John Banville

John Banville’s The Untouchable concerns the suddenly-exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century.

Manju Kapur: “The complexity of the betrayal and the fact that this novel is based on the life of an actual spy is remarkable. There is depth in the way John Banville treats concepts like friendship and idealism.”

Martin Amis

Martin Amis’s The Information is about Richard Tull, a fortyish book reviewer and failed novelist, who is driven to distraction by the effortless and unmerited success of fellow Oxonian Gwyn Barry. Tull finally decides it's payback time, and this novel chronicles his slapstick attempts to annihilate his friend.

Manju Kapur: “Though it might make a light-hearted read, there is great irony in this book about a novelist who cannot sell his books.”

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s award-winning novel On Beauty is set mainly in New England partly in London. It is about a pair of feuding families – the Belseys and the Kipps – and a clutch of doomed affairs.

Manju Kapur: “This novel is funny in bits but there is all kinds of social commentary about races and Zadie Smith deals with it through irony and satire.”

Ian McEwan

In Ian McEwan’s Atonement, by the end of the hottest day of the summer of 1935, the lives of three young people change forever. Childhood friends Robbie and Cecilia cross a boundary they had never before dared to approach and become victims of 13-year old Briony Tallis’s scheming imagination. And Briony commits a dreadful crime, the guilt of which colours her entire life.

Manju Kapur: “There is great technical skill involved in the way things are tied up together in this novel. The first half covers the events in a single day while the second half is about what happens on a day many years later. It is written from the point of view of a child and what she inadvertently does.”

AS Byatt

In AS Byatt’s Possession, Maud Bailey and Roland Michell, a fellow academic, discover a love affair between the two Victorian writers the pair have dedicated their lives to studying. As they unearth the truth about the long-forgotten romance, they embark on a journey that challenges the most basic assumptions they hold about themselves and uncovers their unique entitlement to the secret of Ash and La Motte’s passion.

Manju Kapur: “This book, based on the discovery of historical letters by a 19th century poetess and a 20th century researcher brings together the past and present. There are various layers in the narrative which grip the reader.”