{"product_id":"secondhand-modern-fiction-bargain-book-box-sp2871","title":"Secondhand Modern Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2871","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSecondhand Modern Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2871\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eTwenty-three novels, mostly twentieth century: Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, le Carré’s The Night Manager, Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, Waugh’s Officers and Gentlemen, Anne Tyler, Rose Tremain’s Restoration, Burgess’s verse novel Byrne, Max Frisch and five Fay Weldons. Serious fiction with Ben Elton thrown in for a laugh.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003col dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTherapy — David Lodge — Tubby Passmore writes a hit sitcom, has a knee that hurts for no reason and a wife who’s leaving him, and starts reading Kierkegaard. The ending on the Camino de Santiago is Lodge’s warmest.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOfficers and Gentlemen — Evelyn Waugh — Guy Crouchback goes to Crete in 1941 and watches the British Army fall apart around a dandy who deserts. Sword of Honour book two, the one with Trimmer and Ivor Claire. Orange Penguin.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnimal Farm — George Orwell — The animals throw out the farmer, the pigs take over, and the commandments change overnight. Penguin with the pig-in-headlights cover.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Island of Doctor Moreau — H.G. Wells — A shipwrecked man finds an island where a surgeon is cutting animals into men. The Sayer of the Law and the House of Pain; Wells’s cruellest book. Penguin Modern Classics.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmpire of the Sun — J.G. Ballard — Jim, eleven, loses his parents in the Shanghai crowds in 1941 and spends the war in a Japanese camp, learning to love it. Ballard’s own childhood, and the book that made him respectable.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMost Secret — Nevil Shute — A fishing boat fitted with a flamethrower raids the Brittany coast at night. Shute’s war thriller, written in 1942 and held back by the censor until 1945.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy Year of Meat — Ruth L. Ozeki — A Japanese-American documentary maker shoots a TV series selling American beef to Japanese housewives, and discovers what’s in the beef. Funny, furious, and still relevant.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGrowing Rich — Fay Weldon — Three girls in a Fenland town, a Rolls-Royce that stops for one of them, and a driver who may be the Devil. Written for Anglia TV, and better than it had to be.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePopcorn — Ben Elton — A Tarantino-style director wins an Oscar and wakes up with two of his imitators in his house, armed. Elton’s argument about screen violence as a thriller. Gold Dagger winner.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDarcy’s Utopia — Fay Weldon — Eleanor Darcy, wife of a jailed economist, explains to two journalists how to abolish money and marriage. Weldon’s big-ideas novel.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShanghai — William Marshall — Weeks before Pearl Harbor, a detective in the International Settlement watches the city not see what’s coming. From the Yellowthread Street author. Pan.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDinner at the Homesick Restaurant — Anne Tyler — Pearl Tull is dying and her three children remember a different mother each. Ezra’s restaurant, where the family never finishes a meal together, is the heart of it. Tyler’s own favourite of her books.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMornings in Jenin — Susan Abulhawa — Four generations of a Palestinian family from the village lost in 1948 to the Jenin camp in 2002. The first big Palestinian novel in English, and it sold a million.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGreat Meadow: An Evocation — Dirk Bogarde — The actor’s Sussex childhood in the 1930s, with his sister, a cottage and a nanny called Lally. The gentlest of his memoirs. Penguin.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLittle Sisters — Fay Weldon — A weekend at a rich man’s country house, and a story told inside the story about what money does to women. Early Weldon, sharp as glass.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Estate — Isaac Bashevis Singer — The sequel to The Manor: the Jacoby family’s Polish estate and the generation that leaves it for Warsaw, America and apostasy. Penguin.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVariety of Men — C.P. Snow — Einstein, Lloyd George, Rutherford, Hammarskjöld, Hardy, Wells and Stalin, by a man who met most of them. The Rutherford essay is the one to read. Penguin.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Night Manager — John le Carré — Jonathan Pine, hotel night manager, is recruited to get inside the circle of Richard Roper, the worst man in the world. Le Carré’s first post–Cold War novel and the source of the TV series.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe First Circle — Alexander Solzhenitsyn — A prison outside Moscow where scientists work for Stalin in comfort, four days before Christmas 1949, and a diplomat who makes a phone call he shouldn’t. Fontana, Nobel banner.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe President’s Child — Fay Weldon — Isabel once spent a night with a man who’s now running for President, and the men around him want her quiet. Weldon does paranoid thriller.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBluebeard — Max Frisch — A doctor acquitted of murdering his sixth wife keeps rerunning the trial in his head. Frisch’s last novel, a hundred pages, perfect. Penguin Modern Classics.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eByrne — Anthony Burgess — A monstrous Irish painter and composer, his bastards scattered across the century, and the will that brings them together. Burgess’s last novel, written in ottava rima, and he was dying when he finished it.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRestoration — Rose Tremain — Robert Merivel is given a wife by Charles II on condition he never touches her, and touches her. The fall from court to a Quaker asylum. Booker shortlist; the film has Robert Downey Jr.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ol\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50851330490587,"sku":"SP2871","price":110.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/sp2871.jpg?v=1792450871","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/secondhand-modern-fiction-bargain-book-box-sp2871","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}