Lucinda Byatt

Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy

By Christopher Duggan - Published 2012

Genres:

Nonfiction

The book’s title contains the clue to its unique approach. Duggan has drawn on the reams of correspondence received by the Duce’...Read Review

The Cruel Trade

By Clifford Peacock - Published 2012

Genres:

This unusual novel is set in Zanzibar in the mid-19th century, where slavery, ivory and trade from the northern ports have made ...Read Review

Memory of the Abyss

By Marcello Fois - By Patrick Creagh (trans.) - Published 2012

Genres:

Literary

Returning home late one night, Felice Stocchino and his young son, Samuele, are refused a glass of water at a neighbour’s house. ...Read Review

The Knot

By Jane Borodale - Published 2012

Genres:

This is a perfect book for the green-fingered reader – and also for translators! Henry Lyte has made it his life’s work to ...Read Review

The Good Hope

By W. Glyn Jones (trans.) - By William Heinesen - Published 2011

Genres:

Literary

William Heinesen was a native of the Faeroe Islands – where this book is set – although he wrote in Danish. He was renowned as ...Read Review

Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure

By Tim Jeal - Published 2011

Genres:

Nonfiction

This is a story you might think you know already, also thanks to Alan Moorehead’s two books published fifty years ago. However, ...Read Review

The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began

By Stephen Greenblatt - Published 2011

Genres:

Nonfiction

There was something serendipitous about reading this book in a week that modern scientists took a step closer to the elusive Higgs boson. ...Read Review

The Tea Lords

By Hella S. Haasse - By Ina Rilke (trans.) - Published 2010

Genres:

Saga

Haasse’s books have achieved classic status in her native Netherlands, and this is the first to be translated for 15 years. The Tea ...Read Review

Venetian Navigators: The Voyages of the Zen Brothers to the Far North

By Andrea di Robilant - Published 2011

Genres:

Nonfiction

Strands of serendipity weave through the various levels on which this book is written: to start with di Robilant’s chance encounter with ...Read Review

The Favourite: Sir Walter Ralegh in Elizabeth l’s Court

By Mathew Lyons - Published 2011

Genres:

Nonfiction

Lyons’ account of Ralegh, a “self-seeking, self-publicizing butterfly”, his early life and meteoric rise to become Elizabeth’s favourite also offers a detailed ...Read Review