One of the best novels I’ve read in years. During the Nazis’ siege of Leningrad, amid starvation and destruction, two young men embark on a bizarre quest to find eggs for an army colonel. The descriptions of hunger and misery are palpable, yet the book is often hilarious, the older of the two protagonists conveying to the younger his tips for squeezing enjoyment out of life. The novel has it all – historical insights, three-dimensional characters, a riveting plot, and humor.
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over and co-creator of the HBO series Game of Thrones, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival - and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in…
A sudden epidemic of blindness strikes, sending its first victims to a hospital where the veneer of civilization is quickly eroded. One person retains her sight. Often bleak, but captivating and wonderfully written. Much more intense and fast moving than Saramago’s other novels that I’ve read.
No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order.
Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers.
A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks. It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society…
The first half is a fascinating account of spending time with miners and other poor / working class people in Northern England, documenting the stunning difficulty of their lives. The chapter on mining is chilling. The second half is a long critique of British socialists, mainly lamenting their inability to connect with their critics rather than preaching to the choir of “vegetarians and sandal-wearers” (not an exact quote). The book was a selection of the Socialist “Left Book Club” in 1937. At first, I didn’t like the second half, but then it grew on me, and many of its critiques seemed eerily applicable to present-day politics.
An unflinching look at unemployment and life among the working classes in Britain during the Great Depression, The Road to Wigan Pier offers an in-depth examination of socio-economic conditions in the coal-mining communities of England’s industrial areas, including detailed analysis of workers’ wages, living conditions, and working environments. Orwell was profoundly influenced by his experiences while researching The Road to Wigan Pier and the contrasts with his own comfortable middle-class upbringing; his reactions to working and living conditions and thoughts on how these would be improved under socialism are detailed in the second half of the book.
How does life work? I tackle this daunting but fascinating question in this pop-science book on the physics of life. From the publisher's page: The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it. So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering.
