Item category 1: World Paperback

Two investigators are put on the case of a murdered Russian general. Their stumbling researches take them all over Europe until eventually it dawns on them that they are merely pawns in a game in which the KGB are the key players.

Written in 1842, this comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims is one of the major works of Russian literature.

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.

Set in Paris, Fred Vargas's novel addresses a particularly serious and chilling case of murder. Superintendent Adamsberg loves mysteries but when the town crier begins reading disturbing messages that have been slipped in between the daily news, he knows this is no ordinary crime and no normal cr...

At the age of 15, Kafka Tamura runs away from home, either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-lost mother and sister. Instead, he finds himself setting out on an odyssey where he shall encounter some very strange characters indeed.

Unable to find any meaning in his life, the 25 year old narrator quits his MA course at university in a bid to discover a raison d'etre. He recounts a series of anecdotes, which culminate in a trip to stay with his brother in New York.

The Russo-Turkish war is at a critical juncture, and Erast Fandorin, broken-hearted and disillusioned has gone to the front in an attempt to forget his sorrows. But he will need to resurrect all of his dormant powers of detection if he is to unmask a traitor in the Russian camp.

Addressing a chance acquaintance in an Amsterdam bar, Jean-Baptiste Clamence remarks that Amsterdam's concentric circles resemble the circles of hell. Clamence, a successful barrister realises the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence.

In 1948, when he is 15, Trond spends a summer in the country with his father. The events - the accidental death of a child, his best friend's feelings of guilt and eventual disappearance, and his father's decision to leave the family for another woman - will change his life forever.

The second part of 'The Cairo Trilogy' by the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a true-life Egyptian family saga featuring the bullying, pompous, belching, self-adoring patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmed and his long-suffering family in domestic turmoil, with feuding in-laws.