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The Gourmet
John Lanchester
‘I have vivid memories of my one or two visits to my brother during his incarceration in various gulags.’
Bicycle Thieves
Blake Morrison
‘Late June, scorched grass and sprinklers, the sky as if scuffed and beaten. Too hot to work, too lazy to think.’
The Professor’s History
Claire Messud
‘The call of the muezzin reached his ears only as a muffled wail, the keeper of ritual and the passage of time.’
The Lady with the Laptop
Clive Sinclair
‘It is Friday, and I am at the airport waving a little flag, a one-man welcoming committee.’
Savage Winds
Bao Ninh
'The war was almost over. On the other side of the plain, the enemy artillery base lay silent; no reconnaissance plane had yet appeared on the horizon.'
Gnossienne
Julian Barnes
‘Let me make it clear that I never attend literary conferences. I know that they're held in art deco hotels close to legendary museums; that sessions on the future of the novel are conducted with camaraderie, brio and bonhomie.’
Never Saw Brazil
William Boyd
‘On one of the sunniest of bright May mornings, Senator Dom Liceu Maximiliano Lobo needlessly ran his comb through his neat goatee and ordered his chauffeur to pull into the side of the road.’
The Shore
Richard Ford
'Our relationship, in fact, hasn't seemed to need more attention to theme or direction but has proceeded or at least persisted on autopilot, like a small plane flying out over a peaceful ocean with no one exactly in command.'
The Hole
Romesh Gunesekera
'I let the tears roll down to the sides of my mouth, and licked them to harden my insides. I wanted to cry gushingly, but I couldn't.'
Creatures of the Earth
John McGahern
‘They alone among all the creatures of the earth would never have to go that way.’
