Item category 1: World Paperback

'The Kill' is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of 20 novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. The novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure.

'The Ladies' Paradise' recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late 19th-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, & of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture & the changes in sexual attitudes & class relations takin...

'The Masterpiece' is the most autobiographical of the 20 novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it provides a unique insight into his career as a writer and his relationship with Cézanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence.

'The Sin of Abbe Mouret' is the fifth novel in Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series. It follows Serge Mouret, a young priest, aspiring to perfect purity and sanctity. An illness leaves him with amnesia, and no longer knowing he is a priest, he falls in love with his nurse. Together they roam an Eden-l...

Israeli Etgar Keret and Palestinian Samir el-Youssef, have produced a book of nine short stories and a novella exploring different aspects of a fraught and complex situation. Their bleak, hip urban tales reflect the dreams and nightmares of living in Israel today and during the first Intifada.