The Fiery Furnace Trilogy Boxed Set: The Kiss of Judas, Confessions, The Eleventh Hour

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BEAU IDEAL

Always praying and invoking your Holy Family. I have the highest admiration for your great people--but I have met rotten specimens Bad as some of my own Do you kneel down night and morning and pray to your kind Christian God, Englishman? The forgiving God of Love, Who has landed you here? I don't pray--in words--much You won't mind asking questions for fear of being thought inquisitive, will you, gentle Jacob? You forgive the very worst of injuries because you are a Christian, but not because you're a Christian You do as you would be done by, and not as you've been 'done' by You don't pray in words, and hold daily communion with your kind Christian God--you regard Him as a gentleman--an English gentleman of course--who quite understands, and merely desires that you be--decent, which of course, you naturally would be, whether He wished it or not And you'll punch me on the nose if I smite you on the cheek--but you don't even do that much to anyone who betrays you to a dreadful death And really, in your nice little mind, you loathe talking about your religion, and you are terrified lest you give the impression that you think it is better than other people's, for fear of hurting their feelings And so you are perfectly certain that you are a most superior person, but you strive your very utmost to conceal the awful fact You're a puzzling creature What is your motivating force?

What is your philosophy? What are you up to? The Englishman and the American memorized an address in Paris, and each declared that he would not only write to Madame de Lannec, but would visit her, give her her son's last message, and assure her of his gentle happy death from honourable wounds received in the service of France, and describe his grand military funeral.

In this same Zaguig But I finish here I've got a job to do, and I intend to live until it's done In the morning, the spot of light fell on his face and he awoke and, from time to time, spoke rationally, though he did not appear to realize where he was. He desired the services of a priest, that he might "make his soul. He offered to chew it for him if he were unable to masticate Officers once, doubtless, and gentlemen still I am going to add to the burden of debt I owe you But I am going to give you something in return My dying assurance that you are going to live I most clearly see you walking in the sunshine, free and happy Walking towards a woman--a truly beautiful woman She loves you both--but one far more than the other You fight on her account Will one of you go to the little cemetery and stand by her grave and say:.

He spoke only words of kindness and love He did not breathe one word of reproach Only kindness, love and gratitude. Always they were her flower A few of the beautiful big violets that welcome one home from Africa Once I kissed an old grandmother who was selling them on the quai at Marseilles, and gave her a gold piece They were not violets she sold to me Their odour was the distilled soul of the sweetness of all that is in those three wonderful words France, Home and Beauty Did I ever see them again without trembling from head to foot, without wondering how my frozen brain could function But you never saw her She was God's triumph Yes, often I called her, 'You Evidence of God'--for such beauty and wonder and untellable glory of womanhood was final proof to me of the existence of a great good God of Beauty.

No-- he is there! Do not stir hand or foot He will shoot you , not me, the fiend! I nearly broke your heart when I told you I would marry her And you nearly broke mine when you said that I should not But a model of beauty and grace Lovely in all her ways and thoughts and movements But a model for all women to copy Every fascination and charm of mind as well--witty and clever and of the sweetest disposition With her, one laughed One laughed the whole day through Was it her fault that she had no heart?

No fairy, mermaid, elf, sprite, no magic princess from the golden castle on the crystal hill, ever has a heart! So I gave her mine--to break He did not even love you You were merely his model, his chattel, his property No one must take you from him--not even to marry you A pistol in his hand My arms about you as I implored you to be my wife Your terrible shriek as you saw him appear The Frenchman's voice changed completely.

It was as though an entirely different personality possessed his body. Move hand or foot, and our fair and frail young friend will have her beauty marred! Oh, a great picture! Do you fear , little cockerel? Do you fear you have brought death to your mistress? Death the great Artist! His lovely colours of corruption and decay! See, I lay the pistol on this table beside the easel You'd rise from that rug, would you!

Would you murder this woman whom you love so much? Your glazing eyes staring from the white mask of your face One has to go to some trouble to find them, of course Moisten your lips with your tongue again See, little pimp, I think I will shoot her, after all--as I have finished her face Yes--you a little later She lies on the divan--same attitude--blood on her breast, a thin stream trickling down her white arm, a stain on the white bear-skin--lovely colours! One arm and your head and shoulders across her body The rest of you on the rug--much the same position as now A bullet-hole beneath your ear I am not too near, here, I think What shall we call the second picture?

No, a little banal No name at all, I think-- a 'problem' picture You think I 'll make a fine picture on the guillotine, do you? That's where you're wrong, puppy This is going to be a crime passionel Anyhow, the present picture is going marvellously Never was FEAR so portrayed before That bullet stirred her hair Stirred your heart too by the look of you, you little hound The Frenchman drank avidly.

Upon this little stream of life-giving water his conscious mind seemed to be borne to the surface. I was not noticing One of you will see to that for me, will you not? Get them on the quai at Marseilles, and put them on her grave in the little cemetery And tell her that my last thoughts were of her She will understand now She understood nothing when she died She was like that when I saved her from the Beni Zarkesh God is very good and He had taken away her understanding He was twice as big and strong as I, that Moor But I killed him with my bare hands, as I had killed the watchman dozing at the foot of the stair Oh, that lovely silent struggle, with my hands at his throat His name was Charles She called me ' Charles ' as I carried her to the horses She called me ' Charles ' through the brief remainder of her life She died calling me ' Charles.

A little hard for me to bear Yes, I suffered a little I had thought bitterly of Charles de Chaumont and I had written him a rather terrible letter when, on the strength of his rank and seniority, he declined my challenge to a duel But I am grateful to him for his kindness to her, and for making her so happy all those years He must have loved her truly Who could help it? And how she loved him! She must have been happy as the day is long, for she had changed but little A girl when I lost her A woman when I found her Even more beautiful, if that were possible The mad are often very lovely But I firmly believe her last days were happy She had forgotten that hareem And I was her adored Charles de Chaumont!

Unconscious fingers can play a fearful threnody upon our heart-strings Can break them one by one I have always been deeply interested in the Hereafter, and I confess to being a little weary of the Here Yes, I think it's time to go. I have no strong views on the subject of man murdering his fellow-man on the scaffold, or against the wall at dawn. But this slow murder is quite indefensible, and I feel justified in expediting my end.

And you will have suffered a few hours or a few days longer than I Either the Company has moved on, and there are a few more miles of the Zaguig-Great Oasis Road, marked, or else there was a sudden raid and the Company is obliterated What do you do, my friend if you sit on a tin-tack? You promptly remove yourself. I am going to remove myself.

I have already sat too long upon this particular--ah--tin-tack. One doesn't commit suicide! It seems to me to be more logical to let it be a matter of seconds. Life is illogical and death is illogical, and God is illogical," said Jacob. May we meet again and discuss our discoveries concerning God, Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Mahomet, Buddha and the other manifestations of man's incurable anthropomorphism Or au revoir --whichever it may prove to be.

There are only we three now, and one more corpse will not further discommode you. I beg you to believe me that I would not have done this were all the others still alive--not even though I knew there would be no release And it will have to be soon," he added, his weak voice growing perceptibly weaker. Just till the spot of light falls on the Frenchman's body again Please yourself after that. But I believe we'll be saved to-morrow. When you want it, you'll find the piece of steel in my right hand Pluck up your courage and come along with me, both of you Do you know that our meeting in here is one of the most astounding things that have ever happened?

Do you know you are the one man in all the world I have been looking for! And this is where I find you! I did my damnedest--and then Providence took a hand Heaven helps those, etc We're dreaming, of course. We aren't in any silo You aren't John Geste. And I didn't hear you call your wife 'Stout fella' at Brandon Abbas when you were kids and We'll be out of here to-morrow, boy We can't die here. God doesn't mean us to die and rot in this hole that was ordained to be our meeting-place Ordained from the beginning of Time as the place where I should find you, after all And Isobel's well and only waiting to be happy as soon as she hears you're coming home to--er--tea, John Geste!

And I was to tell you Michael didn't take the 'Blue Water' from under the cover. It wasn't he who stole it And I'm going mad, John Geste--mad with joy--and starvation, and weakness, and happiness How do you know my name--and about Isobel? The Englishman had collapsed and lay inert, unresponsive, either in a faint or the last sleep of all. The arrival of the spot of sunlight found the American moistening the lips of the dying Englishman with the remaining drops of water.

I feel as strong as a horse now! He had given up hope before I recognized him I've found him and he's dying No, God can't mean that I'm talking out loud. I must catch hold of myself Help me, God, for I am going to help myself--to help them. The American crawled across to where lay the body of the strange man known to his fellows as Jacob the Jew.

Feeling over the corpse he found the right hand and in it a piece of wonderfully-tempered steel, which, together with a few matches, the man had somehow hidden from those whose duty it had been to search him. Securing it, he returned to the side of the Englishman, and once again endeavoured to revive him. Panic seized him as he realized his efforts were unavailing. Putting his lips to the ear of the unconscious man, he whispered urgently, and his whisper quickly grew to a hoarse shout. Come back, John Geste! Come back , man! You can't die, now , John Geste!

Do you hear me? Do you hear me, John? Fight for your life! Think how Beau would have fought! Think how Digby would have fought As though the name had reached his semi-conscious mind, the dying man stirred. The other crowed inarticulately, and suddenly fell quiet. I shall never forget my first sight of Isobel Rivers--a somewhat foolish remark, in view of the fact that I have never forgotten any glimpse I have ever had of her. I don't think I have even forgotten any word that she has ever said to me. Nay, more, I do not believe I have forgotten any word that I have ever said to her.

It was, as was most fitting, one of those truly glorious English spring mornings when one is consciously glad to be alive, and unconsciously aware that God's in His Heaven and all's well with the world. I was on a visit to the home of my maternal grandmother at Brandon Regis and had that morning walked out from the big old house which was half farm and half manor, where my yeoman ancestors had lived since Domesday Book, or before. I suppose it was the utter glory of that lovely morning, and not a premonition that this was to be an epochal day in my life, that made me feel so joyously exalted.

I had walked a mile or so, in the direction of Brandon Abbas, and was seated on a gate that opened into one of those neat and tidy English fields that always look to me as though they were tended rather by parlour-maids than by agricultural labourers. I was whistling merrily, and probably quite tunelessly, when a dog-cart, its small body perched high on big spidery wheels, came smartly round a bend in the high-hedged narrow lane to which my face was turned. On the front seat were two boys, extraordinarily alike, as I saw when the horse was brought to an extremely sudden stand-still at my gate.

Back to back with these obvious twins, sat a boy and a girl, the boy an unmistakable younger brother of the twins, and the girl younger still. They were an astoundingly handsome quartette, and the girl's face was the loveliest I had ever seen. I will not attempt to describe her, as it is foolish to attempt the impossible. I can only say that the face was typically Anglo-Saxon in its fair loveliness of pale golden hair, large, long-lashed eyes of corn-flower blue, perfect complexion and tender mouth, faultless and sweet. The boy who was driving the restless and spirited horse, addressed me in a form of words, archaic and unusual.

Music such as ne'er was heard on earth before--let's hope! But what's all this got to do with the dog? The dog may be dying while we trifle thus--dying of a broken heart. D'you mean to suggest that the callous brute is not by now dying of a broken heart? And what we want to know, Sir, if you could be quiet for one second, is--er--have you seen a dog?

Have you seen her here? Will you help me find her--for I do love him so? I'll find him if he or she is alive. Oh--er--she's a bitchelor--feminine of bachelor, you know," replied Digby She isn't a bit like a giraffe, really She's rather like--a dog. And she is one of these new Andorran Oyster-Hounds That's helpful," I said appreciatively, while four pairs of bright young eyes summed me up.

I was being weighed, and most earnestly I hoped I should not be found wanting. He has a most lovely smile," she added, turning to me. Now what is the likeliest way to win her smile? What shall I call her when I see her? You must tell us later what you did call her when you saw her Especially if you called her it in American. But to get back to the dog. You don't know the state I'm in Am I out in a rash? In a dog-cart," said Beau, "and you won't be in that long, when we start playing chariots Well, good-bye, old chap. I hope you haven't bored us--I mean we haven't I think he's most awfully kind and nice And we ought to help him to Of course we must help him.

Now let's see," he continued. He wags his tail from left to right; not right to left You get the idea, don't you? Or an Aberdonian his head, when asked to subscribe. Oh, yes, I know she's got a name because I was at the christening--but I've clean forgotten most of it What's her name, Beau? Featherstonehaugh--whereat the little girl was moved to climb down on to the step at the back of the cart, and jump to the ground.

Coming round to where I stood, she seized my arm and proceeded to lead me down the lane. She is Digby's dog, but it's me she loves, and I know she's grieving and sorrowing like anything, for she has such a nice loving nature and a good heart. Her name is Joss and she's middle-sized and middle-aged and sort of middleish altogether--not exactly a spaniel nor a terrier nor a hound, but just a dog, and if you call ' Joss, Joss, Joss, Joss, Jossie! You'll know her by her smile.

You will find her, won't you? Come on, if you want to be Boadicea," came borne on the breezes, and with a " Thank you, nice American Boy," and a smile that went straight to my heart--and also to my head--Isobel turned and scampered back. The dog-cart driven at a reckless gallop across a great lawn-like field, contained a boy and a girl, both wearing fencing-masks, the girl, armed with a bow and arrow, returning the fire of two presumed Roman soldiers who, with javelin and arrow, assailed the chariot, skilfully driven and controlled by a charioteer. I was relieved to observe that the horse was apparently accustomed to these martial exercises, and that the chariot came round in a graceful curve before reaching the ditch-and-hedge at the end of the field.

Being a strictly truthful person, I cannot say that I found Jasper Jocelyn Jelkes, alias Joss, for it was really she who found me. What her business may have been, I do not know, but she was visiting at High Gables, my grandmother's house, when I returned for lunch. As I emerged from the shadows of the avenue, I beheld a very nondescript dog sunning herself on the lowest of the white steps of the porch, and smiling, most positively smiling, with extreme fatuity and foolishness, at my Grandmother's tiny Pekinese, a microscopic by-product of the dog-industry, which found no favour in my sight.

Lifting up my voice to the level of the hope that rose in my heart, I invoked the smiling caller, in the very tones and accent in which I had been instructed, and in the most mellifluous and wooing way at my command. The excellent Joss, for such, beyond peradventure of a doubt, her conduct proved her to be, lolloped straightway to my feet and sitting on end, smiled and smiled and was not a villain, I felt sure.

You shall lead me, gentle Jossie, like a blind man's dog, straight to Brandon Abbas, to the house of Aunty, to those delightful boys and to--Isobel. Are you a bit of a card, Jossie? For my visiting-card you shall be Oh, to be seventeen again! Seventeen, on a most glorious English spring day, the day on which you have first encountered the very loveliest thing in all the world--that is to remain, for ever, the very loveliest thing in all your world.

After lunch, on that day of days, with Hail Smiling Joss as my sponsor, excuse, and loud note of introduction, I "proceeded," as they say in the British Navy, to the great house of Brandon Abbas, after so feasting the excellent dog that it seemed highly probable she would again lose herself in the direction of High Gables. Up a few miles of avenue of Norman oaks I tramped, from the Lodge at the gates guarded by heraldic beasts well known to students of Unnatural History--the Returning Wanderer straining at the leash and obviously striving to compose her features to a mask of becoming gravity, tempered by gladness while chastened by shame.

Arrived at a large square of mossy gravel surrounded by a dense shrubbery, I beheld a great porch and an open door through which I had, in passing, a glimpse of a panelled hall, gleaming floor, and suits of armour. A passing glimpse, because it was clearly obvious that Joss intended me to pass, and my will was not brought into conflict with hers, as I heard shouts and peals of laughter from the band of whom I was in search. Guided by the now excited dog, I crossed a rose-garden and, by a path through some great old elms and beeches, reached an open space of turf which was a view-point overlooking half the county.

As we burst from the gloom of the wood into the sunshine, a hubbub arose; the four, now augmented by several others, converged upon me, and, with a shriek of joy, as she sped forward ahead of the rest, the little girl literally flung herself upon me, threw her arms about my neck, and kissed me warmly.

Truth compels me to add that she promptly did precisely the same to the errant Joss, who instantly abandoning her expression, pose, and air of a Misunderstood-but-Hopeful-Dog, stood upon her hind legs, her paws against her mistress, wagged her tail and her tongue, and smiled and smiled to the point of laughter. Daniel Boone--or are you Kit Carson?

Anyhow, you're the Dogfinder," said Digby, extending his hand, and wringing mine powerfully Good mind to kill the fat-headed calf! The youngest brother, meanwhile, having slipped his hand inside my arm, while he critically watched the progress of the fight, stood by my side as I waited--holding the grubby little paw which Isobel had thrust into my hand--and feeling unreasoningly and unreasonably happy. Do you think we might roast you at the stake? We've all got mustangs, and Joss is quite a good wolf or coyote. She's being a wolf now, and she's not mad at all--not even half-witted. I am Digby Geste, Lieutenant of the Band.

The female prisoner is Isobel Rivers, the Music of the Band. The beautiful woman enthroned yonder is Claudia, Queen of the Band; and the gentleman at present struck dumb by toffee-on-the-jaw, is Augustus Brandon, and can't be helped. I may add that, as you doubtless suppose, he is not such a fool as he looks. How could he be? The small fat boy and girl on the pony are twins, Marmaduke and--er--Marmaduchess. Marmaduke's step-mother, who eats vinegar with a fishhook three times a day, says he is Wholly Bad. We call him the Wholly of Whollies. Marmaduchess is of course the Roly of Polies These camp followers--scampfollowers--er--no, that won't do, as they follow the Captain, are Honorary Members of the Band.

In view of your great services, I have the pleasure Gratefully accepting the Band's hospitality, I was initiated and enrolled, and quickly appointed stage-manager of its activities in its Western American manifestations, and became its authority upon the dark ways of Red Indians, Bad Men, Buffalo Bills, Cow-boys, Deadwood Dicks, and other desperadoes. I won my spurs but did not wear them by finding myself able to catch, mount, and ride a horse that was loose in the paddock.

A horse that had never been ridden before and apparently intended never to be ridden again After a most delightful tea with these extraordinarily charming young people, I walked back to High Gables feeling happier, I think, than I had ever felt in my life.

It was a rather wonderful thing to me, a lonely stranger in a strange land--for there was nobody but my Grandmother and her servants at High Gables--suddenly to find myself a member of so attractive a society, a family so friendly, so welcoming, so uncritically hospitable that, almost on sight, they had admitted me to membership of their Band, with all the privileges attaching thereto But as I lay awake in bed that night, the picture most vividly before me was the beautiful face of the darling child who had given me that sweet spontaneous kiss of gratitude and innocence.

I shall be believed when I state that I missed few opportunities of accepting the warm invitation to "come again soon" which invariably accompanied the farewells at the end of each of my visits to Brandon Abbas. The more I saw of the three Gestes, the better I liked them, and I knew that I could never see too much, nor indeed enough, of Isobel Rivers--that lovely little fairy; charming and delightful child; ineffably sweet, and absorbingly interesting, little friend Of the boys, I liked John best; for, in addition to all the attributes which he possessed in common with his brilliant brothers, he was, to me, slightly pathetic in his dog-like devotion to the twins, who ruled him with a rod of iron, chastened and chastised him for the good of his soul, kept him in subjection, and loved him utterly.

In return for their unwavering and undemonstrated love, he gave them worship. They would have died for him, and he would have died under torture for them. Yet, at the same time, I like Beau enormously; for his splendour--and it was nothing less--of mind, body and soul; his unselfish sweetness and gentleness, and his extraordinary "niceness" to everybody, including myself.

Even when he had occasion to punish a member of his Band, it appeared to me that the victim of his arbitrary justice rather enjoyed the honour of being singled out, even for admonition and the laying on of hands But then, again, I liked Digby as much; for his unfailing mirth and happiness. He was a walking chuckle, and those who walked through life with him chuckled too. He was merriment personified; his day was a smile; and if he fell on his head from the top of a tree, the first use he made of his recovered breath was to laugh at the extraordinarily amusing funniness of Digby Geste's falling thirty feet and nearly breaking his neck He was the most genuinely and spontaneously cheerful person I ever met, and somehow one always laughed when Digby began to laugh, without waiting for the joke.

Isobel was their pet, their fairy, their mascot, their dear perfect play-mate; and Claudia was their Queen--"Queen Claudia, of Beau Geste's Band"--held in the highest honour and esteem. They loved and obeyed Claudia; but they petted and adored Isobel. I suppose Claudia was of an immaculately flawless beauty, charm, and grace of form and face, even as a young girl--but personally I never liked her. There was a slight hardness, a self-consciousness and an element of selfishness in her character, that were evident--to me at any rate, though not, I think, to the others.

When they played "tournaments" she was always the Queen of Beauty, and he her Champion, ready, willing and able, to dispose of all who disputed his or her claim that she was the loveliest damsel in all the world Nor could I like Lady Brandon, fascinating as she was to most. She was kind, gracious and hospitable to me, and I was grateful--but like her I could not. She was an absolute re-incarnation of "Good" Queen Bess, and I do not think any living woman could have better impersonated Queen Elizabeth than she, whether on the stage or off.

Although beautiful in her way, she was astoundingly like the portraits of that great unscrupulous Queen, and, in my belief, she resembled her in character. She was imperious, clever, hard, "managing" and capable. She was very queenly in appearance and style, given to the cherishing of favourites--Michael and Claudia especially--and extremely jealous. She was a woman of strong character and could be both ruthless and unscrupulous.

At least, that is the impression I formed of Lady Brandon--and I am very intuitive, as well as being a student of physiognomy, and possessed of a distinct gift for reading character. She resembled the Queen, too, in her power of inspiring great love in men, a noble love, worthy of a nobler object On one of my visits to the Band, I was scolded for my absence of several days--I had been to London, on business of my Father's--and told that I had missed the chance of a lifetime, a chance of seeing and hearing a veritable Hero of Romance, a French officer of Spahis, son of a senior school friend of Lady Brandon's, who had been week-ending at Brandon Abbas, and who had for ever endeared himself to the children, by his realistic and true tales of Desert warfare, and of adventures in mysterious and romantic Morocco.

Promptly we ceased to be Red Indians, Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders, Ancient Britons, Big Game Hunters, or anything else but Spahis and Arabs, and the three Gestes and I spent a portion of our lives in charging--mounted on two ponies, a donkey and a carriage-horse--a douar of gorse-bushes stoutly defended by a garrison of Arabs clad in towels, sheets and night-shirts and armed with pea-shooters, bows and arrows, lances, swords and spears, toy rifles and pistols which made more sound than sorrow The Band certainly "lived dangerously," but accidents were few and slight, and the absolute freedom permitted to the children, as soon as morning lessons with the Chaplain were finished, was really not abused.

Being trusted, they were trustworthy, and the Captain led the Band not into temptation irresistible, nor into more than right and reasonable danger. This chaplain was a puzzle to me. I felt certain he was essentially good, honourable and well-meaning; but he struck me, in my youthful intolerance, as being too weak and feeble in character to be worthy of the name of man. Certainly he was well-placed in the skirted cassock that he wore; and that, together with his sweet and gentle face and manner, seemed to put him in a class apart--neither man nor woman, just sexless priest.

He loved the children devotedly--and was more like a mother than a father to them. Lady Brandon, he obviously adored. He too, was one of this queenly and imperious woman's favourites, and her handsome face would soften to a great gentleness when she walked and talked with him upon the terrace. It was an extraordinarily interesting household, and when the time came for me to return home and prepare to go to Harvard, I was extremely sorry.

It was with a slight lump in my throat that I spent my last afternoon with the Band, and with a miserable turmoil in my heart that I said good-bye to them. They, too, seemed genuinely sorry that I was going, and seriously considered John's proposal that they should accompany me en masse , at least as far as Wyoming, where they might remain and adopt the profession of cow-puncher. I think I walked back to High Gables that afternoon as quickly as I had ever walked in my life, for I was trying to walk away from myself, from my misery, from the sense of utter loss and desolation.

I was astounded at myself Why was I feeling this way? What had happened to me? I had not felt so wretched, so bereaved, so filled with a sense of loss and loneliness, since my Mother died I was like a man who, stricken with some sudden mortal pain, strives to account for it, and cannot do so And I had positively been unable to answer anything at all. I could only laugh and nod my head in assent. That night, being absolutely unable to sleep, I rose from my bed, dressed, and, creeping quietly from the house, walked to Brandon Abbas to see, as I told myself, how that ancient pile looked by the light of the full moon Next day I began my journey, suffering horribly from home-sickness--sickness for the home of my heart--Brandon Abbas.

Each mile that I was carried, by train and ship and train again, from that lovely place, increased my misery, and when at length I reached my Father's ranch, I had hard work to hide it from my sister Mary, that dear determined and forceful young woman. My Father--my hard, overbearing, autocratic Father--was not given to noticing whether others were wretched or not, and my kid sister, Janey, was too young.

Noel, the eldest of our family, was still "missing," and my Father professed neither to know nor to care where he was However, I soon began to enjoy my sweet unhappiness, and I lived on horseback until the day came when I must go East to college, and leave this free and glorious open-air life behind me. As a matter of fact, I went willingly enough, for I loved books, and desired above all things to become a fine scholar I considered "My mind to me a kingdom is," to be a grand saying if one could say it to oneself only, of course with real truth I could never understand Noel's flat refusal to study anything but horses, Nature, and the lore of the Indian and the Plainsman; nor his oft-expressed view that education is not of books but of life.

Nothing, according to Noel, could educate one for life except life itself; and books and schooling could but educate one for more schooling and books, the examination-hall, and the realms of false values. And yet he read the books that he liked, my wonderful brother Noel--but to school and college he would not go, and thither not even my dynamic and violent Father could drive him. We could not do otherwise than honour Mother, as well as love her almost to the point of adoration. What shall I say of my terrible Father? We did honour him.

We respected him and most certainly we obeyed him--all of us but Noel, that is. Noel ceased to obey him as soon as he was big and old enough to stand up for Mother. His refusal to go to school and college was, I believe, due to his wish, that he might be near her and take her part. Nor did he leave home until the day when he found that in his wrath he had pulled his gun on Dad, and realized that he had to choose between that sort of thing--and departure.

My Father was not a bad man. He was a very "good" one. He was not cruel, vicious, nor vindictive; but he was a terror and a tyrant. He crushed his wife and broke her spirit, and he turned his children into rebels, or terrified "suggestibles. Of all the marvellous deeds for which, as a child, I worshipped Noel, his defiance of my Father, was to me by far the most wonderful. At different times, my Father in his austerity and tenacity reminded me of Abraham Lincoln; in his rugged and ferocious "piety," of the prophet Elijah, John Wesley, Brigham Young, and John Knox.

There was something in him, too, of Mr. Gladstone, of Theodore Roosevelt, and a good deal of William Jennings Bryan at his most oratorical, most narrow, and most dogmatic. And there was undoubtedly something in him of King David of Jerusalem. Yes, most undoubtedly there were many points of strong resemblance between my Father and that brave, strong, wily man, that pious and passionate king. And a king, in his own wide realm, my father was, brooking scarcely a suggestion, much less a contradiction, from any man--a king terribly and unhappily aware of the state of sin in which lived all his subjects, especially those of his own household.

He believed that the Bible had been dictated--in English of course--by God, and that to take it other than literally was damnation and death. He almost flogged Noel to death when, at the age of sixteen or so, the latter impiously dared to wonder how Noah gathered in both the polar bears and the kangaroos, for his menagerie, and how he built the fifty-thousand-ton liner necessary for the accommodation of all the animals and their food.

This was after Father's return from a trip to Europe to buy a twenty-thousand-dollar pedigree prize Hereford bull, and the finest pure-bred Arab stallion that money could purchase. During his absence, Noel had caught out the overseer, a pious-seeming hypocritical rascal, in whom Father firmly believed; had thrashed him, and run him off the Ranch. Undoubtedly Noel had saved Father a great deal of money and unmasked an unmitigated rascal, and for this, I verily believe, Father hated him the more, and never forgave him.

To this day, when I have a nightmare, and I have a good many, it is generally of a terrible conflict with my Father, and I awake sweating and trembling with indignation, rage and horror. For, in the dream, he always rushes at me, bawling invective, his face inflamed with rage, and, seizing me by the throat he raises his cutting-whip to thrash the wickedness out of me, as he so often did in reality. And, to my horror, I find myself clenching my fist to smash that mask of mad ferocity, and then I realize that I am about to strike my own Father, in my indignation that I, a grown man, should be treated thus.

I believe that Mother worshipped him and feared him, and I believe that I, subconsciously, hated him most bitterly, while I consciously respected and feared him. To the world, our little western world, he was a great man--a man of his word, a strong man, a dangerous man to cross, a good friend and a bad enemy. One of Mary's obiter dicta on the subject of Father sheds a great light on his strong and complex character. Mary inherited much of Father's strength and force of will, as well as much of Mother's attractiveness. She was a girl of character, and what she set her heart on, she got.

If Father's strength were that of granite, iron and adamant, hers was the strength of tempered steel, for she was pliant and knew when to bend that she might not break. She managed Father and refused to be crushed. Where Noel openly defied and fought him, she secretly defied and out-manoeuvred him. Father certainly loved her--as men do their daughters--and I think Mary loved him, up to a point.

Much as I enjoyed everything, from books to base-ball, at glorious Harvard, I found myself obsessed with the desire to visit England again. Nor was it wholly due to a yearning to see the fine face of my kindly-caustic Grandmother Hankinson once more. I wanted to see the Geste boys again--and I wanted to see Isobel That's the plain fact of the matter--I wanted to see Isobel. Every single separate day of my life I wanted to see her. I do not say that, during my Harvard years, I mooned about in a hopeless state of calf-love, a ridiculous young sentimentalist, nor that her lovely little face came ever and ever between me and the printed page, and was always in my mind, sleeping and waking, playing and working--but I certainly admit that I thought of her regularly It was my practice nightly, on laying my head on the pillow, to project my mind to the Park of Brandon Abbas, and to enter into a lovely secret kingdom of my own, and there to dwell, happy, remote, and in lovely peace, until I fell asleep.

This kingdom was shared by Isobel, and we two--devoted friends--did delightful things together; had wonderful talks; explored a world of utter beauty; and walked hand-in-hand in a fairyland of joy and fun and laughter I am not sure but that this was my real life, at that time; this and the dreams that followed almost invariably, when I fell asleep. Certainly, it was so real that I looked forward to it each day, and if not consciously doing so, was always half-aware and semi-conscious of something delightful that was in store for me, something good and sweet and precious, something "nice" that was coming to me.

And when I analysed this feeling of joyous promise I found that it was my soul's anticipation of its visit to the Kingdom of Enchantment where Isobel would meet me and we would walk and talk and laugh together in our Paradise Unlost. When a sleep-dream followed the consciously induced day-dream, I always awoke from it to minutes of ineffable happiness, a happiness experienced at no other time and in no other way And I realized how singularly blessed was Otis H. Vanbrugh, above other men. Nor did the corollary escape me--how incumbent it was upon me to keep myself fit to enter our lovely secret kingdom, and worthy to meet Isobel there.

I do not think that what are supposed to be the inevitable and terrible temptations of wealthy young men at College, existed for me at all. Late hours would have been hours that made me late for the Secret Garden; the odour of wine was not one that would mingle favourably with that of the dewy roses there; nor could one who was daily privileged to commune with Isobel, find the faintest possible charm or attraction in the halls of the Paphian dames So I filled my days with work, read hard and played hard, lived dangerously when living in the West, pursued with ardour there the study of International Law and of the ways of the mountain lion and of the grizzly bear, and earned the warm approval of my brave and hardy sister, Mary And imagine if you can, the frame of mind in which, at the end of my College days, I sailed for Europe--on a visit to a life-long friend of my Father's, who was then our Ambassador to France--and incidentally to visit my Grandmother at Brandon Regia As I stepped from the Southampton-London boat-train at Waterloo Terminus, another train was in the act of departure from the opposite side of the same platform, and gliding forward with slowly increasing speed.

At a window, waving a handkerchief to three young men, was a girl, and, with a queer constriction of the heart, a rush of blood to the head, and a slight trembling of the whole body, I realized that the girl was Isobel Rivers--the child Isobel, grown up to most lovely girlhood She had put her hair up In the baggage-car of my own train were my cabin-trunks and portmanteaux. In the hands of a porter were already my suit-case and grip. Without ceremony, I rushed across that broad platform, threading my way through the crowd like a football-forward in a hurry. As I reached the now quickly-moving train, seized a door-handle and ran swiftly while I turned it, an official of some sort made a grab at me and shouted, "Stand back!

You can't get in there, sir," in fiercely indignant remonstrance, not so much at my daring to break my neck as at my daring to break a railway bye-law. In the compartment that I then entered, were three Englishmen and an Englishwoman. Not one of them looked up as I took my seat, nor spoke to me nor to each other during the long hours of non-stop run that ensued And there I sat in that antediluvian non-corridor car through those long hours, my baggage abandoned, my hotel reservation unclaimed, my destination unknown; but with the knowledge that Isobel Rivers and I were in the same train and that I should speak to her just as soon as that prehistoric Flying Dutchman, or Roaring Rocket, reached its destination or first stopping-place.

In spite of cold, hunger, disorientation, and a certain slight anxiety as to the ultimate fate of my baggage, those were, I verily believe, among the happiest hours of my life; and when the train slowed down--it must have slowed down, I suppose, though no change of speed was to me perceptible--to decant its phlegmatic inhabitants at Exeter, I, the last man into that train, was certainly the first man out. Isobel, I am most perfectly sure, was really unfeignedly glad to see me, and Lady Brandon very kindly pretended to be.

I knew that Isobel was glad because, as she recognized me, that wonderful sparkle--a kind of dancing light, that indescribable lighting-up, as though with an internal illumination, that always signalized and beautified her joy--came into her eyes. One reads of people dancing with pleasure and jumping for joy. Isobel did not do these things, but her eyes did, and one could always tell when a gift or a jest or any happening had given her real pleasure, by watching her eyes. I had often heard John Geste say " That'll make Isobel's eyes shine" when there was something amusing to tell her, or some piece of good news; and I thought to myself that surely no-one could conceive a more glorious and wonderful way of spending his life than in bringing this beautiful light to Isobel's eyes.

The boys will be sorry," and she gave me both her hands in the most delightful and friendly manner. Lady Brandon gave me both fingers in a less spontaneous and friendly manner that was nevertheless quite pleasant, and--God bless her--invited me to share their compartment in the train to Brandon Abbas and their carriage which would meet them there. She displayed none of the surprise that she must certainly have felt on learning that there was no luggage problem, as I had no luggage. Beneath her half-kindly, half-satirical gaze, I did my best to conceal the fact that, on catching sight of Isobel, I had abandoned everything but hope, and dashed from one train to the other.

I do not know whether selected prophets, such as Elijah, ever found ecstatic joy in their rides in fiery chariots and similar celestial vehicles, but I do know that my short ride by train and carriage with Isobel, was to me the highest summit of ecstatic joy--a pure happiness utterly indescribable and incommunicable--the higher, the greater, and the lovelier for its purity. And it was not until I was deposited at High Gables after leaving Isobel and Lady Brandon at Brandon Abbas, that my soaring spirit came down to earth, and, it having come to earth, I was faced with the problem of explaining my unheralded arrival and the absence of further provision than a walking-stick and one glove.

Also, alas, with the realization that I should not see Isobel again, as she and Lady Brandon were going to Wales on the morrow, and, later on, to Scotland on a round of visits. They had been staying in London with the boys, who were now setting off for a walking-tour in Normandy. However, I had seen Isobel and received confirmation--if confirmation were needed--of the fact that not only was she the most marvellous thing in all the world, but that everything else in the world would be as nothing in the balance against her.

I have mentioned this trivial and foolish little incident--which ended next day with my return to London and the pursuit of my baggage--because it was on this night, as I lay awake, that there came to me the great, the very greatest, idea of my life--the idea that I might conceivably, with the help of God and every nerve and fibre of my being, some day, somehow, contrive to make myself worthy to love Isobel and then--incredibly--to be loved by Isobel, and actually to devote my life to doing that of which I had thought when her eyes sparkled and shone at seeing me.

It is curious and true that the idea had never occurred to me before, and I had never envisaged the possibility of such a thing as not only loving her, but being loved by her in return, and of actually walking hand in hand along the path of life in the spirit of sweet and lovely companionship, as we did nightly in our Dream Garden And there, I remember, a little chill fell upon my heart and checked my fond imaginings, as it occurred to me for the first time that the Dream Garden was a creation of my dreams alone, and not of Isobel's as well.

There we met and talked and walked and were dear friends, with a reality as great as that of anything in my real and waking life--but of course, it was only my dream, and the real Isobel knew nothing of the Dream Garden. Suppose--only suppose--that she dreamed it, too! Suppose Isobel had this curious and wonderful double life, as I had, and met me in her dreams precisely as I met her, night by night!

Absurd, of course, but much too lovely an idea to discard with even pretended contempt. I would ask her the very next time I saw her. How unutterably wonderful if she could tell me that it was so! Moreover, if it were so, it would mean that she loved me --and, at this, even I laughed at my own folly. Still I would ask her the very next time we met I suppose that among the very happiest days of my whole life were those I spent on my next journey from New York to Southampton and Brandon Regis.

I must have seemed insufferably joyous and pleased with myself. When not actually whistling or singing with my mouth, I was doing it in my heart. What is less certain is whether everybody loved me. I loved the glorious sunshine, the perfect sea, the splendid ship, the jolly food, the passengers, every one of them, the young, the old, the merry, the grumpy, the active, the lazy, the selfish, the unselfish If all the world loves a lover, surely a lover loves all the world The world that contains, and exists to contain, the one and only woman in the world I loved the stars, the moon, the marvellous night-sky, the floor of Heaven pierced with millions of little holes through which shone rays of the celestial light--and I sat late and alone, gazing, thinking, dreaming, longing.

I loved the dawn, and late as I may have sat upon the boat-deck at night, I was there again to see the East grow grey and pink and golden, there to welcome and to greet the sun that ushered in one more milestone day upon the brief and lovely road that led to Brandon Abbas and to Isobel. Brandon Abbas and Isobel! One day, when a poor rich youth whom I comprehended in my universal love--in spite of his pimples, poor jokes, unpleasing ways and unacceptable views--asked me if I were going to Paris, and I replied, "No--to Brandon Abbas," and he, astonished, inquired where that might be, and I answered:.

Doubly right was he, for I was beside myself with joy and drunk with happiness. At Southampton I let the boat-train go upon its foolish way to London, and at the terminus hotel of the South Western Railway I awaited the far far better one that meanders across the green and pleasant land of England to the little junction where one may get one better still, one that proceeds thence to Exeter where waits the best of all--the final and finest train in the wide world--that carries its blest occupants to Brandon Abbas. I was not sitting in a train made with mortal hands, but in a chariot of fire that was carrying me, ecstatic and uplifted, to the heaven of my dreams, my night-and-day dreams of many years.

by Percival Christopher Wren

From the station I drove, in what to the dull eye of the ordinary beholder was a musty, mouldy carriage, drawn by a moth-eaten and dilapidated parody of a horse, to High Gables, and was welcomed with the apparently caustic kindness and grim friendliness with which my wonderful old Grandmother Hankinson hid her really tender and loving nature. I remember trying, on the way, to recollect some lines I fancied I had read. Were they written by the Marquis of Montrose or had Queen Elizabeth scratched them with a diamond on a window-pane for the encouragement of some young adorer?

Was it, " He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all. Something like that anyhow, and probably written by Montrose. Well, my deserts were small enough, and at times I feared my fate, but I was certainly going to put it to the touch before I went away, if I stayed for a year or a life-time.

I was going to tell Isobel that I loved her--had loved her unceasingly and increasingly, from the moment that I had seen her, a lovely child sitting in a dog-cart, and much concerned about a dog. True--I was utterly and wholly unworthy of her, but so was everybody else. I had nothing to recommend me but an absolutely perfect and unquenchable love--but I was not ineligible from the point of view of such a person as Lady Brandon, for example.

I was a foreigner, an American, but I had roots in this very soil, through my Mother. I was obscure and unknown, but that could very quickly be put right if I became Isobel's husband. That alone would be a great distinction, but I would undertake to add to it, and to promise that Isobel's husband should one day be the American Ambassador to St. James's, to Paris, to St. Petersburg--any old where she liked President of the United States of America, if she set her heart on his being that I was very far from being poor, and should not be far from being very rich, someday.

Thirty-cent things of that sort would be quite germane and material in the eyes of Queen Elizabethan Lady Brandon. To my mind, the only really relevant thing was that I loved Isobel to the point of worship and adoration, and that this love of mine had not only stood the test of time, but had gained from Time himself--for the wine of love had mellowed and matured, grown better, richer, sweeter, nobler, year by year Good old Burdon, the perfect butler, fine flower of English retainerhood, was in the hall as I appeared in the porch, and greeted me in the perfect manner of the perfect servant, friendly, welcoming, respectful.

I walked down the drive less buoyantly than I had walked up it. Natalie Cate Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Anna Blume, 19, arrives in a city to look for her brother. She finds a ruin, where buildings collapse on scavenging citizens. All production has stopped. Nobody can leave, except as a corpse collected for fuel.

Anna buys a trolley and wanders the city, salvaging objects and information. She records horrific scenes, but also a deep capacity for love. This small hope flickers in a world where no apocalyptic event is specified. Instead, Auster creates his dystopia by magnifying familiar flaws and recycling historical detail: NC Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

Consider Phlebas introduced the first of many misguided or untrustworthy heroes — Horza, who can change his body just by thinking about it — and a typically Banksian collision involving two giant trains in an subterranean station. PD Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. A magic carpet is the last refuge of a people known as the Seerkind, who for centuries have been hunted by both humans and the Scourge, a mysterious being that seems determined to live up to its name.

Nicola Barker has been accused of obscurity, but this Booker-shortlisted comic epic has a new lightness of touch and an almost soapy compulsiveness. A jumble of voices and typefaces, mortal fear and sarky laughter, the novel is as true as it is truly odd, and beautifully written to boot.

He sends him back to the far future in an attempt to save the Eloi woman Weena, only to find himself in a future timeline diverging from the one he left. Bear combines intelligence, humour and the wonder of scientific discovery in a techno-thriller about a threat to the future of humanity. A retro-viral plague sweeps the world, infecting women via their sexual partners and aborting their embryos.

Somehow surviving, he swiftly gets down to it. Those who stumble across it are inevitably surprised to find it was written half a century ago. Along the way he joins up with a group of vampires, finds his true family and discovers what he really values, amid much blood, sex, drugs and drink.

Keith Brooke Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Al Barker is a thrillseeking adventurer recruited to investigate an alien labyrinth on the moon. Barker is the first person to survive the trauma of witnessing their own death, returning again and again to explore.

Rogue Moon works as both thriller and character study, a classic novel mapping out a new and sophisticated SF, just as Barker maps the alien maze. KB Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. When the Devil comes to s Moscow, his victims are pillars of the Soviet establishment: This is just a curtain-raiser for the main event, however: For his hostess, his satanic majesty chooses Margarita, a courageous young Russian whose lover is in a psychiatric hospital, traumatised by the banning of his novel.

No prizes for guessing whom Bulgakov identified with; although Stalin admired his early work, by the s he was personally banning it. In this pioneering work of British science fiction, the hero is a bumptious American mining engineer who stumbles on a subterranean civilisation. Also present are ray guns, aerial travel and ESP.

Ironically, the hero finds utopia too boring. He is rescued from death by the Princess Zee, who flies him to safety. One of a flurry of novels written by Burgess when he was under the mistaken belief that he had only a short time to live. Set in a dystopian socialist welfare state of the future, the novel fantasises a world without religion. JS Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. In one of the first split-screen narratives, Burgess juxtaposes three key 20th-century themes: JJ Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

John Carter, a Confederate veteran turned gold prospector, is hiding from Indians in an Arizona cave when he is mysteriously transported to Mars, known to the locals as Barsoom. Butler single-handedly brought to the SF genre the concerns of gender politics, racial conflict and slavery. Several of her novels are groundbreaking, but none is more compelling or shocking than Kindred. The hero Higgs finds himself in New Zealand as, for a while, did the chronic misfit Butler. Does it sound familiar? Higgs escapes by balloon, with the sweetheart he has found there.

He ends up keeping his promise, witnessing the French revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath from the perspective of the Italian treetops. In this novel, the domineering old spinster Queenie dies — a relief to those around her. Her niece Alison inherits the house, but soon starts to suspect that the old woman is taking over her eight-year-old daughter Rowan. A paranoid, disturbing masterpiece. Alice, while reading in a meadow, sees a white rabbit rush by, feverishly consulting a watch.

She follows him down a hole Freudian analysis, as elsewhere in the story, is all too easy , where she grows and shrinks in size and encounters creatures mythological, extinct and invented. Morbid jokes and gleeful subversion abound. More donnish in tone, this fantasy follows Alice into a mirror world in which everything is reversed. Her journey is based on chess moves, during the course of which she meets such figures as Humpty Dumpty and the riddling twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

More challenging intellectually than the first instalment, it explores loneliness, language and the logic of dreams. The year is — and other times. Fevvers, aerialiste, circus performer and a virgin, claims she was not born, but hatched out of an egg. She has two large and wonderful wings. In fact, she is large and wonderful in every way, from her false eyelashes to her ebullient and astonishing adventures. The journalist Jack Walser comes to interview her and stays to love and wonder, as will every reader of this entirely original extravaganza, which deftly and wittily questions every assumption we make about the lives of men and women on this planet.

The golden age of the American comic book coincided with the outbreak of the second world war and was spearheaded by first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants who installed square-jawed supermen as bulwarks against the forces of evil. It celebrates the transformative power of pop culture, and reveals the harsh truths behind the hyperreal fantasies. XB Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. One of the first major works to present alien arrival as beneficent, it describes the slow process of social transformation when the Overlords come to Earth and guide us to the light.

At the centre of all is the terrifying Sunday, a superhuman force of mischief and pandemonium. Two rival magicians flex their new powers, pursuing military glory and power at court, striking a dangerous alliance with the Faerie King, and falling into passionate enmity over the use and meaning of the supernatural. The book is studded with footnotes both scholarly and comical, layered with literary pastiche, and invents a whole new strain of folklore: This classic by an unjustly neglected writer tells the story of Drove and Pallahaxi-Browneyes on a far-flung alien world which undergoes long periods of summer and gruelling winters lasting some 40 years.

This is just the kind of jargon-free, humane, character-driven novel to convert sceptical readers to science fiction. This is a story about the end of the world, and the general falling-off that precedes it, as year-old Karen loses first her virginity, then consciousness. When she reawakens more than a decade later, the young people she knew and loved have died, become junkies or or simply lost that new-teenager smell. Wondering what the future holds? That said, the creepiness stays with you, especially the house that keeps stealthily remodelling itself: A curly tail, trotters and a snout are not far off.

Joanna Biggs Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The setting is a post-apocalyptic future, long past the age of humans. The novel follows Lobey, who as Orpheus embarks on a quest to bring his lover back from the dead. With lush, poetic imagery and the innovative use of mythic archetypes, Delaney brilliantly delineates the human condition.

Here California is under-populated and most animals are extinct; citizens keep electric pets instead. In order to afford a real sheep and so affirm his empathy as a human being, Deckard hunts rogue androids, who lack empathy. As ever with Dick, pathos abounds and with it the inquiry into what is human and what is fake. The Axis has won the second world war. Imperial Japan occupies the west coast of America; more tyrannically, Nazi Germany under Martin Bormann, Hitler having died of syphilis takes over the east coast. The Californian lifestyle adapts well to its oriental master.

Germany, although on the brink of space travel and the possessor of vast tracts of Russia, is teetering on collapse. The novel is multi-plotted, its random progression determined, Dick tells us, by consultation with the Chinese I Ching. And in the character of Isserley — her curiosity, resignation, wonderment and pain — he paints an immensely affecting portrait of how it feels to be irreparably damaged and immeasurably far from home. Determined to extricate himself from an increasingly serious relationship, graduate Nicholas Urfe takes a job as an English teacher on a small Greek island.

Walking alone one day, he runs into a wealthy eccentric, Maurice Conchis, who draws him into a succession of elaborate psychological games that involve two beautiful young sisters in reenactments of Greek myths and the Nazi occupation. Appearing after The Collector, this was actually the first novel that Fowles wrote, and although it quickly became required reading for a generation, he continued to rework it for a decade after publication.

Before long, he is embroiled in a battle between ancient and modern deities: The three narrative strands — young lovers in the s, the chaos of thebetweenalcoholics, English civil war and soldiers going native in a Vietnam-tinged Roman Britain — circle around Mow Cop in Cheshire and an ancient axehead found there. Dipping in and out of time, in blunt, raw dialogue, Garner creates a moving and singular novel. A fast-paced thriller starring a washed-up hacker, a cybernetically enhanced mercenary and an almost omnipotent artificial intelligence, it inspired and informed a slew of films and novels, not least the Matrix trilogy.

When the adults finally arrive, childish tears on the beach hint less at relief than fear for the future. When Haldeman returned from Vietnam, with a Purple Heart for the wounds he had suffered, he wrote a story about a pointless conflict that seems as if it will never end. Known for his intricate short stories and critically acclaimed mountaineering novel Climbers, Harrison cut his teeth on SF.

In typical fashion, he writes space opera better than many who write only in the genre. For all its star travel and alien artefacts, scuzzy 25th-century spaceports and drop-out space pilots, Light is actually about twisting three plotlines as near as possible to snapping point.

This is as close as SF gets to literary fiction, and literary fiction gets to SF. Jon Courtenay Grimwood Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Amateur stonemason, waterbed designer, reformed socialist, nudist, militarist and McCarthyite, Heinlein is one of the most interesting and irritating figures in American science fiction. This swinging 60s bestseller working title: The Heretic is typically provocative, with a central character, Mike Smith, who is raised by Martians after the death of his parents and questions every human assumption — about sex, politics, society and spirituality — on his arrival on Earth.

Set on the desert world of Arrakis, this complex novel combines politics, religion, ecology and evolution in the rise to power of Paul Atreides, who becomes a revolutionary leader and a prophet with the ability to foresee and shape the future. Epic in scope, Dune is primarily an adventure story, though Herbert was one of the first genre writers convincingly to tackle the subject of planetary ecology in his depiction of a drought-stricken world.

After the Bomb — long, long after — humanity is still huddled in medieval-style stockades, cold, ignorant, superstitious and speaking in degraded English, the patois in which this book is written. Yet his story is still poignant. This is what happens to Robert Wringhim, who is brought up in the Calvinist belief in predestination. When he encounters a devilish figure known as Gil-Martin, Wringhim is easily tempted into undertaking a campaign to purge the world of the Reprobate — those not selected for salvation.

After a series of rapes and murders, and seemingly pursued by demons, Wringhim yields to the ultimate temptation of suicide.

Richard Aldington: Death of a Hero (1929)

Sexist, racist, snob, Islamophobe … Houellebecq has been called many things, with varying degrees of accuracy. The charge of misanthropy is hard to deny, given his repeated portrayal of humankind as something that has lost its way, perhaps even its right to exist. Atomised — set in the world we know but introduced by a member of the superior species that will supplant us — provides two more examples of our inadequacy in half-brothers Michel and Bruno, an introverted biologist and a sex-addict teacher. Conflict has been eradicated with the aid of sexual hedonism and the drug Soma; babies are factory-bred in bottles to produce a strict class hierarchy, from alpha to epsilon.

It is the year AF After Ford Eventually he recalls that he is an eminent concert pianist, scheduled to perform. The man is shepherded through an expanding and contracting world, his own memories and moods changing like the weather.

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Yet the dream-logic is rooted in real, poignant, human dilemmas. One for readers who have grown out of Philip K Dick. CO Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Hill House is haunted, but by what? The ghosts of the past or the people of the present? Here is a delicious, quietly unnerving essay in horror, an examination of what makes us jump. Jackson sets up an old dark house in the country, garnishes it with some creepy servants, and then adds a quartet of intrepid visitors. But her lead character — fragile, lonely Eleanor — is at once victim and villainess.

By the end, the person she is scaring most is herself. Are the ghosts that a new governess in a country house believes to be steadily corrupting her young charges apparitions, hallucinations or projections of her own dark urges? The book divides SF critics and puzzles fans of her crime novels, but remains one of the great British dystopias and a trenchant satire on our times and values. JCG Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. In the centre of England, a vast crystalline lake has formed. A strong candidate for the most beautiful of all Victorian novels.

Owing debts to Jimi Hendrix and offering a decidedly 60s summer festival vibe, Bold as Love is the first in a series of novels that mix politics with myth, counterculture and dark age sensibilities. It deservedly won Jones the Arthur C Clarke award. On the morning of his 30th birthday, Josef K is arrested by two sinister men in dapper suits.

PO Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The story has two central characters. Algernon is a mouse, whose intelligence is surgically enhanced to the level of rodent genius. The same technique is applied to Charlie Gordon, a mentally subnormal fast-food kitchen hand. The narrative, told by Charlie as his IQ soars, traces the discontents of genius. Alas, the effects of the surgery are shortlived, and the end of the story finds Charlie back in the kitchen — mentally challenged but, in his way, happy. Being smart is not everything. The hotel is haunted by unexorcised demons from brutal murders committed there years ago.

Torrance is possessed and turns, homicidally, on his wife and child. Jack is beyond salvation. The film was brilliantly filmed by Stanley Kubrick in A young married woman, Melanie, scours antiques shops to furnish her new home and comes back with an old chaise-longue, which is perfect apart from an unsightly reddish-brown stain. She falls asleep on it and wakes up in an unfamiliar house, an unfamiliar time — and an unfamiliar body. At first she assumes she must be dreaming. But gradually she starts to piece together the story of Milly, the young Victorian woman in the last stages of consumption whom she has apparently become, and the nature of the disgrace she has brought on the household run by her fearsomely stern elder sister.

Why does the sight of the doctor make her pulse beat faster? And can she find a way back to her own life? AN Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. This is frequently judged the best ghost story of the Victorian period. On the sudden death of her father, Maud, an heiress, is left to the care of her Uncle Silas, until she comes of age. Sinister in appearance and villainous by nature, Silas first plans to marry Maud to his oafish son, Dudley who is, it emerges, already married.

When this fails, father and son, together with the French governess Madame de la Rougierre, conspire to murder their ward with a spiked hammer. Told by the ingenuous and largely unsuspecting Maud, the narrative builds an impending sense of doom. Set in a near-future in a disintegrating city, where lawlessness prevails and citizens scratch a living from the debris, this dystopia is the journal of an unnamed middle-class narrator who fosters street-kid Emily and observes the decaying world from her window.

Despite the pessimistic premise and the description of civilisation on the brink of collapse, with horror lurking at every turn, the novel is an insightful and humane meditation on the survivability of the species. The world has entered the Second Enlightenment after the Faith Wars. In the Republic of Scotland, Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson investigates the murders of religious leaders, suspecting atheists but uncovering a plot involving artificial intelligence.

Before his current incarnation as a thriller writer specialising in conspiracy theories and psychopathic gore, Marshall Smith wrote forward-thinking sci-fi which combined high-octane angst with humour both noir and surreal. His debut features a bizarre compartmentalised city with different postcodes for the insane, the overachievers, the debauched or simply those with unusual taste in interior design; as well as adventures in the realm of dreams, a deep love of cats and a killer twist.

Robert Neville is the last man standing, the lone survivor in a world overrun by night-crawling vampires. But if history is written by the winners, what does that make Neville: Clearly this was too much for the recent Will Smith movie adaptation, which ran scared of the very element that makes the book unique. Francie Brady is a rambunctious kid in s Ireland. McCabe leads us on a freewheeling tour of a scattered, shattered consciousness, as Francie grows from wayward child to dangerous adult — nursing his grievances and plotting his revenge.

Chances are that old Mrs Nugent has a surprise in store. These two figures are pushing south towards the sea, but the sea is poisoned and provides no comfort. In the end, all they have and, by implication, all the rest of us have is each other. During the Korean war and then the space programme, Yeremin closes down his emotions even as his horizons expand, from the Arctic skies to the moon itself. The second of his sprawling steampunk fantasies detailing the alternate universe of Bas-Lag follows Armada, a floating pirate city, in its search for a rip in reality.

Miller breathes new life into the Gothic antihero with his beautifully written Impac-winning first novel. In an epilogue, a spaceship leaves Earth with a cargo of monks, children and the Leibowitzian relics. The Wandering Jew makes recurrent and enigmatic appearances. Then it hops all the way back down again, resolving each story in turn. These include a camp Ealing-style misadventure, an American thriller and an interview with a clone, all connected by a mysterious comet-shaped tattoo.

Moorcock spills out such varied books that he often feels impossible to nail down, which is probably the point. Mother London, his most literary — it was shortlisted for the Whitbread — shows him at the height of his powers. Having gone to sleep on the London underground, the narrator awakes to find himself in 20th-century Hammersmith. He bathes in the now crystalline Thames and spends a day in what used to be the British Museum, airily discussing life and politics.

He then travels up the river to Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, going on from there to some idyllic haymaking in Oxford. Sweet Home is a deceptive name for the Kentucky plantation where horrific crimes have been committed, as Beloved is for this shocking and unforgettable account of the human consequences of slavery. Sethe lives in Ohio in the s; she has escaped from slavery, but cannot escape the past, which quite literally haunts her. It sparks off a page adventure that sees him trapped at the bottom of a well, marked with a strange blue stain and taken on many otherworldly adventures, all in search of his missing wife.

Murakami has the Japanese trick of writing about surreal events in a matter-of-fact way, making them all the more disturbing. Ada or Ardor is part sci-fi romance, part Proustian memoir. It plays out on a fantasy planet, a marriage of contemporary America and pre-revolutionary Russia, and details the love affair of precocious Van Veen and his sister Ada, chasing them from lustful puberty to decrepit old age. It is a gorgeous display of narrative wizardry, at once opulent, erotic, playful and wise. A moving affirmation of the continuities of love against unusual odds. JH Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

But this novel, which won Hugo and Nebula awards, reminds us he was once one of the most exciting names in hard sci-fi. Part of the Known Space series, it follows a group of humans and aliens as they explore a mysterious ring-shaped environment spinning around a star like a giant hula-hoop. Set in Manchester in the near-future and in a phantasmagorical virtual reality, Vurt is the story of Scribble, his gang the Stash Riders and his attempt to find his sister Desdemona, who is lost in a drug-induced VR. Set in a rural Ireland that is also a vision of hell, it features policemen turning into bicycles; that SF standby, the universal energy source; and any number of scientific and literary in-jokes.

According to Yoruba tradition, a spirit child is one who has made a pact with his fellows in their other, more beautiful world, to rejoin them as soon as possible. Azaro breaks the pact, choosing to remain in this place of suffering and poverty, but the African shanty town where he lives with his parents teems with phantoms, spirits and dreams.

An angry, impassioned fantasy of how to take down corporate America, and an ingenious modern version of the myth of the double. Thwarted in love, the hero Scythrop reads The Sorrows of Werther and considers suicide, but settles for the comforts of madeira instead. Sinister and sensual, overwrought and overwritten, Titus Groan is a guilty pleasure — a dank, dripping Gothic cathedral of a novel. Titus himself is a minor character — literally: He inherits Gormenghast castle and its extraordinary household: But at its heart is a chilling glimpse of the nature of evil.

With this gargantuan novel, Powys set out to take a location he knew well from his boyhood and make it the real hero of the story. It tells the story of Glastonbury through a year of turmoil, setting mystic mayor John Geard against industrialist Philip Crow. Geard wants to turn the town into a centre for Grail worship, while Crow wants to exploit and develop the local tin mines. Complex and rich, this is a landmark fantasy novel. The novel is as much a study of their obsession as a brilliant examination of magic and rationalism.

A Benedictine monk who gave it up to study medicine, Rabelais wrote this satirical tale of the giant Pantagruel and his even more monstrous and grotesque father Gargantua on the cusp between eras. In his portrayal of Gargantua, a belching, farting scholar given to urinating over the masses below his ivory tower, he satirises medieval learning as well as the emerging Renaissance thirst for knowledge.

Remind you of anything more contemporary? NB Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. This was the novel that brought the one-time astrophysicist to the attention of the SF mainstream. What follows is a history of our world with Islam and Buddhism as the dominant religions and the major scientific discoveries and art movements we take for granted happening elsewhere.

Necessarily schematic in places, but a stunning achievement all the same. Every now and then, a book comes along that is so influential you have to read it to be part of the modern world. It is also a truly global phenomenon, and a nice little earner for the tribe of British character actors who have had the good fortune to be cast in the films.

Claire Armitstead Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The offensive core of the novel depicts, under thin disguise, the prophet Muhammad, and wittily if blasphemously questions the revealed truth of the Koran. Stranded in the Sahara, a pilot meets a boy. He claims to have come from an asteroid, which he shared with a talking flower, and to have visited many other worlds — one inhabited only by a king, another by a businessman, a third by a drunkard … On Earth, he has chatted with a snake and tamed a fox.

Blindness is black, says an onlooker to the man who has suddenly ceased to see while sitting in his car at the traffic lights; but this blindness is white, a milky sea in the eye. Soon everyone is affected and the city descends into chaos. His flowing, opaque style can be challenging, but this parable of wilful unseeing, which resists reductive interpretations, is full of insight and poetry. When Lily Bloom dies, she simply moves house: The classic Gothic tale of terror, Frankenstein is above all a novel of ideas. Victor Frankenstein is a young Swiss student who resolves to assemble a body from dead parts and galvanise it into life.

As well as an exploration of nature and nurture, the book can be read as a reaction to motherhood and a comment upon creativity. High SF at its best. The world is gone, destroyed in an accident that gave humanity farcasters, controlled singularities that enable instant travel across galactic distances. The internet is now a hive mind of advanced AIs that control the gates and keep a vast empire in existence.

But someone or something is playing with time, and all is not as it seems. Hyperion won the Hugo award for best novel. Not so much a novel as a treatise on the nature and evolution of intelligence in the universe, Star Maker takes an unnamed Englishman on a tour of space and time as he observes human and alien civilisations rise and fall over a period of one hundred billion years.

A short, dense book, it repays several readings. Fast, furious and containing more ideas in a single sentence than most writers manage in an entire book, Snow Crash has been credited with helping to inspire online worlds such as Second Life and established Stephenson as a cult figure.

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This classic novel of horrific possession is supposed to have come to the author in a nightmare. It takes the form of a posthumous confession by Dr Henry Jekyll, a successful London physician, who experiments privately with dual personality, devising a drug that releases his depraved other self, Edward Hyde. The murderous Hyde increasingly dominates the appalled Jekyll, who finally kills himself to escape his double.

Others have seen it as a depiction of ineradicable dualisms in the Scottish character. The solicitor Jonathan Harker is sent to Transylvania on property business with Count Dracula and is vampirised by his client an interesting reversal of the normal estate agent-purchaser relationship. The count sails to England and embarks on a reign of bloodsucking terror, before being chased back to his lair by the Dutch vampirologist Dr van Helsing, and decapitated.

He would, of course, rise again. This unusual writer excels at the creation of skewed, dreamlike parallel worlds. In his fourth novel, the rootless, emotionally frozen Martin Blom is blinded by a stray bullet: A new nocturnal existence and highly charged affair with a nightclub waitress follow, in a phantasmagorical meditation on repression and transgression, absence and invisibility.

Hank Morgan, an engineer from 19th-century Connecticut, is knocked out in a crowbar fight and mysteriously transported to sixth-century England. Vonnegut considered Sirens of Titan to be one of his best books , ranking it just below Slaughterhouse-Five. Featuring a dimension-swapping ultra-rich space explorer who can see the future, a robot messenger whose craft is powered by UVTW the Universal Will to Become and the newly established Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, Sirens of Titan manages to be classic 50s pulp, a literary sleight of hand, a cult novel of the 60s counterculture and unmistakably Vonnegut all at the same time.

Young Jakob von Gunten enrols in a sinister academy that touchstone of Germanic fiction in which students learn how to be good servants. Kafka and Hesse were big fans of the Swiss writer; film-making duo the Brothers Quay turned the novel into a mesmerising stock-frame feature in Waters followed the rollicking Tipping the Velvet with this sombre, beautifully achieved meditation on love and loneliness set in the milieu of Victorian spiritualism. Waters exploits the conventions of the ghost story to moving, open-ended effect, recreating a world of fascinating detail and beguiling mystery.

On his return he reports that he has travelled to the year , Mankind has evolved into hyper-decadent Eloi and hyper-proletarian Morlocks, who live underground. The Eloi fritter, elegantly, by day. The Morlocks prey on the Eloi cannibalistically by night. Before returning to his own time, the Time Traveller goes forward to witness the heat death of the Solar System.

At the end of the narrative, he embarks on a time journey from which he does not return. The most read, imitated and admired invasion fantasy of the 19th century. The Martians, a cold-bloodedly cerebral species, driven by the inhospitability of their dying planet and superior technology, invade Earth.

Their first cylinders land at Horsell Common and are followed by an army of fighting machines equipped with death rays. Humanity and its civilisation crumple under the assault, which is witnessed by the narrator, a moral philosopher. The novel can be read as an allegory of imperialism. As the narrator muses: The Sword in the Stone was initially published as a stand-alone work, but was subsequently rewritten to become the first part of a tetralogy, The Once and Future King. Only at the end of the book is it confirmed that the boy will grow up to be King Arthur.

Kathryn Hughes Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Originally published in four volumes, this far-future story presents a powerfully evocative portrait of Earth as the sun dies. Using the baroque language of fantasy to tell a story that is solidly science fiction, Wolfe follows Severian, a professional torturer exiled to wander the ruined planet and discover his fate as leader and then messiah for his people. Complex and challenging, this is perhaps one of the most significant publications in the last three decades of sci-fi. Triffids are possibly escapees from a Soviet laboratory; their takeover begins when a meteor shower blinds everyone who witnesses it.

Bill Masen owes his survival to the fact that he was in hospital with his eyes bandaged at the time. CA Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. It emerges, six months later, that every fertile woman in the village is pregnant. As they grow up with terrifying psychic powers, a perceptive Midwich citizen, Gordon Zellaby, contrives to blow them up and save humanity. What did the Soviet censors find so offensive?

Until, that is, the mathematician D falls in love. Bakha, 18, is strong and able-bodied. He is a latrine cleaner, a Dalit, an untouchable, and the novel traces a day in his life. Deep in thought and enjoying a sweet jalebi, Bakha brushes against a Brahmin. A novel written, some would say, before the genre was properly invented. Set in Surinam, which the author may or may not have visited, its hero is a highly cultivated African prince who is brought to the West Indies as a slave.

They marry but, unwilling to have his children raised in servitude, Oroonoko raises a slave rebellion. It is and while the Irish war of independence rages outside the gates of their County Cork home, Sir Richard Naylor and his Anglo-Irish family continue their privileged life of tea and tennis. Afrikaner teacher Ben du Toit lives a comfortable life in s Johannesburg. Yet his family do not want to look and his search for the truth makes him dangerously vulnerable. Nonetheless, Shirley is an important social novel, set in Yorkshire during the Luddite riots at the end of the Napoleonic wars, which revolves around two questions: Paul Laity Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

Unable to reconcile his religion with his homosexuality, Kenneth Toomey wanders the world from the Paris of Joyce and Pound, via Nazi Germany and heyday Hollywood, to Malta where — mottled, sallow, emaciated — he awaits his death, sure of only one thing: Claire Armistead Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Middle-aged Jeeter Lester is an impoverished cotton farmer.

He married his wife, Ada, at the age of 11 and the couple have had 17 children. Incest rages in the Lester household. Tobacco Road created an image of poor white trash that is still with us. Not so much of an allegory, then, as a Kafkaesque parable Camus acknowledged the debt: Nicholas Lezard Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

His novel is set on Haiti, an island steeped in myth and voodoo. Ti Noel is a slave when a rebellion begins in Having lost his job he moves in with his daughter on her remote farmstead, but then is a helpless bystander when three black men arrive and rape her. His life is becoming a tuition in humiliation. Yet the bleakness of any paraphrase is belied by the beautiful exactness of the prose, which mimics the intelligence and coldness of the protagonist.

But the Magistrate is also a servant of the empire and his intervention in the case of a barbarian girl teaches him lessons about himself as well as the workings of power. Technology with a human face. Only luck rescues her, and makes her penitent. The tale is the more compelling because she is looking back ruefully on her misadventures in older age, examining her own motives with withering candour. This novel really does attempt an anatomy of post-war America. It also combines the trickery of post-modern narration — a reverse chronology, sudden shifts of narrative perspective, interpolated passages of documentary reconstruction — with a simple and alluring fable.

For the spine of this huge book is the story of what happens to a famous object, the baseball hit into the stands to win the World Series for the New York Giants in , just as the Soviet Union is successfully testing an atomic bomb. Attuned like no other novel to the perplexities that hum away at the margins of everyday experience, White Noise remains the most precise, and killingly funny, portrayal of the way we live now.

Lindesay Irvine Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The titular cities are Paris and London. It is the best and worst of times: The doctor, whose wits are gone, is rescued by a lawyer, Lorry, and brought to England with his daughter, Lucie. A classic novel that helped to give lawyers their bad name.

Bleak House is a vigorous satire on the old court of Chancery and the self-serving, pocket-lining nonsenses of the profession practiced there. Richard Carstone and Ada Clare are wards of the court in the eternal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce; thrown together, they secretly marry. Also central are their friend, Esther Summerson, who nearly marries out of respectful devotion but loves another, and Lady Dedlock, who has a deep secret uncovered by the ruthless barrister Tulkinghorn.

Written when the author was becoming more interested in narrative design and when the type of design he tended towards was palpably darker. The novel opens with the frigid Mr Dombey being presented with the son he hopes will one day take over the family business. Mrs Dombey promptly dies and young Paul in a death scene of tear-jerking pathos follows a few years later. Dombey — desperate for an heir — marries a cynical beauty, Edith Granger. A ruined Dombey finally realises the worth of Florence, the daughter he has always neglected. Bubbles always burst; if only our financiers had learned from the story of Mr Merdle, in whose bank a deposit seems magically to accrue.

Dickens targets greed in this novel, and pride, but he had two more specific targets — government bureaucracy the obstructive Circumlocution Office and the law of imprisonment for debt his own father had been in the Marshalsea. The hero is Arthur Clennam, with whom Amy is in love and whose hateful mother has long-ago wronged the Dorrit family.

Riches arrive and disappear, the pretensions and hypocrisies of society are uncovered, and the inevitable union of Amy and Arthur is long prolonged. Dickens, as always, bashes us over the head, but he does it brilliantly — a battering for our times. A woman arrives, exhausted, at the Mudfog workhouse.

She gives birth and dies. The orphan is named Oliver Twist. Oliver discovers that he is gently born and the victim of a criminal conspiracy. Fagin is hanged, Sikes — pursued by an angry mob — hangs himself. The novel was brilliantly illustrated by George Cruikshank, who later claimed that he, not Dickens, had had the principal idea for the story. A short, desolate, wonderful tale of Californian hedonism that centres on the decline of a failed actor, Maria Wyeth, who recounts her life while in recovery from a breakdown. Her parents are dead, her marriage is over, her young daughter is in hospital.

Drugs and sex make her life no less empty. The only place in which she is happy is behind the wheel of her car, driving endlessly on the freeway. Long before he became prime minister, Disraeli was a member of Young England, a group that looked to paternalism to solve the problems of the industrial age.

A sense of the oppression that inspired Chartism is channelled into a high romantic storyline. After his release from prison in s Berlin, transport-worker-turned-hardman Franz Biberkopf tries and fails to stay on the straight and narrow: A novel spun from the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the pair of small-time communists who, accused of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, were executed by the US authorities in Originally three individual volumes — more than 1, pages in the Penguin complete edition — U.

Large parts of it abandon straightforward narrative in favour of newspaper headlines and stream-of-consciousness collage. In between wander a dozen or so vagrant and only intermittently connected characters — tycoons, power-brokers, hoboes, aspiring movie actors, drunks — deviously at large in the pullulating anthill of earlyth-century transatlantic life. Dreiser deftly records the steely realities of modern urban living. Castle Rackrent can claim many English literary firsts, but was most influential as the first regional novel.

Set in Ireland before the arrival of short-lived independence in , this is a satirical saga of incompetent Anglo-Irish landlords, narrated in the vernacular by their disingenuous steward, Thady Quirk. The one Victorian novel whose greatness no one contradicts. Dorothea marries the parson-scholar Edward Casaubon, only to discover his mind is unworthy of her. Amidst swirlingly connected plots, Dorothea now widowed eventually finds fulilment. Marner is a linen weaver in the village of Raveloe, who once belonged to a religious sect from which he was unjustly expelled: His store of gold is stolen by the son of the local squire; at the same time, a golden-haired foundling, later named Eppie, is left in his house.

She humanises the miser and when her rich father reveals himself, Eppie refuses to leave her adoptive parent. A pioneering novel about being black in America, by a pioneer black American author. It is framed as a journal by an un-named African-American, following his post-college career. Can youthful idealism withstand the disillusions of age?

Flaubert asks what is ultimately of most value to us: In his sequel to The Sportswriter , Ford picks up the story of Frank Bascombe, now a New Jersey estate agent, as he navigates the fraught emotional territory of a holiday weekend. An ex-wife, a disturbed son and a dangerous universe: An ambitious, almost encyclopedic novel about modern America, structured around the seemingly hackneyed idea of a dysfunctional family getting together for Christmas.

The parents, Enid and Alfred, confront old age, illness and frustrated ambitions. The elusive central character is Wyatt Gwyon, intended by his family for the ministry but instead a forger of those objects of religious devotion: The novel renders the passion with which he creates truly original fakes, credited to Flemish masters.

The other leading characters are also counterfeiters, like Otto, the playwright, who plagiarises authors he has never read, or the conman Frank Sinisterra. Much of the novel consists of dialogues in which ideas about religion, art and truthfulness are fearlessly elaborated. All turns out well. The novel in which Gaskell set out to be scrupulously fair to the Lancashire mill-owners whom she had earlier criticised in Mary Barton Initially appalled, Margaret is gradually won over by the rough northern community and its tough but moral textile workers.

When Bernard, a student, is told he is illegitimate, he runs away from home and ends up in the bed of his schoolfriend Olivier. Bernard becomes secretary to Edouard — who is working on a novel called The Counterfeiters. While writing the novel, Gide kept a journal detailing its composition, which he published separately in Unwilling to share their fate, their younger sister Monica marries a wealthy man who makes her miserable. George Orwell said of this bitter, brilliant novel that it retains its capacity to disquiet.

Though set in late 19th-century London, its study of the corrosion of the literary world by self-promotion and commercialism is more relevant today than ever. Edwin Reardon and Jasper Milvain are two young writers who both realise that the values of the new literary industry are base. Milvain plays the game and prospers; Reardon chooses not to compromise and fails.

Led to safety and protected by July, their faithful black servant, the Smales in turn become subservient to him. Rosalind Porter Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. In a greasy factory suburb, Pelageya Nilovna is a downtrodden woman whose only solace is religion. When her son, Pavel Vlassov, declares himself a socialist, she is afraid and ashamed. In her eyes, socialists murder tsars. Yet through her love for her son, she overcomes her habits of subservience.

A strange, huge picture of Glasgow written by an author as renowned for his artwork as for his writing. The challenge to the reader is to follow the connections between the two. The early-morning march of hobnail boots on cobbles and the clack-clack-clack of the cotton mills may document a distant time, but rising unemployment, pressure on wages and means testing still shatters lives today.

Michael Henchard, a drunken journeyman labourer, sells his wife to a sailor at a local fair. On sobering up, he vows not to drink for 21 years. He rises in the world as a corn-factor and is elected mayor of Casterbridge Dorchester, bleakly depicted , but his fall once again is precipitous, and he dies, as he began, a labourer.

Neglected by his parents, bullied by his brother, beaten and belittled at school, Billy Casper has little hope of a future beyond the pit in his deprived northern town, a destiny signalled by the coal- heaps which loom over the playground. The most popular novel among both armies in the American civil war. On his release, he steals some silver candlesticks from a bishop, who forgives him. This act of kindness sets Valjean on the path of righteousness. He becomes a successful industrialist, mayor and family man — although always haunted by his criminal past. Hugo introduces spectacular wartime and street-revolution set pieces.

Greeks, Germans and Italians march through the town. Making use of the rawness of folklore and tapping into the strange logic of dreams, Kadare takes the lunacy of war and spins it into his own Balkan myth. He seems to have lost his sight, though he remembers little of what has happened. The third-person narrative does not merely inhabit his thoughts, it also uses a version of his demotic Scots, replete with obsenities, but charged with feeling. JM Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The most famous poet of his era, Larkin as a young man published two novels, of which this is the second.

Published in austerity Britain, in a year which saw the worst winter of the century, the narrative is very much of its time. But no one reading it will fail to wonder whether there was not a great novelist struggling to get out of a great poet. At separate tables in a rooftop cafe, two black women take tea and pass as white. It is a chance encounter between childhood friends. Irene is a respectable black woman committed to her home and family. Clare travels the world with her white husband who, unwittingly, calls her Nig.

Passing broke literary ground as the story of two racially and sexually ambiguous women written by another. Social boundaries can be permeated, but not without cost. Nearly 60 years before winning the Nobel prize, Lessing was acclaimed for a stunning debut which tells the story of Dick and Mary Turner, farmers in a remote part of Rhodesia. The lure and contradictions of colonial life are brilliantly analysed as a tragedy unfolds.

Here his target is dollar- driven evangelism. Elmer, a jock who lives for football, booze and girls, gets religion at college. The end of the novel sees him triumphantly preaching his message: We shall yet make these United States a moral nation. The novel remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and still strikes a chord. Imagine Sex and the City with a social conscience, with characters saying things like: Michael Moran is a former IRA guerrilla whose fails to adjust to civilian life after the Irish war of independence and is bitterly resentful of the new free state government.

He takes it out on his family, for whom he is the ultimate patriarch. Employing an appropriately louche prose style, he spins an enjoyable, self-deprecating yarn as his hapless hero tries to interest householders in the Sucko brand and whiles away his spare time romancing the wife of a fellow salesman. It begins with the unreality of a fairy tale: Their family takes hi in but contact with Gemmy Fairly, a white man who has lived with the blacks and is a stranger even to himself, has repercussions for the whole community.

Fascinated with this place high up in the Swiss Alps, where illness is championed — not without vanity — as a triumph of the intellect over the body, he stays for seven years and falls ill along the way. Featuring lengthy debates between humanist freemasons and Jews-turned-Catholics, a long love-scene written entirely in French and a brilliant hallucinatory journey down the snowy slopes, it merits multiple readings. A novel for a lifetime not just a rainy afternoon. With wry commentary on the abuse of power, epic set pieces from the Thirty Years war and graphic depictions of the horrors of the plague, it is the classic of 19th-century Italian literature and is as important in that country as the works of Thackeray, Dickens, Fielding and Hardy rolled into one.

Maupassant turns his cynical imagination to the squalor and decadent gloryof late 19th-century Paris. There his splendidly moustachioed hero, Georges Duroy, immerses himself in the amoral world of political journalism and climbs to the top of society, over the bodies of colleagues and quickly discarded mistresses. At once detestable and delightful, Duroy works his charm on the reader as seductively as on the women he misuses.

The result is a masterpiece — a page-turner as well as a vivid chronicle of a sordid world. One of the greatest novels of the late 20th-century. India comes alive in an inspiring contemplation of power and the powerless, of compassion and terror, of comedy and cruelty. Mistry has the heart of Dickens, the sweep of Victor Hugo and the command of words of a great poet. Carmel Callil Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Moravia started his study of two days in the life of a middle-class widow and her troublesome children when he was 18, having been challenged by friends.

A bracing blast of social-realism, played out in San Francisco and detailing the rise and fall of a knuckle-headed dentist. This was, of course, the life of Lena Zavaroni, but Personality is a long way from a biographical study. We create celebrities for our pleasure, then destroy them: Animals, led by the pigs, resolve to take their farm from its human owner, Mr Jones. Once the revolution is achieved, the ruthless porker Napoleon Stalin imposes an even harsher dictatorship than that run by his capitalist, two-legged predecessor. The less intelligent beasts are slaughtered or worked to death while the pigs morph into the capitalists of old.

Slum thuggery represents freedom from the conventions of politics and morality.

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