Locked in a lethal relationship, the two men stumble across Europe, shedding wives, self-respect and identities in a game of literary cat and mouse - and the climax of their odyssey, when it comes, i
While mothers raise children in the bucolic Place of Women, Chimp is tormented by the Leopard Men in their brutal hunts, until he gains new wisdom . Imperial Rome. In an era of invention and exploration, the emperor realises he loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own loutish heir .
But in this claustrophobic community - stifled by the English class system, and where everybody knows everyones business - love, lust and rebellion are closely followed by revenge and embarrassment .
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics.
Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the night cold and the terror of his isolation. To drink there is a pool of rain water; to eat there are weeds and sea anemones. Through the long hours with only himself to talk to, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate, piece by terrible piece. While most readers are aware of William Golding as the writer of Lord of the Flies, it is Pincher Martin, his third novel, that speaks most directly to contemporary readers. This shocking, unusual bullet of a book is the definitive survival novel and has an ending that is guaranteed to leave you reeling.