazon’s marketplaces, Abebooks or eBay might technically be listed for as little as a penny.

Of course, it would be folly to think that those prices are actual representations of the cost to the buyer. There may be many reasons for such low prices being on offer, one of which is clearly the threat of competition, as buyers generally list items by price and only buy those which top the list, but there are obviously other problems for the seller to overcome. The problem of putting themselves on the Internet market can to a large extent be negated by using services such as the ones I listed above – the problem however is being able to afford to do so.

On a recent purchase from Abebooks, I was dismayed to note that whilst there was technically a benefit to purchasing more than one book from the same seller in terms of postage costs, the reduction was clearly much smaller than what should be expected. One paperback cost £3.35 shipping, already a little extreme you might think, whilst eight paperbacks cost £16.00 – for roughly the same weight of parcel, Royal Mail quote a first class delivery (whilst the quoted price was for second class) at £8.22. This kind of price shuffling is fairly typical, which recently caused a fairly negative reaction from Abebooks through adding fees to the shipping prices. Whilst charging shipping at such high prices might seem unfair, however, it seems entirely just when considering the number of charges laid at the sellers door when dealing with the large marketplaces. I recently saw a sale via Abebooks wherein the total order amounted to £3.92 excluding shipping, and Abe’s commission was £2.10. Add to this the fees charged by Paypal (as that was the payment method) which could be as much as 20p plus 3.5% on the total amount including shipping, and it’s little wonder that book-sellers try to add extra to their shipping costs in order to maintain a sliver of profitability. For those that deal in rare books or expensive volumes, the smaller cuts that are made through listing and payment fees might be dealt with, but for smaller sellers just getting a foot on that ladder seems like a daunting prospect.

Unfortunately, there would appear to be very few alternatives. Even Abebooks was recently acquired by Amazon, and no doubt their fees and market models for second-hand sellers will be homogenised further than they already were. Sites such as UKBookworld from The Clique offer no commission sales in return for annual listing fees (amongst other services), though leave sellers to handle credit card or other payment methods themselves (though thereby avoiding a ‘skim’ from the host). The site of course suffers from a small number of participating shops, and tends to focus more on antique and out-of-print volumes than low cost second-hand paperbacks as a result.

Unless bookshops can set up their own sites that are popular enough and large enough to attract customers and direct sales, is there any alternative for those needing to use one of the main marketplaces mentioned? Or is this just an example of the failure of the Internet to democratise finances as well as ideas?

100 Best Last Lines from Novels – How great can a last line be? I’ve read some of the works on the list and can’t say any are particularly memorable, but here’s an arbitrary list of the top 100 anyway. (PDF)

The World’s Spookiest Weapons – Starting with the A-bomb and working through mind control, crowd control and animal manipulation, this little list illustrates some of the craziest weapons designed or researched in the years since the last war.

Boxhead 2play – While away some moments (hours!) with this mad flash-based zombie fest. Can also be played cooperatively or in deathmatch mode from the same machine.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

It is precisely that simple point of view that makes the book so brilliant. The war experience is palpably retold through the mundane everyday occurrences. The constant search for food and provisions, the tedium of life during the quiet moments, dealing with lice and rats, the pressures of bombardment and the psychological reactions to sleeplessness and the constant threat of death. Scenes from the dressing stations are vividly retold, as are the effects of dysentery, or the aftermath of gas attacks. The novel’s narrator, Paul Bäumer, finds himself constantly searching for the answers, the reasons, the logic behind it all, and often relates conversations with his companions over why the war started, why it goes on, will it ever end, and how life can possibly continue after it all.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its personality, its identification with the individual and the individuals as part of a collective in the great overall theatre of the war. Bäumer’s experiences throughout the war are his own, but at the same time it is only through camaraderie with those in his regiment that he is able to function, able to keep his nerves calm and endure the deadly randomness of life in the trenches. Any moment might be his last, but knowing that there are others there around him with the same thoughts and feelings allows him to stand through it. Indeed the war changes him such that he almost fears the life back on the home front, where no one can possibly understand his experiences, when all that classical liberal education instilled into him before the war has lost all shred of meaning and credibility.

At the same time, the book’s other great strength is its imprecision. Paul Bäumer, Stanislaus Katczinsky and the others might be people we are to identify with, yet at the same time they are merely shadowy figures in a much larger play. Remarque makes few references to their real identities, although we know they come from a variety of backgrounds, whether farmers, cobblers or locksmiths. Perhaps one of strongest criticisms of All Quiet On The Western Front is that the focus lies on those from poor backgrounds and the suggestion that they alone served in the fighting. Nevertheless the novel gives little intimation about the nationality of these soldiers; they could just as easily be from ‘those over there’ as Remarque often refers to the enemy. The Hollywood film adaptation of 1930 highlights this even more, as Germans with thick American accents whoop and cheer as their schoolmaster persuades them to enlist, before marching off singing “Die Wacht am Rhein”. In essence the book’s strength is its portrayal of war as an abstract concept, and featuring people of indeterminate origins who are tormented, tortured and killed under its weight.

The novel ends with the reader being told that Paul Bäumer died only a month before the Armistice, almost as if the journalistic memoirs of a soldier at war had been cut short before they could be finished. Bäumer had considered the record of his time in the war a possible source of meaning in his life after being demobbed, something which Remarque himself clearly enacted. Ultimately however, the juxtaposition of this sudden curtailment of a young man’s life, a hero’s life which the reader has shared and empathised with from the first page, with the military dispatch which can report “Im Westen nichts Neues” (more literally “Nothing new on the Western front”) leaves the reader completely unable to answer Bäumer’s searching questions, deafened by the sickening irony.

This last scene is depicted brilliantly in the film version, in a manner not described in the novel. This adaptation certainly deserves a quick mention as it is a true masterpiece of cinematography. The film still seems fairly fresh given its antiquity, and one easily forgets the primitive nature of film making at the time. In 1930 such ‘talkies’ were sufficiently new that whole apparatus had to be built around the great clunking cameras to prevent their mechanical whirrings from being recorded on tape. As already mentioned, the fact that the actors are quite blatantly American robs the adaptation of none of its truth, whilst the script stays largely true to Remarque’s original.

The book was harried by Hitler’s NSDAP as being a crime against every German who fought in the war, and naturally banned on their coming to power. Remarque himself was forced to flee the country, first to Switzerland and then on to the United States by way of France, after the Nazis revoked his German citizenship. The film adaptation even had to be withdrawn from German cinemas, after Goebbels managed to whip up such a storm of protest and disruption at the Berlin screening, and the ban was only lifted as late as the 1960s. Whilst there were many who enjoyed the war for all its glory and adventure (epitomised by books such as In Stahlgewittern by Ernst Jünger, translated as Storm of Steel), one might presume the vast majority shared Remarque’s sentiments about the war years, which leads one to query why this book was not more staunchly defended, and why so many found it abhorrent. The answer may even lie within the book itself; Bäumer finds himself on leave during one section of the book, unable to come to terms with the home front, with those untouched by the horrors of war beyond food and labour shortages. For these members of society the war is ethereal and fantastic, especially for those too young to participate (for example, see Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir) or too old. For them it becomes all too easy to believe in the Dolchstoßlegende, the ‘stab in the back’ myth of Germany’s loss in the First World War. For us it becomes all the more important to remember the book’s message, and to appreciate it as a masterpiece of anti-war literature.

Ranković, Tito and Đilas

It’s probably about time I got around to finally writing about some of the books that I read, a little in the vein of the 52-in-52 meme. This probably won’t start a trend, but Milovan Đilas’ Conversations with Stalin is full of sufficient tidbits to make it worth writing about, albeit unfortunately a little on the short side.

Đilas (pictured, right) was one of the key figures in the Yugoslavian Partisan movement during the Second World War, and maintained an influential position in the post-war government alongside Josip Broz Tito (centre), Aleksandar Ranković (on the left), and Edvard Kardelj. He started to write his memoirs in the mid-50s and decided to set his encounters with Stalin aside for separate treatment, but his outspoken criticism of the Yugoslav system resulted in his arrest and imprisonment in 1956. He restarted this work in 1961, which eventually brought about his re-internment.

The book details relations between the Yugoslav Partisans and later government and the Soviet Union during the Second World War until the eventual rift between the two states in summer 1948. On account of his position and his command of Russian, Đilas was chosen for a number of visits to the Soviet government, in 1943, 1944 and 1948. Đilas remains quite frank about his own limitations in perception, particularly in his first trip to the Soviet Union during the height of the war. He openly describes his naïve views regarding the west, the perfidious nature of British Intelligence, and his reverence of the Soviet lands as both leaders in the Communist world, and as the spiritual home of pan-Slavism.

Georgi Dimitrov

Nevertheless, Đilas makes numerous important observations, doubtless with the benefit of many years’ hindsight, from his early meetings with Stalin, and the men who surrounded him. He notes the description of the morale boost Stalin’s continued presence in Moscow made during the Battle of Moscow in late 1941, in a meeting with Georgi Dimitrov (pictured), the Bulgarian Communist leader and head of the Comintern until its disbandment in mid-1943. Đilas also pointed out his surprise at the influence of Russian Orthodoxy, no less than pan-Slavism and Russian nationalism, as a motivating factor in the pursuit of the war against Nazi Germany.

Of the figure of Stalin, Đilas illustrates his early reverence for this figure of genius in the Communist path, but confirms many of the facts revealed elsewhere about the pursuit of Soviet policy and the workings of the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy. He remarks on Stalin’s “Kremlin complexion” (of pale skin and rosy cheeks), the copious drinking habits of many of the key figures in the Politburo,¹ the excessive meals undertaken from late evening into the small hours (and the subsequent shift in time of the bureaucracy’s operations to account for the late rising of many department heads), and the associated requirement of a weekly day’s разгружение or ‘unloading’ – a governmental detox programme if ever there was one. Also interesting was the mention of Stalin’s penchant for watching films, a detail that Nikita Khrushchev struck upon in his memoirs.²

Đilas makes clear recognition of the influence of imperialism in Stalin’s deliberations and in Soviet policy as a whole. His private recognition of the action of British socialists within the British democratic framework lay in contrast to the public differences, which Đilas maintains came as a result of their differences in foreign policy. Stalin apparently expounded his views in terms of the unity of Slavs as being vital to success, and predicted that Germany would rise within a dozen years on account of her educated and industrious proletariat. Perhaps more intriguing is Đilas’ report that Stalin predicted the ‘next war’ to occur within 15-20 years, and that at a time when the current war was still raging.

“This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army has power to do so. It cannot be otherwise.”

This clear imperialistic mentality is further expanded in the last portion of the book, when Đilas traveled to Moscow again in 1948 on account of relations between Yugoslavia and Albania, and the foundation of the Cominform.³ Albania and Yugoslavia had been the only eastern European nations to free themselves from the Nazi yolk without decisive intervention from the Red Army, and as such lay beyond the mental grasp of the Soviet system as the above quote suggests. The cooperation between these two states, particularly in terms of economic development and the potential integration of Albania into the Yugoslav federation brought opposition from Nako Spiru within the Albanian Communist Party, and fierce resistance to his opposition particularly from the likes of Koçi Xoxe and Enver Hoxha⁴ resulted in his eventual suicide. Đilas points out that the issue of Albanian-Yugoslav cooperation and integration was not one of major concern for the Soviets, but that the Yugoslav government could provide support, aid and most particularly advice to the Albanian regime, despite itself requiring these things of the Soviet government was hypocritical. “We agree to Yugoslavia swallowing Albania,” Stalin is quoted as saying. Incidentally, this period clearly strikes as being of particular interest in light of today’s Balkans, Đilas writing that “its [the potential Yugoslav-Albanian union] particular importance, in my opinion, lay in the fact that it would make possible the amalgamation of our considerable and compact Albanian minority with Albania as a separate republic in the Yugoslav-Albanian Federation.”

This dispute over Yugoslav-Albanian relations was to be solved through the integration of these two states into the Soviet dominated east European framework. At a meeting with the key figures of both the Yugoslav and Bulgarian Communist parties, Stalin and his associates openly derided the Bulgarian attempts at creating a customs union with Rumania without prior Soviet consultation. Soviet policy rather demanded the union of Bulgaria with Yugoslavia (and subsequently the union of Albania with this new federation), no doubt on the basis that the Bulgarian Communists relied on Soviet support, still being under the Red Army’s occupation. Dimitrov himself had been prevented from returning to Bulgaria immediately after the war, no doubt on account of his position and potential independence of Soviet aims.

These final meetings with Stalin strike as the most revealing into the degeneration of the Soviet state, and the first seeds of the gerontocracy which plagued the later Soviet years. Pointing to the vitality of Stalin’s mind during the war, Đilas remarks on his creeping senility, his increasingly gluttonous habits, his reliance on older memories and anecdotes, a more banal sense of humour, and the attitude of those who paid court to his actions. Stalin’s position was as much self-created as it was required by those very forces who surrounded him, and the rot in this symbiotic relationship strikes out particularly in the later section of Đilas’ memoirs. Đilas provides some tidbits which unfortunately aren’t fully expanded upon, such as the appearance of open anti-Semitism in the Soviet hierarchy (Stalin boasting that none of its Central Committee members were Jewish), the mysticism and religiosity surrounding the Lenin Mausoleum, returned from its wartime hiding place in the Russian interior, and the now famous account of Stalin maintaining that Benelux involved only Belgium and Luxembourg and was no real example of a working customs union, no one in his presence willing to correct him.

One should also point out Đilas’ impressions of Khrushchev on his meeting with him in 1945. Đilas noted the marked Russification of life in Kiev,⁵ despite the relative leniency of regional policy in the late war years: at this time, Ukrainian party officials sought the establishment of separate diplomatic relations with the various people’s democracies. Khrushchev himself certainly straddled the line of Russo-Ukrainian. Khrushchev impressed Đilas as being of limited classical education, but more importantly self-made and experienced beyond the normal limits of the bureaucracy, “a man of the popular masses,” well acquainted with the actualities of the Soviet system (e.g. experiences and limitations on the Soviet collective farms), and interested in modifying and reforming from within said system. Of course as Đilas was able to point out, these impressions came from a Khrushchev of a different era to the one who assumed control of the Soviet Union in Stalin’s wake.

Finally, Conversations with Stalin includes a couple of rather amusing anecdotes worth relating about Soviet views on Winston Churchill. Certainly he was well-respected within higher circles as a ruthless politician, and thus a dangerous one. Stalin had reputedly warned Đilas to be wary of British aid, explaining that it was they who had shot down Władysław Sikorski’s flight leaving no evidence behind. Đilas argues that his warnings passed on to Tito inspired the latter to leave his base at Vis for Soviet occupied Rumania in September 1944. It was this reputation which resulted in Stalin’s following remark:

Perhaps you think that just because we are the allies of the English we have forgotten who they are and who Churchill is. There’s nothing they like better than to trick their allies. During the First World War they constantly tricked the Russians and the French. And Churchill? Churchill is the kind of man who will pick your pocket for a kopeck if you don’t watch him. Yes, pick your pocket of a kopeck! By God, pick your pocket of a kopeck! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill – will do it for a kopeck.

Nevertheless his respect was well earned; during a trip to Moscow, Churchill apparently remarked that he should be awarded for his services to the Red Army, since it was his call for intervention at Archangel that had trained them so well.

Conversations with Stalin offers an interesting insight into the inner workings of the Soviet system, and their relations with the eastern block in the immediate aftermath of the war, in particular of course with Yugoslavia. Đilas marks the start of the deterioration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations with his inquiries into the actions of the Red Army in Belgrade, though points out earlier examples of differences between the two existed even from 1943, quoting Tito as having said “our first duty is to look after our own army and our own people” over the issue of not informing the Soviet Union of their parley with the Germans regarding the treatment of POWs. His style is readable and littered with interesting asides which unfortunately are all too often left unexplored, and one certainly gets the impression that the amount of retouching with the benefit of hindsight is at least more limited than might elsewhere be found. Despite his recognition of Stalin’s growing senility and the blatant imperialism of Soviet policy, Đilas nevertheless continued to respect Stalin, for his abilities, his accomplishments and his drive, despite the horrors that lay in his wake. Đilas describes him as a man who would destroy nine tenths of humanity in order to make the remaining tenth ‘happy’. But a man who was as much driven by his own demands as by the men around him, to drag the Soviet Union into the future.

1. Vyacheslav Molotov was one to ‘drink hard’, whilst Lavrentiy Beria was ‘practically a drunkard.’
2. Published in English as Khrushchev Remembers.
3. On the latter point, Đilas remarks that it was Stalin himself who came up with the name for the Cominform’s organ “For a Lasting Peace – For a People’s Democracy” on the basis that it would be quoted as such in the Western press.
4. Đilas wrote that Stalin described Hoxha as a petty bourgeois, inclined towards nationalism.
5. For more on this subject, see Ivan Dzyuba, Internationalism or Russification?, 1974.

Noble—but undomesticable?

How do you domesticate a zebra? You can’t, or at least that’s the justification put forward by Jared Diamond in his Guns, Germs and Steel for why these wild beasts were never used as draught animals or cavalry in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of what Diamond writes has a logical ring to it, and whilst the evidence is sparse and in places contradictory, his conclusions fit the necessarily teleological approach. Others have accused him of too much geographical determinism, and perhaps they have a point, but the one thing which struck me as being peculiarly out of place in Diamond’s writing was his treatment of Africa’s wild animals as being unsuitable for domestication. He argued that it was only by chance that Eurasia benefited from having suitable species such as goats, sheep, cattle and horses, and that the native varieties of these animals in sub-Saharan Africa were inherintly unsuitable.

To be domesticated, animals must meet certain criteria. For example, they must have a good disposition and should not panic under pressure. Zebras’ unpredictable nature and tendency to attack preclude them from being good candidates for domestication.

Despite the lack of a ‘good disposition’ however, this same link illustrates that zebras have on occasion been tamed and hybridized with other ungulates to produce zorses and zonkeys. So zebras can be ridden, they can be used to pull carriages but are nevertheless somehow unsuitable for domestication. Diamond argued that the proof lay in the continued inability to domesticate the zebra in modern times, but just how much effort has gone into such endeavours? The argument just doesn’t seem persuasive enough. Wolves don’t tend to make great pets, yet they have produced man’s best friend, and presumably the common ancestor to the horse and zebra would have been a challenge to train.

That isn’t to say that Diamond’s logic is entirely flawed. Whilst the idea of Europe being overrun by the deadly llama cavalry of the Incans is rather appealing, llamas simply aren’t comparable to horses in size or strength. And whilst elephants can be tamed, the idea of truly domesticating them would be challenging to say the least. But simply because zebras haven’t been domesticated doesn’t seem a strong enough argument to say they couldn’t be. Take a litter of kittens and socialise them, and you’ll probably find even within that small genetic sample, some are bolder and more malleable than others, whilst others are consumed by a fear of humans. Over time, such traits can be developed within a particular species, as modern day domestic animals surely attest to. With creatures like horses, the task of domestication is much greater than with many other species perhaps, and building in a genetic predisposition to being handled takes much longer.

Whilst Diamond may have been motivated by an anti-racist polemic in his defence of sub-Saharan Africa’s lack of domesticated species, his geographic determinism might once more be closer to the truth in that the sheer size of the Eurasia landmass offered greater scope for the domestication of horses. Cultural influences must be taken into account of course, and comparing Native American horsemanship to the lack of zebra riding Zulus seems quite out of place. Whatever the reality turns out to be, I doubt we’ll be seeing zebras running the Derby any time soon.

The two traditions arose at different times, states Art Lebedev, with book binders starting trends which gradually became standards in their respective regions:

The tradition to write on the spine top-to-bottom is older; its roots can be traced back to the time when books were few. The reasoning was that if a book is lying on the table (or in a small stack) face-up, reading its title should be easy.

The tradition to write on the spine bottom-to-top is younger; it’s more concerned with how easy it is for the bookshelf owner to handle the book. Reading bottom-to-top is easier, because this direction is more in keeping with the European left-to-right writing tradition, which is especially apparent when there are several lines of text on the spine (an urge to read the lines left-to-right is only natural).

The same rules apply to DVDs and presumably audio CDs, though in my experience the latter are more haphazardly labelled. As someone once noted, however, that when it comes to learning, those in the West tilt their heads to the right, and those in the East tilt theirs to the left. But whichever way you tilt your head, it’s worth remembering:

Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

Flannery O’Connor

British Library – Alright, so the first link isn’t exactly a new idea, but the British Library have recently unveiled their new website, with a particular emphasis on its new search capabilities to retrieve results from its increasing online resources.

What Shall I Read Next – This website does exactly what it says on the tin. Type in a book title or author you read recently, and up comes a list of recommendations based on what titles others have read together. However, the system relies on a wide range of users for offering recommendations beyond the most popular titles, and as is mentioned here, the chances of catching up with the years of data a website like Amazon have accumulated in order to provide reading recommendations is quite slim.

BookMooch – BookMooch offers a different approach to ‘peer-to-peer sharing’, and takes what some might consider a logical step. The idea is that readers can swap titles they’ve read with other users, paying only the cost of postage, whilst simultaneously being able to search for titles they would like to receive. A points system is in place to assure the credibility of its users, and to help readers find worthy homes for their old books. Whilst there is still room for abuse, the system employs some safe guards regarding ratios and feedback comments to prevent fraud. Overall a pretty interesting idea, the basis for a small book-bartering economy.

Full Books – On the other hand, if you can’t wait for the postman to deliver your next read, you could always head here for something to tide you over. The listed titles are quite varied, some might say even random, and the website seems quite sparse otherwise, with titles published in standard HTML format. Probably not the best place to go first if you’re looking for a work that’s out of copyright.

Bookalizer – The final site on this list isn’t technically to do with reading, but instead a method for making a little money out of readers! Essentially it offers an easy way to generate Amazon book adverts for your website according to either page content or your own criteria, by specifying key words or product IDs. Using Amazon’s associates programme, the clicks generated can give your website a little bit of income, or else go to some predetermined ‘good cause’.

However it is telling that the book is sporadically out of print,¹ despite acclaim by such luminaries as Salman Rushie and Anthony Burgess, who wrote a preface to the 1969 edition of the novel. This should not be seen as a reflection of the work’s growing inaccessibility; many terms and phrases used were probably much more understandable in 1948 than they are now, but it does not suffer from the overt use of Indian words which course through many other literary works of the period.

While the key motifs of the book can be interpreted as the exploration of dislocation, loneliness and the search for meaning in life, of much more interest to the colonialist are the references and allusions to relations between British and Indian, cultural, real or hidden. There are innumerable references to the English literary canon, the most obvious of which is the comical Shakespearean portage of Hatterr’s trusted friend Bannerji, presumably symptomatic of a literary heritage that does not fit the user. Bannerji represents the very finest satirical embodiment of Macaulay’s “brown Englishman”, and his frequent expounding of facts reminds us of a student of Mr. Gradgrind. Yet Desani seems to avoid any such criticism being weighed upon himself. In his preface, Burgess decried any labelling of Desani as a métèque author (derived from μέτοικος—the immigrant); he should rather be placed alongside the ranks of Conrad and Nabokov as authors with a remembrance of learning English, but who were not in the act of learning when writing—his English therefore, “gloriously impure”.

Indeed Desani’s novel therefore offers a staunch alternative to the English literary tradition that had progressed through Kipling (who indeed gets a mention) to Forster in the shadow of the Great War, no better illustrated by the eloquent portrayal of the absurdities of English society and culture in English from a foreign voice.² The language of the oppressor then, can not only be appropriated but can be employed so eloquently and so satirically to the detriment of the former.

The novel is also riddled with the theme of illusion, deception and imitation. This is most pointedly directed at the sahib Anglo-Indian of the Club. The “wish man…must master the craft of dispelling credible illusions” teaches one of the sages in Hatterr’s travels,³ perhaps the greatest of which is the power of the British overlord. Indeed great fun is made at the expense of the Scot from Dundee, who infers the secret of acceptance in British society—the necktie! The employment of Faust in the illustration that deception and imitation are evil things suggests some moral judgement of Macaulay’s brown Englishmen.⁴ Yet one wonders what alternative there could be to the solidification and codification of what it means to “be” British within the context of the Empire. There can be little doubt that the need to export British culture only required that it was very much more concrete in form, and there is no better example of its existence than in the bastion of etiquette witchcraft, the Club!

Interestingly, Desani’s investigations into imitation lead to further insights into the very meanings of Truth⁵—with interesting legal implications—perhaps best illustrated by the Sage of Delhi’s wise words for Hatterr “all Appearance is false. Reality is not Appearance.”⁶ And of course who can forget Desani’s thoughts on language itself as a means of communication, and with it translation—will you aa or baa?⁷

Confusing perhaps, All About H. Hatterr offers some interesting insights into the cultural ramifications of colonialism. Further, its autobiographical nature lend some insight into the character of its author, who went on to travel widely in India, investing time distilling Truth from Hinduism and Buddhism—attend! a very mad-as-a-hatter, Mr. H. Hatterr kind of thing to do. We can only hope that as a work of literature it will not be consigned to complete oblivion. And there is hope after all—it is listed in the 1001 books to read before you die meme.

1. Although it is reported that the book will be reprinted next year.
2. Desani, G. V., All About H. Hatterr, (London, 1970), p. 106.
3. Ibid., p. 41.
4. Ibid., p. 200.
5. Ibid., p. 283.
6. Ibid., p. 198.
7. Ibid., p. 284.