One of Cinema's great masters revisits his childhood - and the end of his parent's marriage - in a novella of awakeningOver the course of one summer, eight-year-old Pu Bergman realises that his parents are no longer in love. Surrounded by the quiet idyll...

The life of a poet becomes a parable of hope in Yi Mun-yol’s searching novella of art, status and selfhood. With their family condemned as traitors, two young brothers are sent away in disguise to save their lives. One grows up by his wits,...

Masks is Enchi's elegant, seductive story of sexual deception, revenge, and the haunting legacy of the past.Ibuki loves widow Yasuko, who is young, charming and sparkling with intelligence. His friend, Mikame, desires her too but that is not the...

At a Christmas party, a revelation shatters a man's complacency foreverAt a winter gathering in Dublin, friends and family come together for an evening of music, conversation and ritual. As the night unfolds, small tensions surface, and a chance...

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's stories of rebellion and sacrifice, where ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courageIn these tales of rebellion and sacrifice, ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courage. From fighters taking up arms against colonial rule to...

Written in the last years of Saramago's life, Cain is a controversial and witty story of a wilful, authoritarian God.After killing his brother, Cain is condemned to wander the earth. As he moves through time, he encounters moments from the Old...

Dylan Thomas’s vivid, affectionate portrait of youth - and the journey towards finding one’s own artistic voiceA boy grows up in a small Welsh town, moving through school, family life and first encounters with the wider world in moments of...

Colette’s elegant, unsettling study of love turned hostile - and all because of a cat.A young marriage begins to sour, poisoned by rivalry and resentment. At its centre is a cat – adored by the husband, despised by the wife –...

A fever-dream journal documenting the making of cinema’s most infamous production, from the world's most infamously visionary director: Werner Herzog.In 1982, the visionary film director, Werner Herzog, released Fitzcarraldo, a lavish film...

Embark on a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Angela Carter, weird fiction’s most influential pioneer, and her transformative stories of finding oneself in the face of another world. Five stories of desire and discovery set in 1970s Japan, from weird...

Four of Kurt Vonnegut’s best dystopian stories, Monkey Business distils his darkly comic vision of the modern world and the cost of trying to engineer a better life.In a future where everyone is forced to be equal, a gifted teenager dares...

Reality bends all the more acutely with lack of sleep in this stunning novel from the master of the surreal.Eyes mark the shape of the cityThe midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude...

A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes.Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots...

In November 1974, when Werner Herzog was told that his mentor Lotte Eisner, the film-maker and critic, was dying in Paris, he set off to walk there from Munich, "in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot." Along the way he...

One September, the writer and explorer Peter Matthiessen set out with field biologist George Schaller to journey 250 miles through the Himalayas to the Crystal Mountain on the Tibetan plateau. They wanted to study the wild blue sheep, the bharal, but...

Sally Bowles is the dazzling centrepiece of Goodbye to Berlin, distilling Isherwood's genius into the tale of one baudy, brilliant woman.1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, repression and excess, threatened by a rising tide of...

Experience a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Nobel Prize-Winner Yasunari Kawabata, and his remarkable fictional account of a world about to be cleft in two as two men battle to become the master of the strategy game, Go. Luminous, suspenseful, and serene, The...

Hemingway’s enduring story of resilience and solitude: One of the most powerful tales of courage and endurance ever writtenAn ageing fisherman sets out alone into the Gulf Stream, determined to prove that his strength and skill have not left him...

What begins as a miracle of science soon turns into a nightmare...After a plague wipes out all of Russia’s chickens, eyes fall on zoologist Periskov and his strange discovery that promises to revive their population. But quickly, the state’s...

The classic, moving tale of a man born old, destined to die young, and live at odds with his time Born in the body of a 70-year-old man, Benjamin Button is cursed to live life in reverse. As he ages backwards, he embraces life, finds love and seeks...