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Lampedusa’s masterpiece is set amongst an aristocratic family facing social and political changes in the wake of Garibaldi’s invasion of Sicily in 1860. At the head of the family is the prince, Don Fabrizio. Proud and stubborn, he is accustomed to knowing his own place in the world and expects his household to be run accordingly.
When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend’s return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened, while Giovanni’s life descends into tragedy.
When 92-year-old Marian Leatherby is given the gift of a hearing trumpet, she overhears her family plotting to commit her to an institution.
‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird’. This is a lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of the story – a black man charged with raping a white girl in the 30s.
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.
Tender is the Night is based upon the author’s unhappy marriage, and was written as he was experiencing the tragedies of his wife’s nervous breakdown and his own decline.
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of The Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his flair for spotting ace reporters. Acting on a dinner party tip he feels convinced he has found a chap to cover a little war in Ishmaelia.
Set in the 50 years after the Civil War, this novel tells the story of the Trasks and the Hamiltons. Adam Trask marries Kate. When she abandons him and their twin sons to run an infamous brothel, the family is consumed in a bitter struggle.
Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. It tells of the Joad family who travel West in search of the promised land, and find only broken dreams.
Inspired by Jane Eyre, Wild Sargasso Sea is Jean Rhys’s powerful and compassionate story of Antoinette Cosway who is haunted by her brother’s death and the madness of her mother and who is trapped in an unstable marriage.
Immortalised in the film starring Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote’s classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s is full of sharp wit. Its exuberant cast of characters vividly captures the restless, slightly madcap era of early 1940s New York.
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