Absurdistan
Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart has recently been recognised by the New Yorker as one of America’s best 20 writers under 40. This satire based in a fantasy Russian state is the perfect introduction to one of the smartest and most hilarious novelists around.

Out of Place: A Memoir
Edward Said

Memoir from one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century and author of the seminal Orientalism. ‘One of the greatest critics of our age has produced a work of art, one of the noblest autobiographies of our time.’ Irish Times

Somewhere Towards the End
Diana Athill

Winner of the Costa Biography Award 2008. Athill’s memoir looks back on a life well lived and reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age brings. ‘On sex, religion and death she is a master.’ Literary Review

Stasiland
Anna Funder

Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2004. Anna Funder reveals the reality of life behind the Berlin Wall by telling the stories of the ordinary men and women that lived through the years of the infamous Stasi.

Straw Dogs
John Gray

‘Straw Dogs challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions. This is the most exhilarating book I have read since Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene’ J.G. Ballard

The Rehearsal
Eleanor Catton

Winner of the Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and heaped with critical praise, The Rehearsal is one of the most talked-about debuts of recent years: original, compulsively readable and startlingly good.

The Soccer War
Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Soccer War sits at the heart of Granta Books’ strong tradition of reportage.  Here Kapuscinski gives an account of his decade-long rollercoaster ride as communist Poland’s only ‘foreign correspondent’.

The Wild Places
Robert Macfarlane

Considered by many to be the book that marked the pinnacle of ‘the new nature writing’, The Wild Places charts Robert Macfarlane’s search for the remaining wild places of Britain and what the notion of wildness can mean to us all today.

This Book Will Save Your Life
A.M. Homes

The novel that captured the imagination of more than a quarter of a million readers in the UK alone. A.M. Homes is famous for her razor sharp wit, finely wrought characters and sheer ability to entertain. This is her masterpiece.