From ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Mrs Dalloway’ to ‘The Trial’: the trailblazing works of that year’s literary gold rush remain vivid and influential today
After his crushing accident, the author’s droll, trenchant voice records humour and small joys — without prettifying the pain
Historian Keith Lowe takes a rigorous, myth-busting look at the city’s chaotic recovery in the wake of war and fascism
From ancient Nineveh to Victorian London to the present day — the author’s restless novel flows across epochs and continents
Having launched her literary career in scandal and outrage, she was revered by readers — and, in time, her homeland — as a charismatic change-maker
Harald Jähner’s vivid history depicts Germany’s dizzying era of change — and its catastrophic finale
Corinne Fowler’s exploration of the dark histories behind the country’s landed wealth is both scholarly and nuanced
Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s amnesiac narrator pieces together past and present in a radiant translation by Philip Roughton
The writer, who lost an eye and use of his hand in the attempted murder, uses witty prose to overcome the urge to confront his attacker in the flesh
A biography of the art historian whose influence is still felt in the digital age is a meticulous marshalling of ideas
David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu challenge artistic claims to originality
Amid the fog and fury of the Israel-Hamas war, Nathan Thrall’s salutary account of a 2012 disaster shows humanity on both sides
Two works turn the tables on our assumptions about the giants of British espionage fiction
Thomas Harding’s biography uncovers the secrets of a chameleonic outsider who made himself a fixture of the cultural establishment
Filling in the ‘Slow Horses’ back-story, this sort-of prequel is part belly-laugh spy spoof, part elegiac state-of-the-nation satire
After ‘Cedilla’, protagonist John Cromer returns with a witty, observational novel that fuses sexuality and spirituality
Two books paint a portrait of a brilliant generation falling prey to barbarism under the Third Reich
The writer’s fifth novel conjures a new plague and its catastrophic effects in journal entries addressed to a cephalopod
Simon Winchester takes a lively, digressive look at how humans have ordered and passed on knowledge over time
Dreamers, hippies, oddballs and ex-KGB agents come together in a newly translated novel that brims with rueful satire
This farcical tale of freedom and ecstasy — told in fruity Polari slang — reads as if Jean Genet and Vladimir Nabokov had joined the writing team of the ‘Carry On’ films
From the ‘miracle’ of 1989 to the return of state thuggery, readers could hardly wish for a wiser guide to the continent’s triumphs and travails
Essayist-biographer’s memoir evokes Rousseau and Augustine as it charts his life’s dramas and traumas
Belying the gloom of traditional narratives of the early-Medieval age, many communities lived peaceful, cosmopolitan lives
The author sidesteps cliché to reveal the inner world of a 16th-century Italian noblewoman
