Series: Canons

Against an unflinching backdrop of 90s reservation life in the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf Nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Native American, connected by their own understandings of life yet struggling to find a common voice. As they journey together through small Indian towns and down forgotten roads where the whisperings of the wind...

INTOXICATING ~ EFFERVESCENT ~ HEDONISTIC Iconic LA 'lit girl' Eve Babitz's semi-autobiographical novel of sun, excess and success. Jacaranda - wild child of sun and surf - grows up by the hurling glory of the ocean and believes that good things are infinite. Propelled by drink, drugs and men, she travels headlong through the rip current of West Hollywood's decadent...

The Sunday Times Bestseller Winner of the 'Books Are My Bag' Reader's Choice Award 'A must-read' — Zadie Smith 'Phenomenal' — Malorie Blackman 'If I could, I'd push a copy of this through the letterbox of every front door in Britain' — Independent Fearless, challenging, playful, moving and always real, this groundbreaking essay collection sees 21 leading writers of colour...

'A troubling, hammering and glorious novel' - David Mitchell On the edge of the Antarctic Circle, in the years after World War One, a steamship approaches a desolate island. On board is a young man on his way to assume the post of weather observer, to live in solitude for a year at the end of the earth. But on...

Why did numerous celebrated authors become entwined with the grip of alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing weaves an evocative journey across America, probing the intricate interplay between creativity and alcohol through the intertwined lives and works of six literary giants: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Laing embarks...

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard fixes her entrancing gaze and powerful sense of wonder on the natural world. Whether watching a sublime lunar eclipse or locking eyes with a wild weasel, Dillard captures the grand and miniature miracles of our universe. Annie Dillard is one of the most respected and influential figures in contemporary non-fiction and winner...

Now And Then is not merely a collection of a songwriter's lyrics; the song-poems of this undisputed 'bluesologist' triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron's career. This collection of poems carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and...

In The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd takes us on a profound journey through the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland, where she discovers a realm of extraordinary contrasts and hidden wonders. This masterful work of nature writing not only paints a vivid picture of the landscape but also delves into the essence of the mountains themselves. Shepherd's narrative transcends mere description, offering...

In The Writing Life, Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard offers up her own trials in the pursuit of inspiration: the absurdity, the fierce determination, and the sacrifices (warm feet; gainful employment; peace of mind). Her perennial guide, which wrestles with the hubris and insanity of the creative process, has been an inspiration and a comfort to writers for nearly...

With introduction by Roddy Doyle "He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels" – Leonard Cohen Charles Bukowski is one of the greatest authors of the twentieth-century. The autobiographical Ham on Rye is widely considered his finest novel. A classic of American literature, it offers powerful insight into his youth through the prism of his alter-ego Henry Chinaski, who...

In a small Pacific Northwest town, we meet a young man who has shot dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy: the anguish, regret, despair and bittersweet romance. Typical of Brautigan's singular style, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is a beautifully written, brooding novel. Its autobiographical prose is...

Sophie, a twenty-something Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A., and Lola, a German immigrant who has settled in Hollywood, know that while Los Angeles is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal. The two women dazzle—one with the promises of youth, the other with the fulfilment of nostalgia—as they wend their way through the pink sunsets and...

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift, before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a...

The notorious corner of West Fayette and Monroe Streets in Baltimore is a 24-hour open-air drug market that provides the economic fuel for a dying neighbourhood. Through the eyes of one broken family—two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable fifteen-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough—Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the USA. The Corner unflinchingly assesses why...

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them . . . So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen, and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a...

In Dubliners, James Joyce takes us on an extraordinary journey with the ordinary men and women from the city of his birth. In 'Araby', a young boy struggles with everyday tasks in the face of a growing infatuation with his neighbour's sister; in 'The Boarding House', a single mother orchestrates a marriage proposal for her daughter; in 'The Dead', the...

Under the Sea-Wind marks the beginnings of one of the most significant careers in nature writing. In it, Rachel Carson celebrates the mystery and beauty of birds and sea creatures in their natural habitat, conjuring the atmosphere of the shore and the open sea. Carson illustrates the delicately balanced, fragile struggle for life along the shoreline. Through her vivid descriptions,...

Trickster disrupted the world around him, and in doing so he reshaped it. Playful, mischievous, subversive, amoral, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but they are also indispensable heroes of culture. Trickster Makes This World revisits the stories of Coyote, Eshu, and Hermes and holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Pablo Picasso,...

From the fiery intellectual provocateur - and one of our most fearless advocates of gender equality - a brilliant, urgent essay collection that both celebrates modern feminism and challenges us to build an alliance of strong women and strong men. Ever since the release of her seminal first book, Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia has remained one of feminism's most outspoken,...

The One State is the perfect society, ruled over by the enlightened Benefactor. It is a city made almost entirely of glass, where surveillance is universal and life runs according to algorithmic rules to ensure perfect happiness. And D-503, the Builder, is the ideal citizen, at least until he meets I-330, who opens his eyes to new ideas of love,...

Five thousand years after leaving the Cretan labyrinth, the Minotaur — or M as he is known to his colleagues — is working as a line chef at Grub's Rib in Carolina, keeping his horns down, trying in vain to put his past behind him. He leads an ordered lifestyle in a shabby trailer park where he tinkers with cars,...

Powerful - Barack Obama Searing - New York Times How do you comfort a man who has just lost his best friend? How does it feel to see fear in your wife's eyes? What does it mean to come home? In one of the most acclaimed and celebrated collections of stories for years, Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of...

Dreamer is a multi-layered masterpiece, capturing Civil Rights-era America in a snapshot of racism and brutality, revolution and hope. Martin Luther King Jr is a political visionary, human rights activist, preacher, scholar, and martyr. Chaym Smith is his dark mirror, a violent, cynical criminal with the mind and talent to mimic King's. When Smith begins to act as King's double...

When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He's a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night. If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of...

The Underground Sea is a succinct, urgent collection of writings from John Berger's archive. It brings together for the first time his work on mineworkers and the miners' strikes and has been edited as a set of actions for today: a time when people are rediscovering the necessity, power, and possibilities of collective action. Including essays, transcripts, interviews, and images,...

From the grimly gothic Do Not Disturb to the razor-sharp dissection of manners in The Takeover and the mordantly brilliant The Only Problem, in a panoramic sweep taking in the shores of the Italian lakes to the castles of Geneva, Muriel Spark casts her unflinching gaze over the continent and onto some of the odder specimens of human nature abounding...

When you hire C. Card, you have scraped the bottom of the private eye barrel. He is a detective of sorts. When he's hired to steal a body from the morgue, he needs to stop dreaming, find bullets for his gun and get there before someone else does. Not since Trout Fishing in America has Brautigan so successfully combined his...

Twice Voted Scotland's Favourite Book Faced with a choice between a harsh farming life and the world of books and learning, Chris Guthrie chooses to remain in her rural community, bound by her intense love of the land. But everything changes with the arrival of the First World War, and Chris finds her land altered beyond recognition. In lyrical prose,...

A heartbroken American writer starts a story about an ice-cold sombrero that falls inexplicably from the sky and lands in the centre of a small Southwest town. Devastated by the departure of his gorgeous Japanese girlfriend, he cannot concentrate on his writing and, in frustration, he throws away his beginning. But as the man searches through his apartment for strands...

Getting it in the Head, McCormack's celebrated debut collection, is richly imaginative, bitterly funny, powerful, and original. Here we enter a world where the infatuation with death, ruin, and destruction is total. Set in locations ranging from New York to the west of Ireland, and to the nameless realms of the imagination, it is a world where beautiful but deranged...

The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery. "It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title – almost the only men...

In this investigation into loss, losing, and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. A Field Guide to Getting Lost takes in subjects as eclectic as memory and mapmaking, Hitchcock movies, and Renaissance painting. Beautifully written, this book combines memoir, history, and philosophy, shedding glittering new light on the way we live now.

Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and businessman, is alone in a hotel room, drinking whisky, fantasising about sex and contemplating suicide. As he tries to distance himself from reality, his lonely, alcohol-fuelled fantasies are interrupted by a flood of memories, reminding him of his own shortcomings. An unforgettably imaginative book, deeply experimental in its form and charged with a dark...

WINNER OF THE WINDHAM CAMPBELL PRIZE 2025 WINNER OF THE PRIX ÉMILE GUIMET DE LITTÉRATURE ASIATIQUE 2017 WINNER OF THE RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI AWARD 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE ONDAATJE PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER 2016 In Capital, Rana Dasgupta reveals the new version of Delhi which...

There is no such thing as history, you see. It's a dream, perhaps even a dream of a dream... Walter Benjamin is dead. One of the most radiant minds of the twentieth century has been snatched away by death in a small town on the border between Spain and France. His thousand-page manuscript, carried the length of France during his...