Maaza Mengiste Set during Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers...

Michael Morpurgo In the 1980s a traveler in the Camargue of South France falls ill and is taken in by an older gentleman and lady named Lorenzo and Kezia. While...

Anita Diamant “An excellent novel. A lovely and moving portrait of society’s outcasts…affirms the essential humanity of its poor and stubborn residents, for whom each day of survival is a...

Elif Shafak In 1540, twelve-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan’s menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for)...

William Brodrick Larkwood Priory, Suffolk, 1995: Following his afternoon confessions, Father Anselm is stopped by an old man. What, he is asked, should a man do when the world has...

Lawrence Durrell Lawrence Durrell's series of four novels set in Alexandria, Egypt during the 1940s. The lush and sensuous series consists of Justine(1957) Balthazar(1958) Mountolive(1958) Clea(1960).Justine, Balthazar and Mountolive use varied viewpoints to relate a series of events...

RF Kuang Oxford, 1836.The city of dreaming spires.It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The...

Abdulrazak Gurnah While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own...

Evie Woods An evocative and charming novel full of secrets and mystery, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lost BookshopIn a quiet village in Ireland, a mysterious local...

Sebastian Faulks Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the...

Aharon Appelfeld All Whom I Have Loved is the haunting story of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe in the 1930s as seen through the eyes of an unforgettable nine-year-old...

Herta Muller Set in Romania at the height of Ceauescu's reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young people who leave the...