Date: 2005 Author: Ian McEwen It is easy, out of perverse envy, to harp on shortcomings. McEwen’s Baxter, the thug…

Date: 2005 Author: Hari Kunzru The words this novel suggests are “zany” or “screwball.” That’s not because Kunzru (author of…

Date: 2000 (2014) Author: Michel Faber Michel Faber is a Dutch-Aussie who lives in the Scottish highlands. Modern fiction has…

Date: 2004 Author: Thomas Keneally How do you approach Saddam Hussein by way of Orwell without giving up your virtue?…

Date: 2005 Author: Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman Great writers sometimes deal awkwardly with impending…

Date: 2004 Author: Michael Byers Imagine Michael Crichton material in delicate, yearning hands. Dr. Henry Moss is a Seattle geneticist…

Date: 1915 (1998) Author: John Buchan Like Conrad’s “Secret Agent,” a major icebreaker. Buchan, inspired by World War I, provides…

Date: 2001 Author: Ann Patchett It’s an odd conceit, mixing opera worship with terrorism. Opera here is its own delicious…

Date: 2002 Author: Orhan Pamuk Here “Red” is a color, one of twenty amazing chapter narrators — Dog, Death, Uncle,…

Date: 2005 Author: Uzodinma Iweala Uzodinma Iweala’s child soldier keeps telling himself “I am not bad boy. I am not…