Here are 100 books that The End of the Affair fans have personally recommended if you like
The End of the Affair.
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I am a professor of history who specializes in the United States and the Cold War. A large part of my job involves choosing books that are informative, but that the students will actually want to read. That means I often select novels, memoirs, and works of history that have compelling figures or an entertaining narrative. After more than twenty years of teaching, I’ve assigned many different books in my classes. These are the ones that my students enjoyed the most.
I was immediately drawn to the suspense of this book. The novel begins at the Berlin Wall, where British intelligence agent Alec Leamas helplessly watches as East German guards murder his colleague.
As I followed the elaborate British plan to get revenge on an East German official, I had the nagging feeling that I was missing something. When I finally got to the end, I realized that I had been duped—much like many of the characters in the novel.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.
The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carre's career worldwide
In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-a desk job-Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered…
Journey to an unnamed mountainous country in central Europe at the end of the Great War. Enter Citizen Orlov, a simple fishmonger and an honest, upright citizen, who answers a phone call meant for a secret agent and stumbles into a hidden…
I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Virginia, so I am very familiar with America’s southern lands and culture. The South—also known as the Deep South—is a unique part of America’s tapestry of identities, and I love books set in this locale. Southern literature tends to focus on themes such as racial politics, one’s personal identity, and rebellion. When I wrote my book, I knew the story would have to take place in the southern states.
Here’s another book-to-movie entrant on the list. This book follows the exploits of a Confederate soldier who makes his way home to the mountains of North Carolina. It’s like the Odyssey—he has a series of memorable encounters and run-ins along his journey, and things are not as they seem when he eventually returns home. I love the novel's tension and the artfully crafted characters.
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves.…
One salient feature of my life has been integration: of the personal and professional, the inner and the outer, the spiritual and the material, the east and the west. Though I didn’t know it at the time, that template was set when I was in my twenties by the people I knew and the books I read. These five helped give me direction, meaning, and purpose, and to this day, they continue to inform and inspire. I sometimes refer to them explicitly in my writing, lectures, online courses, and counseling work; anytime I hear that someone read one because of me, it gives me enormous pleasure.
While I hunted for spiritual wisdom, I also read great fiction, and sometimes, the two came together in one work of art. The protagonist of this book, whose title derives from the Upanishads, is Larry Darrell, an upper-crust young man slated for the perfect marriage and career. But WWI left him with PTSD and higher priorities.
His search for truth and meaning eventually takes him to an Indian ashram and transformation in the Himalayas. He returns to New York but resists the pull of privilege. He’ll drive a cab to pay the bills and frequent the libraries. I grew up the opposite of privileged, but Larry was nevertheless a role model. I wanted what he wanted; I was even a New York cabbie for a year.
Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
Paris 1886. Two restless souls move toward the same horizon—unaware that their meeting will ignite a love as luminous and fleeting as the stars themselves.
Vincent van Gogh arrives in Paris with little more than paint-stained hands and an aching determination to create something worthy of the world. Across the…
I write because I want to tell stories–and I also want to share great stories with others. An avid reader and writer of fantasy and speculative fiction, I have a love of the fantastic, the remarkable and the supernatural, which I have managed to sustain and develop alongside a successful working life in government and social administration. If you want to know about power–and what you need to wield it and control it, just give me a call. Great fantasy should tell universal truths, and sometimes, more difficult messages can be told more effectively using a supernatural metaphor. Telling those stories is what I do.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say that, in my opinion, this book is the greatest ever retelling of the Arthurian story. Why do I love it? Primarily I think because his characters are so well-defined and crafted—they have feelings and families, emotions and frustrations—and are frequently not at all heroic.
I love the elements of the book that play out within the animal kingdom—the rigid, controlled society of the Ants, the free and liberal existence of the Wild Geese—all brought to life by an author who was a renowned natural historian and who is using the power of his fantastical imagination to provide insight into the broad spectrum of political models and options for ruling.
I first read this book when I was studying Politics and Philosophy as an undergraduate, and I was blown away by White’s insight, humanity, and the choices he…
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of The Once and Future King, White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. Here all five volumes that make up the story are published together in a single volume, as White himself always wished.
Here is King Arthur and his shining Camelot, beasts who talk and men who fly; knights, wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which…
I’ve penned (so far) seventeen novels, most set during some historical conflict or other, all of them revolving around intense personal relationships (loyalty, love, betrayal, those sorts of profound truths). I tend to read the sorts of books I wish to write. I also teach creative writing at a university (VCU); I tell my students that if they want to really know what a character is made of, shoot at them or have them fall in love. In my own work, I do both.
Inspired by his experiences as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American volunteer in the International Brigades fighting to defend the Spanish Republic against Franco. After being ordered to work with guerrilla fighters to destroy a bridge, Jordan finds himself falling in love with a young Spanish woman and clashing with the guerrilla leader over the risks of their mission.
One of the great novels of the twentieth century, For Whom the Bell Tolls was first published in 1940. It powerfully explores the brutality of…
In addition to writing novels, I’m also a playwright. Whatever form I work in, I’m drawn to character, drama, and emotion. I aspire to write literary page-turners that feel as rich and complicated as real life. Also, I want the endings of my books to slay readers and break their hearts. Of course, when I say that, I’m not necessarily speaking of sorrow; sometimes your heart breaks from expanding, from a surfeit of feeling. Your heart breaks only to grow larger.
This novel about a fifteen-year-old girl’s affair with an older, wealthy man is a provocative exploration of memory. The novel’s language is arch and lyric, always making me feel as if I’ve been hypnotized.
The book is a love story, but in this story, love doesn’t lead to salvation. Still, the splendid, haunting language lifts the tale into the realm of the mythic.
A sensational international bestseller, and winner of Frances' coveted Prix Goncourt, 'The Lover' is an unforgettable portrayal of the incandescent relationship between two lovers, and of the hate that slowly tears the girl's family apart.
Saigon, 1930s: a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society.
A sensational international bestseller, 'The Lover' is disturbing, erotic, masterly and simply unforgettable.
You’re grieving, you’re falling in love and you’re skint. On top of it all, Europe’s going to Hell in a handcart. Things can’t get any worse, can they?
London, 1938. William is grieving over his former teacher and mentor, killed fighting for the Republicans in Spain. As Europe slides towards…
A writer friend asked me, "If you could write about anything you wanted, what would that be?" I thought immediately of Sicily and then of women (and men) trying to break free from cultural definitions that have historically kept us in traditional roles of housewife, cook, and mother, or breadwinner and protector. Having choice and being able to carve one's path is paramount, a deeply held value for me, both as an individual woman and as a psychotherapist. The courage of some of my clients who have dared to follow their own paths, along with my challenge to steer my own path, were also inspirations for the books I chose.
After I visited Sicily at 22 (the same age as Mariella in the book) and stayed with relatives in Siracusa, I fell in love with Sicily (and all of Italy) and wanted to know everything I could about it, its history, its customs, architecture, food, and especially to understand the collective psyche of its people.
My grandmother was born in Sicily and never spoke English even after moving to the United States, and my uncles and father spent a good part of their childhoods in Catania, where the Sicily part of Becoming Mariella takes place. I had never before felt the deep longing of a cultural belonging, and this book, written in 1958, is one of the finest works of twentieth-century fiction (according to Daunt Books), and opened my eyes to the pride and richness of the Sicilian people and its aristocracy, their stubbornness and an understanding of how,…
The Leopard is a modern classic which tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.
'There is a great feeling of opulence, decay, love and death about it' Rick Stein
In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.
From my first exposure to Elisabeth Elliot’s writing when I was a teenager, I was intrigued by her story: a missionary few had ever heard of who became an author with several books published by a Big Five publishing company. Over the years I both wrestled with and was encouraged by her work. I’ve now spent more than a decade conducting original research on Elliot’s life. I believe learning more about her and the influences that shaped her enriches our understanding of our past and, thus, of our present and offers us important tools for approaching the future.
Leo Tolstoy’s follow-up project to the massive War and Peace explores the meaning of human existence and the interplay of socio-political events and individual free will through the medium of infatuation, marriage, and love.
It’s also a real page-turner. When she finished it, Elisabeth Elliot called it the greatest book she had ever read, writing that Anna Karenina’s character had held a mirror up to her soul and showed her what her own heart was capable of.
In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.
In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in…
I have always loved stories, and I love the clash of ideas – political and philosophical, religious and atheistic. And if you can put them together in a novel, so much the better. But I insist that it has to be a real story, with real characters, not ciphers. They must be inconsistent, their ideas half-formed and subject to change. And they must be allowed to put their point of view with their own voice, so I’m never entirely sure what the author thinks. The characters have to be people I can care about, people I can love or hate, people whose fate can cause me anxiety, sorrow, or joy.
I first read Orwell’s dystopian nightmare as a teenager and have gone back to it several times since.
Apparently, it is such a brilliant description of life under totalitarianism that, during the communist era, some Eastern Europeans refused to believe that an inhabitant of a democratic country could have written such a book.
Even today, I find the book very relevant, as Orwell develops themes of truth, propaganda, doublethink, and the misuse of language that you can find in Homage to Catalonia, written a decade earlier. And the ubiquitous and intrusive telescreen has a parallel in our age of surveillance capitalism and the way the Chinese authorities are using information technology to cement their rule.
62
authors picked
1984
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10,
11, and
12.
What is this book about?
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU . . .
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
Writing is about the metaphysical as well as the rational if it’s any good. As an author, I am always more interested in the wreckage of a crisis than the crisis itself—in the aftermath. Survivors search for purpose above all else. They undertake long sojourns, seek spiritual counsel, or find solace in art or politics. As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path that is shared by all these novels is the discovery of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. There lies meaning.
This is a meta-fictional novel about the fragile state of memory and interpretation.
Stories can save us, and in the case of 13-year-old Briony Tallis, stories can ruin us. A single accusation is enough to destroy her sister, a young man’s life, and their future together. It shows us that the art of writing can be both sacred and profane.
It is a novel inhabited by ghosts, one that taught me the importance of absence in storytelling, of the silences and liminal spaces when writing about epic events. The style obfuscates the plot, then later renders it in vivid detail.
What lives between the lines is critical. It asks if forgiveness and acts of retribution can counter the death that eventually comes for all of us.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a…
