General Fiction – Allende, Ariosto, Banville, Barnes & Bedford

To resume…

Back to general fiction and to begin -  two volumes by Isobel Allende. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted her most famous novel The House of the Spirits. That is because my original paperback copy of the book went missing and to replace it I bought (second hand) a movie edition – pretty boring, so I’m not showing it here.

The below editions are Eva Luna in an uncorrected proof edition and The Stories of Eva Luna in a  Penguin edition. 

Next a book, that crazily was popular in the 1970s as a result of the Ballantine  Adult Fantasy Series. I do believe that there was a Ballantine edition of Orlando Furioso
by Ludovico Ariosto, but this edition was  published by Oxford University Press in1974.

John Banville won the Booker Prize for his novel The Sea in 2005, but the two below novels are much earlier. Kepler is part of his Revolutions series and is an imaginative biography of Johannes Kepler the German mathematician and astronomer. Birchwood is an odd sort of book, a tale of decadence and decay set in a dilapidated Irish Manor.

Julian Barnes wonderful novel Arthur and George was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005.  It is described on his website as “A novel about low crime and high spirituality; guilt and innocence; identity, nationality and race; and thwarted passion.” and contains an illuminating character study of Arthur Conan Doyle, who is indeed the Arthur of the title.

And finally for tonight, my small collection of Sybille Bedford novels.

Next – more general fiction.

Modern Firsts – Part 2 – South American and other foreign writers

My book collection is quite eclectic as you no doubt have realised by now. Below are more first edition hard covers from a variety of writers.

Quite few of them were given to me as gifts and others I purchased at the time they were published or I found them on the remaindered books table of a discount bookstore.

Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende I remember purchasing after a successful gamble on a race horse. A long shot winner gained me a windfall of $100.00. I celebrated by buying this book- her third novel published in 1985. I also have somewhere a proof copy of Stories of Eva Luna.

Keeping to South American authors The General in his Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I acquired as a Christmas present in 1990. That year I had to perform the function of present buyer for my mother who was unwell so bought the book for myself as a present from her.

I acquired The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa sometime or other from my friend in the book trade who was at that time the Australian representative for Faber and gave me many interesting books, in hard cover, paperback or proof copy. I can’t remember if I ever read The Storyteller, but it certainly has a great cover.

Other books from this source are the wonderful The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, News From a Foreign Country Came by Alberto Manguel, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi