'A masterpiece... one of the best prose writers in our time' Michael OndaatjeRobert Grainier is a day labourer in the American West, felling the trees that feed the railways. It is the start of the twentieth century, and the world is changing at a rapid pace.

Life is fragile in the wilds of the frontier; disease and forest fires are rife. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainier journeys, struggling to make sense of the bewildering changes transforming the nation. Rich and muscular, sweep...

'I am a sick person. I am a spiteful person. An unattractive person, too .

. .'In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg, a retired civil servant spews forth a passionate and furious note on the ills of society.

The underground man's manifesto reveals his erratic, self-contradictory and even sadistic nature. Yet Dostoyevsky's disturbing character causes an uncomfortable flicker of recognition, and we see in him our own human condition.

With an Introduction and Notes by Merry M. Pawlowski, Professor and Chair, Department of English, California State University,Bakersfield. Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence.

Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives a...

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come. How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined. Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria.

Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to...

Presents the stories of Francis Barber, 'given' to the great eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson; Randolph Turpin, Britain's first black world champion boxer; and, David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who arrived in Leeds in 1949, the events of whose life called into question the reality of English justice.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

A BBC Top 100 Novels that Shaped Our WorldEffia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow.

Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gr...

Longlisted for both the Man Booker and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Charlotte Mendelson’s Almost English is an extraordinary, warm and funny novel about family, food and identity.

A magical novel of love, exploration and home, spanning the East African coast, China, Turkey and the seas in between, from one of Kenya's leading writers. The Dragonfly Sea follows the unforgettable Ayaana's journey to adulthood after her small-island childhood is interrupted. Targeted first by religious fundamentalists and second by Chinese emissaries, Ayaana is sent on a container ship to study in China, where she is forced to grow up fast.

With its epic scope and lush lyricism, Owuor evok...