Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World

1Q84

(2011) The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing something very dangerous. And in this world, there seems no way to save them both. Something extraordinary is starting.

Educated

(2018) Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals. As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it.

Brave New World

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through the clever mix of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, everyone is a happy consumer. Bernard Marx seems alone in his discontent.

Essentials of Psychoanalysis

Pulling Your Own Strings

Does your family treat you like an unpaid servant? Are you afraid to stand up for yourself at work? Do you give in to pressure from friends? Do you torture yourself with guilt and remorse? If you feel and act like a victim, your life is not really your own. But if you learn to take control over your fears, weaknesses and negative feelings, then it is possible to achieve freedom – and the priceless benefits it brings. In this classic self-help book, Dr Dyer shows you in his wise and helpful way how you can take control of your own life and become a stronger person. Reading it is the first step towards a new, effective, assertive you.

You’ll See It When You Believe

(2005) ‘Our thoughts are a magic part of us, and they carry us to places that have no boundaries, and no limitations’ In this bestselling thought-provoking book, Dr. Wayne Dyer stretches beyond self-help to self-realisation. To do so, he embarks on a journey to activate our minds and shows us how to transform our lives by using our thoughts constructively: in other words, how to focus on a belief and see it. Using anecdotes and examples, writing with wit and compassion, and drawing on his own amazing life story, Dr. Dyer has, once again, written an inspirational self-help book that explores how to achieve personal transformation through the visualisation of thought- and teaches us that believing is seeing.

Dance, Dance, Dance

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami’s idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the

A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s international following. Tracking one man’s descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.

Wind-up Bird Chronicle

(1997) Toru Okada’s cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada’s vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.