Rates of Exchange

Sample

Graham Swift

Waterland is a 1983 novel by Graham Swift. It is considered to be the author's premier novel and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (a prize Swift finally achieved with Last Orders).

Sample

Wayne Johnston

"The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" is Newfoundland - that vast, haunting near-continent upon which the two lovers and adversaries of this novel pursue their ambitions. Joey Smallwood, sprung from almost Dickensian privation, is a scholarship boy at a private school, where his ready wit bests the formidably tart-tongued Sheilagh Fielding. Their dual fates become forever linked by an anonymous letter to a local paper critical of the school - a letter whose mysterious authorship will weigh heavily on their lives. Driven by socialist dreams and political desire, Smallwood will walk a railroad line the breadth of Newfoundland in a journey of astonishing power and beauty, to unionize the workers - and make his name. Fielding, now a popular newspaper columnist, provides - in her journalism, her diaries, and her bleakly hilarious "Condensed History of Newfoundland" - a satirical and eloquent counternarrative to Smallwood's story. As the decades pass and Smallwood's rise converges with Newfoundland's emerging autonomy, these two vexed characters must confront their own frailties and secrets - and their mutual (if doomed) love.

Sample

Chinua Achebe

How the leopard got his claws is a celebrated work by Chinua Achebe (Man Booker International Winner), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.

Sample

Hermann Hesse

Prose works is a celebrated work by Hermann Hesse (Nobel Laureate), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.