Here are 100 books that Languages of Truth fans have personally recommended if you like
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It’s a rip-roaring yarn, based on true events, and Cornwell has done great service in bringing the Siege of Seringapatam in India to life in as vivid a fashion through the mercurial but honest character of private Richard Sharpe, who takes on the last Indian ruler to challenge the British East India Company, Tipoo Sultan.
*The brand new novel, SHARPE'S ASSASSIN, is available to pre-order now*
Sharpe's Tiger is the brilliant beginning of Sharpe's adventures
India, 1799
The citadel of Seringapatam is under siege. Navigating this dangerous kingdom of bejewelled palaces and poverty, Private Richard Sharpe embarks on a rescue mission to save a senior officer from the clutches of the Tippoo of Mysore - and oust the Sultan from his throne.
The fortress of Mysore is considered impregnable, but one of the greatest threats comes from betrayal within the British ranks. And the man to outwit enemies from both sides is Sharpe . .…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Shakespeare comes across as a modest but wealthy man, a hard worker who wrote and re-wrote extensively, who had a dysfunctional marriage (he lived apart from Anne for most of their marriage), who amassed a modest fortune in his artistic activities to afford the grandest house in Stratford. He lifted his plots from other works, primarily that of Plutarch, and through the many bookshops he visited. He cared less for plot and historical accuracy and more for the exploration and creation of words – he is reputed to have used 18,000 unique words in his career. He also perfected the art of the soliloquy (“To be or not to be…”) as a response to the personal essay form that was gaining traction in his day.
What accounts for Shakespeare’s transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapiro sets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." (Boston Globe)
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who…
I’m the child of immigrants and grew up imagining a second self—me, if my parents had never left India. Then, when I became a writer, doubles kept showing up in odd ways in my work. In my first play, House of Sacred Cows, I had identical twins played, farcically, by the same actor. My latest novel features two South Asian women: one, slightly wimpy, married to an unsympathetic guy called Mac, and another, in a permanent state of outrage, married to a nice man called Mat. My current project is a novel about mixed-race twins born in India but separated at birth.
My mother is a member of the exact same generation as Rushdie, kids born at the moment when India gained independence, so I grew up in the shadow of that legacy—the optimism, the violence, the huge historical question mark. But when I picked up Rushdie’s magical-realist novel, it was the prose that spoke to me first: vivid, exaggerated, a cacophony, evoking India itself.
Our narrator, Saleem Sinai, was switched at birth with another child, and throughout the novel, images and phrases recur in different contexts. Often, these are puns that, by the second or third time they appear, have accumulated the weight of metaphor. I’ve read this book half a dozen times, and find more to enjoy with each reading.
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE*
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have long been fascinated by what makes us human. Great art is about the human condition. We are very quick to reject art that gets that human condition wrong. I’m a poet, a playwright, and a scientist. While my science has found itself at the center of fields such as computational psychiatry and neuroeconomics, I find myself turning again and again to the insights from great novels to understand the subtleties of the human condition. So to complement the scientific questions of morality (because morality is all about the human condition), one should start with great novels that ask who we are and why we do what we do.
In 1989, Salman Rushdie he had to go into hiding because of the fatwa against his life. In trying to explain this decision to his young son, Rushdie spins a magical tale of a storyteller who decides to stop telling stories.
The hero, Haroun, always wondered where his father's stories came from. His father always said “I drink from the ocean of stories. They install a spigot in the wall for me to drink from.” (Yeah, right.) Until, on that one fateful day, Haroun catches the water genie uninstalling the spigot.
On his way to save the ocean of stories, Haroun finds wonderful friends and the power of teamwork. The moral contrast between the Guppees (who argue all the time, but in the end work together) and the Chupwalas (who never disagree because they live in fear, but are so unable to work together, they fight with their own shadows)…
A captivating fantasy novel for readers of all ages, by the author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses
"This is, simply put, a book for anyone who loves a good story. It's also a work of literary genius." -Stephen King
Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, The Arabian Nights, and The Wizard of Oz. Twelve-year-old Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore his father's gift of storytelling by reviving the poisoned Sea…
Writers often get labeled as either nonfiction or fiction writers. In grad school, it was very difficult to study across genres, which I found very frustrating: To me, the most important thing about a book has always been the voice. A novel? A memoir? Essays? Stories? Don’t pin me down, just give me something with a voice that propels me forward, that is unique and sparkling and unputdownable. When I find books with voices so singular and propulsive, I return to them over and over.
There is nothing like this groundbreaking memoir—it is as good as it gets—and it has probably influenced every memoir since (including my own).
Kingston is a poet, and I find it impossible not to sink into the striking, gorgeous language and imagery as she describes growing up between multiple worlds: the China her parents emigrated from, the California of a first-generation daughter of immigrants, the ghost-filled China of her mother’s “talk stories,” and her inner life and growing awareness. She weaves family stories, famous myths, and her own girlhood experiences into a beautiful and unforgettable narrative.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American.
“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter
As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…
This book is a message in a bottle for dark times. Bulgakov wrote this novel from Stalin's Soviet Union and managed to find a way to laugh (if darkly). His daring and vibrant imagination took me to another world and even made me laugh out loud.
'Bulgakov is one of the greatest Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Independent
Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, The Master and Margarita became an overnight literary phenomenon when it was finally published it, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. Bulgakov's carnivalesque satire of Soviet life describes how the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow one Spring afternoon. Brimming with magic and incident, it is full of imaginary, historical, terrifying and wonderful characters, from witches, poets and Biblical tyrants to the beautiful, courageous Margarita, who will…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My taste in music is as eclectic as my bookshelf. I read everything from poetry to Greek tragedies and listen to both historical and contemporary music. When I first imagined Shelby’s story, I aimed to capture how music transforms us, how it shifts our moods and shapes our memories. As I set out to write the first draft, I had never heard of social-emotional learning. However, writing this book, along with my YA novel, A Song for the Road, inspired me to pursue a master’s degree in Humanities focusing on Social-emotional Learning and Creative Writing. I also teach teens and adults how to write compelling emotional fiction.
In the spirit of many of Rushdie’s books, an atmosphere of magic and myth sets the tone of this extraordinary story of love, death, passion, and rock and roll. The narrator, Rai, is a deceptively meek photographer who reminds me of The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway.
Rushdie’s stories lead me past historical and literary monoliths, and this story unfolds as a modern-day Orpheus retelling. But that’s the challenge—and reward—of reading Salman Rushdie: I get a history lesson, a dose of mythology, an unflinching lens on modern culture, a sweetening of magic realism, and a few belly laughs and tears along the way.
From the world renowned author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses comes Salman Rushdie's brilliant novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, featuring an epic, exuberant love story with a rock 'n' roll soundtrack.
At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music.
Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend…
Hussein Fancy is a Professor of History at Yale University where he teaches medieval history with a particular focus on medieval Spain and North Africa. His research, writing, and teaching focus on the entwined histories of not only Jews, Christians, and Muslims but also Latin and Arabic in the Middle Ages. He has traveled and lived extensively in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
If there’s only one that I could recommend, it’s this brilliant, beautiful, and vexing book by María Rosa Menocal, Sterling Professor at Yale University. In a compelling and artful manner, Menocal tells the story of medieval Spain from the arrival of the first Umayyad rulers to Cervantes. Beyond being a useful introduction to the fascinating history, Menocal makes the argument that a culture of tolerance existed in medieval Spain, one that transcended religious and ethnic differences. The principal engine of this culture, she suggests, was the Arabic language. Menocal’s book has received as much praise as criticism, a testament to its enduring power and the contentious quality of medieval Spain.
A rich and thriving culture where literature, science and religious tolerance flourished for 700 years is the subject of this enthralling history of medieval Spain.
Living side by side in the Andalusian kingdoms, the 'peoples of the book' produced statesmen, poets and philosophers who influenced the rest of Europe in dramatic ways, giving it the first translations of Plato and Aristotle, love songs and secular poetry plus remarkable feats of architecture and technology. This evocative account explores the lost history whose legacy and lessons have a powerful resonance in today's world.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns…
