Item category 1: World Paperback

This novel is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness and bittersweet wit. A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family.

In this story of irreconcilable loves and infidelities, Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of 20th century "Being". The novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence.

This story is told by a young soldier in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see the realities of war. Incidents are vividly described, but there is no sense of adventure, only the feeling of youth betrayed.

Each time he returns from his travels, Marco Polo is invited by Kublai Khan to describe the cities he has visited. But Calvino is describing only one city - Venice. Invisible Cities has been described as Calvino's most beautiful work.

From the acclaimed author of Spring Snow, this novel tells of a band of savage 13-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call objectivity.

The plot of Foucault's Pendulum ranges back and forth through the centuries, full of arcane knowledge, secret societies, love, death, passion and perversion. What starts as a fun way to play with the occult turns into a frantic search for the truth.

Bringing together Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religious life and the history of Japan, this novel is based on an actual incident, the burning of a celebrated temple.

If one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes and locales from Isak Dinesen's childhood in Denmark.

Viktor is lonely, with only Misha, his penguin, for company. He is desperate to earn a living as a writer. He gets a break when the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper commissions him to write obituaries of Kiev's VIP's. But are his worries now over?

What initially appears to be a plain account of the lives of Jewish emigrants in Norfolk, Austria, America and Manchester, merges into an overwhelming evocation of the experience of exile and the loss of homeland.