“Bleak House” by Charles Dickens Dickens’ imagination of Shakespearean proportions offers up a seemingly endless variety of characters, all individualized and functional, ranging from typically Dickensian caricatures to subtly rendered fraught, conflicted individuals.
Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett was one of the great literary Modernists. As novelist, playwright, director, poet, critic, Nobel Prize winner, Beckett achieved an immense stature, yet he is not as widely read by a general audience as he might be.
Nadine Gordimer A long time anti-Apartheid activist, Mandela advocate, and ANC supporter, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer has been a powerful and influential presence in both political and literary realms. With 15 novels, over 200 short stories, and scores of essays, she has earned attention, not just kudos, but surveillance and censorship as well.
What is a Classic? A book lives and earns its afterlife through its handling of language. Even its characters, also crucial, come convincingly and compellingly alive through the language of their presentation.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb produced three highly controversial yet influential books which begin with financial matters but range over many disciplines and issues. His focus: how to live in a complex world we can never fully understand, predict, or control.
Alice Munro When summer arrives, and the question of summer reading arrives with it, I often think of how suitable short fiction is: short stories can usually be read in one sitting and are good companions for beach or travel.
Nicole Brossard A Montrealer by birth and temperament, Nicole Brossard is one of Canada’s most honoured and respected writers, known widely in the French-speaking world but increasingly by those reading her work in translation.
J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy An Anglo-Irish writer, J.G. Farrell is best known for his Empire trilogy, three novels that chart the decline of the British Empire through three seminal events.
The Macallan Estate A tour through the Macallan distilleries in northern Scotland gives new resonance to the name Craigellachie.
