English Books

In her very poetic language, the author describes her upbringing in Turkey in the 1950s and 1970s, her years at a Catholic girls’ school, her desire to move to a big city, her involvement in protests, and her stays in psychiatric clinics.

A magnificent, epic family, romance and socio-political novel set in Delhi, Goa, New York and Mexico. Desai tells the story with depth, plenty of esprit and a dash of surrealism. My favourite character: Babita Bhatia, Sunny’s nerve-wracking mother

What’s the most useful thing you could know about your own life? In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns her boundless curiosity and incisive thinking to a question that affects us all

After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning The Cider House Rules , revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud's, Maine, where Dr Wilbur Larch takes in Esther, a Viennese-born Jew whose

The global powerhouse that is the United States of America is younger even than the British Museum, Guinness and the flushing toilet. In 2026 it will celebrate its 250th birthday. How did this vast land, long inhabited by diverse indigenous cultures

When Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis was published in 1986, Wendy Cope became that rarest of creatures: a celebrated poet who was also a best-seller. Her artful combination of insight and wit made an extraordinary impact in poems that cocked a gentle

It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of

The untold love story that inspired Shakespeare's greatest masterpiece. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the

She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of