Mark Pack explains why the work of a now almost forgotten political novelist is worth seeking out... A best-selling author shifting millions of books in the post-war decades, a renowned public intellectual, a friend of celebrities such as Marlon Brando, a highly respected political scientist and famous enough to feature in ... Read More...
Novels
Nabokov's 'page-turner of exceptional literary quality' is very like a masterpiece, argues Nige... The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (published 1941) was the first novel Nabokov wrote in English. My copy is a Penguin reprint dating from 1971 - that handsome set with the Nabokov signature aslant the cover - and ... Read More...
Last month's Dabbler Book Club choice has reached the shortlist for the 2014 Man Booker prize - but does it live up to the hype? Burma, 1942. In disease-ridden jungle 240,000 prisoners of war labour night and day for their Japanese captors, destroying bodies and minds to finish a rail line linking ... Read More...
Terry Stiastny - the former BBC journalist who has Dabbled here - has a debut novel out on July 17, published by John Murray. Acts of Omission is a tale of political intrigue and the legacy of the Cold War. Here's Brit's review... It has been alleged that when I was ... Read More...
Karyn Reeves is the curator of the A Penguin a Week blog, which gathers reviews of her collection of thousands of Penguin's paperbacks. She wrote about her addiction to Penguins on The Dabbler here, and today she introduces a notable early publication... Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was ... Read More...
Frank celebrates one of the finest children's stories ever written... Fossicking in a cupboard the other day, I came upon a set of a dozen issues of Puffin Post from the late 1960s. This was the quarterly magazine of the Puffin Club, an association for bookish tinies run by Puffin Books ... Read More...
Nige recommends a lesser known novel by My Antonia author Willa Cather... A Lost Lady by Willa Cather [available for a penny from Amazon] is an apparently slight novel of some 160 pages that achieves the kind of depth and makes the kind of impact you'd expect from something twice the length. It's ... Read More...
ZMKC is captivated by a romantic comedy which is also a 'remorseless satire of the eighties and nineties'... The action of One Day (available for 1p on Amazon) takes place over twenty years and follows the lives of two characters - Emma and Dexter. These two spend the night together at ... Read More...
Rita works her way through a summer's worth of spy novels, and looks for parallels with real-life events... Patriot or Traitor? That question has lingered over the summer as the Edward Snowden whistle-blower case has played out in front of the world’s media at Moscow Airport. Americans seem to be about ... Read More...
A rather exciting coup for the Dabbler Book Club this month as we have 5 copies of Man Booker longlisted blockbuster The Kills up for grabs... An astonishing landmark novel in four books, The Kills is both a political thriller and a bravura literary performance. The Kills is an epic novel of ... Read More...
