The Conservationist  •  Nadine Gordimer LITERATURE •  1983 •  PAPER Gordimer's subltle Booker-prize winning novel portrays a wealthy South African industrialist who makes moves to preserve his way of life, his power, and his possessions in the face of massive injustice. (SAF218, $15.00)
Disgrace  •  J.M. Coetzee LITERATURE •  2000 •  PAPER  • 224 PAGES A sobering novel set in Cape Town and on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape. Friendless and twice-divorced, David Lurie loses his professorship as a result of an affair with a student, and is further broken down when he and his daughter are viciously attacked by three intruders. Coetzee's spare, but multi-layered language conveys the devastating realities of racial politics, alienation and suffering in post-apartheid South Africa. This book made Coetzee the only author to win the Booker Prize twice; the first one was awarded for "The Life and Times of Michael K" (SAF17). (SAF89, $15.00)
The Ghost Road  •  Pat Barker LITERATURE •  1996 •  PAPER Winner of the Booker Prize, the third novel in Barker's remarkable World War I trilogy focuses on psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers and Lieutenant Billy Prior as they grapple with the trauma of the war. (EUR306, $15.00)
Midnight's Children  •  Salman Rushdie LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 533 PAGES • FAVORITE Salman Rushdie's greatest book is a madcap, comic, unrestrained novel that takes as its subject the birth of modern India. The narrator, born at the stroke of India's independence on August 15, 1947, is a proxy for the nation itself, and the history of his family is also the history of India. (IDA12, $14.95)
Oscar and Lucinda  •  Peter Carey LITERATURE •  1997 •  PAPER  • 448 PAGES The Booker Prize-winning novel that catapulted Peter Carey to fame is a twisted romance of the kind that could only take place in 19th-century Australia, culimating with a half-mad expedition to transport a glass church across the Outback. (AUS204, $15.95)
The Siege of Krishnapur  •  J.G. Farrell LITERATURE •  2004 •  PAPER  • 344 PAGES A harrowing, grimly humorous novel set during the Sepoy Rebellion, the bloody 1857 revolt of Indian military recruits against the Raj. It's one of a terrific trio of novels (The Empire Trilogy) by the late J.G. Farrell. Winner of the 1973 Booker Prize. (IDA240, $15.95)