WAYS OF GOING HOME by Alejandro Zambra (2013 [2011]; translated by Megan McDowell from FORMAS DE VOLVER A CASA) Growing up in 1980s Chile a young boy plays hide and seek in the suburbs of Santiago while his parents become entangled in Pinochet's regime. As the country shudders under authoritarian rule, the boy conjures stories to explain the sporadic scenes of violence, the disappearances, and the deafening silence of his mother and father. Until, on the night of the Santiago earthquake, a mysterious girl named Claudia appears in the neighbourhood and the boy's world is changed forever. Now, as a young man reflecting on his childhood, he must find the courage to confront as an adult what he could not have known as a child. As he struggles to begin a novel that will encompass the clash between innocence and complicity, the boundaries between fiction and reality blur and Claudia comes back into his life.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE GREEN HOUSE by Mario Vargas Llosa (1969 [1965]; translated from LA CASA VERDE; translator uncredited and unknown) The Green House was put up across the river from the city of Puira at the edge of the desert. The townspeople laughed at the odd-looking structure and the stranger who had come into the town to build it. But when it was finished and its first tenants had arrived, the citizens of Puira stopped laughing. For some, it became a night-time pleasure oasis in the desert. For others it became the very incarnation of the Devil – an evil that had to be destroyed at any cost. *This, the writer's second novel, predates his much later Damascene conversion to liberal, then conservative, and later neoliberal and far-right political beliefs, positions, and proclamations.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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FROM THE DARKNESS by Oswaldo Salazar (2007 [2004]; translated by Gavin O'Toole from POR EL LADO OSCURO) It is the spring of 1939. A peasant dies in agony from poisoning in the hospital of Amatitlán, a town near Guatemala City dominated by the farms of old land-owning families. The man's wife and children are accused of his murder. So unfolds a criminal case known as 'The Gourd Poisoning' which shatters the tranquillity of a land kept in fearful order by the tough dictator General Jorge Ubico. FROM THE DARKNESS takes a rare journey into Central America's criminal history resulting in a masterful literary account of a true crime that examines the contrasting realities of a society transfixed by the transgressions of a simple woman.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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SÃO BERNARDO by Graciliano Ramos (1975 [1934]; translated by R.L. Scott-Buccleuch from Portuguese) Considered one of the masterpieces of twentieth century Brazilian literature, this book, set on a ranch in the late 1920s and early 1930s, portrays of life in the remote countryside. The narrator, a self-made man, cunningly acquires a fazenda from a degenerate friend whom he later employs. The ranch prospers and he marries a schoolteacher to whom he feels socially and intellectually inferior. The novel centres around their relationship, ending with her suicide caused by his unreasonable jealousy. Graciliano Ramos was one of a group of writers, including Jorge Amado among others, whose work is set chiefly in the impoverished north east of Brazil. It records the changes brought about by the slow influx of modern ideas and technological progress, set against the background of a hostile environment.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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HEARTBREAK TANGO by Manuel Puig (1973 [1969]; translated by Suzanne Jill Levine from BOQUITAS PINTADAS) HEARTBREAK TANGO tells the story of a cheap, deceitful but devastatingly handsome 'Don Juan' whose sordid affairs in the boring small-town lives of his lovers take on the lustre of a romantic movie; Puig's chronicle is at once full of sentiment and a celebration of popular culture in everyday life.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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A BRIEF LIFE by Juan Carlos Onetti (1976 [1950]; translated by Hortense Carpentier from LA VIDA BREVE) Brausen is caring for his wife after a long illness. To compensate for the physical void which temporarily stalls their caresses, Brausen eavesdrops on his neighbours, a husband and wifc; imagining their gestures and expressions. He also imagines stories: of a mythical town called Santa Maria, and of a doctor named Diaz Grey. But he not only wishes to imagine himself as someone else, he also seeks release from the world he knows. He leads many lives, some real and some fantastic, in order to experience a moment of psychic weightlessness – a 'brief life'. First published in 1950, this is a brilliant novel by one of the greats of Latin American literature.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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AFTER THE WINTER by Guadalupe Nettel (2018 [2014]; translated by Rosalind Harvey from DESPUÉS DEL INVIERNO) A shy young Mexican woman moves to Paris to study literature. Cecilia has few friends, and a morbid fascination with watching the funerals taking place in Père-Lachaise cemetery outside her apartment. She suddenly strikes up a close relationship with her neighbour, a sickly young man who shares her interest in death and believes we can communicate with the dead. After coming to entirely depend on him for company and routine, Cecilia is left devastated by his decision to go to Sicily for his health, and is left alone in an unfriendly city once more. Claudio, meanwhile, lives in New York with the submissive, quiet, but very wealthy Ruth. She makes few demands of him, while acquiescing to all his desires and indulging his obsessive, misogynistic nature. He meets Cecilia by chance when visiting a friend in Paris and their two very different worlds collide with transformative consequences. With startling intensity, humour and insight, Nettel conjures a dark fable about obsession, denial and our modern ability (and desire) to reach out across the globe in search of love.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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FACES IN THE CROWD by Valeria Luiselli (2012 [2011]; translated by Christina MacSweeney from LOS INGRÁVIDOS) In the heart of Mexico City a woman, trapped in a house and a marriage she can neither fully inhabit nor abandon, thinks about her past. She has decided to write a novel about her days at a publishing house in New York; about the strangers who became lovers and the poets and ghosts who once lived in her neighbourhood. In particular, one of the obsessions of her youth – Gilberto Owen – an obscure Mexican poet of the 1920s, a marginal figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a busker on Manhattan's subway platforms, a friend and an enemy of Federico García Lorca. As she writes, Gilberto Owen comes to life on the page: a solitary, faceless man living on the edges of Harlem's writing and drinking circles at the beginning of the Great Depression haunted by the ghostly image of a woman travelling on the New York subway. Mutually distorting mirrors, their two lives connect across the decades between them, forming a single elegy of love and loss.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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BUXTON SPICE by Oonya Kempadoo (1998) BUXTON SPICE is set in Guyana in the 1970s, and features a spirited young narrator, Lula, growing up in a world of wonder and danger. Against the backdrop of a disintegrating society, Lula and her friends explore their emerging sexuality. Impressionistic, raw and intimate, BUXTON SPICE captures the essence of the end of childhood and innocence.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE RENUNCIATION by Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá (1997 [1974]; translated by Andrew Hurley from LA RENUNCIA DEL HÉROE BALTASAR) Acclaimed Puerto Rican novelist Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá delivers a masterfully structured and intensely exciting historic novel about issues of class and race in Puerto Rico's colonial past. Presented through a series of lectures interspersed with letters and other historic documents, THE RENUNCIATION chronicles a pre- arranged marriage plotted to pacify the slave population and to save Puerto Rico from certain rebellion. The story of Baltasar Montañez, an eighteenth-century Puerto Rican hero and the son of a slave leader, unfolds deliberately, as the lecturer shares with his audience the details of Montañez's life. In 1753 Montañez renounced his own people and married the daughter of the secretary of state. Her hand was offered by the colonial government, with the backing of the Catholic Church, in an effort to create for the slaves an illusion of freedom and social mobility – and to ease growing tension between the two opposing classes. The plan worked, for a brief period, then backfired. This Caribbean Othello, who had so willingly adopted the social, cultural, and religious mores of colonial Puerto Rico's white society, was unable to sustain the charade. Montañez, whose insane visions increasingly preoccupied him, gave in to his consuming madness, abandoning his marriage and renouncing the position to which the marriage entitled him. As the final lecture draws to a close, the audience learns that this archetypal mad genius sided with neither the government and church, which gave him the power he so wanted, nor the slave revolters, whose bloody uprising in his defense brought the Puerto Rican government to its knees.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE SEA by Tomás González (2014 [1983]; translated by Frank Wynne from PRIMERO ESTABA EL MAR) They left in search of paradise, and found themselves in hell. When J. and Elena swap the parties and culture of the city for a simpler life on a remote Caribbean coast, they expect to find an Eden to call their own. But in amongst the mango groves they discover decaying houses, diseased animals, suffocating heat and locals from another world. Faced with growing debt, how will they survive in this new environment when they themselves remain unchanged? And, as their relationship breaks down – and the horror unfolds – who can they count on if not each other? IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE SEA is a menacing, ironic tale of human weakness, the terrifying power of nature, and what happens when our dreams meet their fateful reality.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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HAPPY FAMILIES: STORIES by Carlos Fuentes (2008 [2006]; translated by Edith Grossman from TODAS LAS FAMILIAS FELICES) The internationally acclaimed author Carlos Fuentes, winner of the Cervantes Prize and the Latin Civilization Award, delivers a stunning work of fiction about family and love across an expanse of Mexican life, reminding us why he has been called "a combination of Poe, Baudelaire, and Isak Dinesen" (Newsweek). In these masterly vignettes, Fuentes explores Tolstoy's classic observation that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In "A Family Like Any Other", each member of the Pagán family lives in isolation, despite sharing a tiny house. In "The Mariachi's Mother," the limitless devotion of a woman is revealed as she secretly tends to her estranged son's wounds. "Sweethearts" reunites old lovers unexpectedly and opens up the possibilities for other lives and other loves. These are just a few of the remarkable stories in HAPPY FAMILIES, but they all inhabit Fuentes's trademark Mexico, where contemporary obsessions bump up against those of the mythic past, and the result is a triumphant display of the many ways we reach out to one another and find salvation through irrepressible acts of love. In this spectacular translation, the acclaimed Edith Grossman captures the full power of Fuentes's range. Whether writing in the language of the street or in straightforward, elegant prose, Fuentes gives us stories connected by love, including the failure of love – between spouses, lovers, parents and children, siblings. From the Mexican presidential palace to the hovels of the poor and the vast expanse of humanity in between, HAPPY FAMILIES is a magnificent portrait of modern life in all its complicated beauty, as told by one of the world's most celebrated writers.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE FESTIVAL OF SAN JOAQUIN by Zee Edgell (1997) Luz Marina, cleared of a murder charge for taking the life of her brutal husband, is released from prison on a three-year probation. Determined to rebuild her life and gain custody of her children, she is sustained by mother love and faith in the divine as she fights against the poverty, guilt, vanity and vengeance which threaten to overwhelm her. In this novel, set in the Mestizo community in Belize, Zee Edgell explores with sensitivity and understanding the contradictory and secret territory that is domestic violence.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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WIDOWS by Ariel Dorfman (1983 [1981]; translated by Stephen Kessler from VIUDAS) One by one, men's bodies are washing up on the shore of the river that passes through town, where they are claimed by the women as their missing husbands and fathers, even though the faces of the dead men are unrecognizable. A tug-of-war ensues between the local police, who insist that the women couldn't possibly recognize their loved ones, and the women demanding the right to bury their beloveds. Set in a Greek village in 1942, here is Ariel Dorfman's haunting and universal parable of individual courage in the face of political oppression. WIDOWS is a testament to the countless people who are taken away for "questioning" and never return and a tribute to those whose fierce defiance ensures that the dead are not forgotten. In WIDOWS a power struggle between love, dignity, and honor, and the lesser god of brute force, is turned into a passionate education in how power really works, and how it can be made to work differently. First published in 1983, WIDOWS is one of Dorfman's most popular and lasting books, a classic in the literature of social protest.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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EVELINA by Frances Burney (1778) "I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me." Leaving the secluded home of her guardian for the first time, beautiful Evelina Anville is captivated by her new surroundings in London's beau monde – and in particular by the handsome, chivalrous Lord Orville. But her enjoyment soon turns to mortification at the behaviour of her vulgar and capricious grandmother, and by the rakish Sir Clement Willoughby, who torments the naive young woman with his unwanted advances. And while her aristocratic father refuses to acknowledge her legitimacy, Evelina can hold no hope of happiness with the man she loves. Published anonymously in 1778, when the secret of its authorship was revealed Frances Burney's epistolary novel brought her instant fame. The novel explores representation and performance, social mores and masks, in a world full of distractions, from overturned coaches to golden automata, from opera to malevolent monkeys. EVELINA is also a family romance, and it is acutely observant of the social laws regarding power, authority and authorship, which the author herself had to subvert, at least in part, like her naïve letter-writing heroine. With its ingenious combination of romance and satire, comedy and melodrama, EVELINA is a sparkling depiction of the dangers and delights of eighteenth century England's fashionable society.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE MARQUISE OF O— by Heinrich von Kleist (1808; translated by Nicholas Jacobs DIE MARQUISE VON O in 2019) In a Northern Italian town, a young widowed noblewoman of impeccable reputation publishes a peculiar announcement in a newspaper: she has found herself inexplicably pregnant and would like the father of the child to make himself known so that she can marry him. THE MARQUISE OF O— is the dizzyingly comic tale of how she came to this extremity. It is a story of layered ironies, of events misreported and passions at cross purposes. Nicholas Jacobs' fluid new translation captures the novella's restless pace and complexity as each masterful twist of Kleist's prose plunges us deeper into the ambiguities of truth and human desire.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM by Tobias Smollett (1753) Ferdinand Count Fathom ranks alongside Samuel Richardson's Lovelace in the rogues' gallery of despicable villains; and his talents are given full rein in a novel which has betrayals, seductions, swindles and dénouements succeeding each other with breathtaking speed and brio. Smollett is as subversive as ever, his comic irony undermining the prevailing literary conventions and his characters - particularly Joshua Manasseh, the first benevolent Jew in English fiction - defying pious assumptions. THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM thus occupies a distinctive place in the history of the eighteenth-century novel, in the interregnum between the established picaresque novel dominant in its time and the later Gothic tradition to which it seems a precursor, as well as being a thoroughly gripping read. The cover shows After by William Hogarth in the J. Paul Getty Museum, California.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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A MODEST PROPOSAL by Jonathan Swift (1729) This Juvenalian satire suggests that the Irish poor of the eighteenth century could resolve their economic woes by selling their children as food to the rich. In this ascerbic essay puts the knife into the anti-poor attitudes of the Anglo-Irish elite in British colonised Ireland, the prejudices about Catholics promulgated in the Protestant Ascendancy, and the horrific and corrupt policies of the colonial administration seated in Dublin. The book has had a powerful legacy in English language political satire and in Anglophobe political literature since its publication.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE NEW ATALANTIS by Delarivier.Manley (1709) Writer and wit, proto-feminist and political intriguer, Delarivier Manley shared equal notoriety as a satirist with her friend Jonathan Swift (whom she succeeded as the editor of "The Examiner" Swift's newspaper), and THE NEW ATALANTIS is her major work. The book tells of Astrea, Goddess of Justice borne by the winds to Atalantis, where she meets her long-lost mother Virtue and is guided round the island by Lady Intelligence. Laced with autobiography, and political and erotic scandal, this roman à clef was designed to expose the secret lives of the rich and powerful in Stuart England in the rule of Queen Anne, and, not surprisingly, was suppressed on publication in 1709. Delarivier Manley's concerns – with corruption in high places, the power of the propagandist and the role of the woman writer – remain alive and compelling to this day. The cover shows a portrait of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough by Sir Godfrey Kneller, with the figure of Justice in the top left-hand corner (photo: National Portrait Gallery, London).

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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Maria Edgeworth's CASTLE RACKRENT (1800) and ENNUI (1809) Stylish, sceptical, cosmopolitan, heir to Swift's fantasy and wit, Maria Edgeworth's fiction explores the relations of England and Ireland at a time of historical crisis. CASTLE RACKRENT is Irish family history vividly and unreliably narrated by the loyal servant Thady, steward on the decaying Rackrent estates. In this comic tour-de-force Maria Edgeworth anticipates great themes of the European novel – colonialism, class, master-servant relationships, money, power and sexual inequality – but the novel's true sequel is ENNUI (1809). Beginning as the 'confessions' of an old-regime aristocrat, Lord Glenthorn's story takes him to Ireland, and impels him in a fable of bizarre transformations to play a reluctant part in Ireland's year of Revolution, 1798.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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CALEB WILLIAMS by William Godwin (1794) When young Caleb Williams comes to work as a secretary for Squire Falkland, he soon begins to suspect that his master is hiding a terrible secret. His unearthing of the guilty truth proves calamitous when – despite Caleb loyally swearing never to reveal his discovery – the Squire enacts a cruel revenge. A tale of gripping suspense and psychological power, William Godwin's novel creates a searing depiction of the intolerable persecution meted out to a good man in pursuit of justice and equality. Written to expose the political oppression and corrupt hierarchies its author saw in the world around him, CALEB WILLIAMS (1794) embodies a radical appeal to end the abuses of power while simultaneously exploring the complexities of that endeavour. Cover: Detail from Plate 16 from The First Book of Urizen (1794) Copy D by William Blake, in the British Museum, London.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THW EMIGRANTS by Gilbert Imlay (1793) A frontier tale of love and adventure with a utopian vision of American character. The American Gilbert Imlay is known to readers of British Romanticism as the cad who abandoned Mary Wollstonecraft, the founding mother of modern feminism. Few are as well-acquainted with THE EMIGRANTS, Imlay's delightful epistolary novel set in the Ohio River Valley of Kentucky, then the American frontier. THE EMIGRANTS (1793), one of the first American novels, contrasts the rigid political structures of England with the promise of the American West as a socially just utopia. Its sensational love plots also dramatize the plight of women trapped in degrading marriages, frankly advocating relaxed divorce laws. Thiis novel is an excellent introduction to Gilbert Imlay: reprobate, land booster, revolutionary, and writer. Cover painting: Jacob Eichholtz, Conestoga Creek and Lancaster (detail), 1833. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. James H. Beal.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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WIELAND by Charles Brockden Brown (1798) MEMOIRS OF CARWIN THE BILOQUIST by Charles Brockden Brown (1803-1805) Two powerful classics that examine the psychological, social, and political concerns of the early American republic. WIELAND, Brown's novel of authority misrepresented and authority imagined, is a terrifying account of the fallibility of the human mind and, by extension, of democracy itself. Set in rural Pennsylvania in the years before the American Revolution, the book relates how a small community is disturbed by the intrusion of the mysterious Carwin, whose extraordinary verbal gifts cast doubt and dissension among them. In the fragmentary sequel MEMOIRS OF CARWIN THE BILOQUIST, Brown explores Carwin's bizarre previous history: as a manipulated disciple of the charismatic utopian schemer Ludloe. Two centuries later, as the political, economic, and social institutions of the United States are transformed by the elites, much may be learned from Brown's examination of tensions in power and authority in the early republic. Cover art: Washington Allston, "The Prophet Jeremiah Dictating to His Scribe Baruch", Yale University Art Gallery Gift of Samuel F.B. Morse, B.A. 1810.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE MONK by Matthew Lewis (1796) Noble and devout, Ambrosio is the abbot of a Spanish monastery and spends his days in prayer and preaching. However, his monastery is harbouring a malevolent force in the form of a young monk called Rosario. Rosario attaches himself to the abbot and then one fateful night reveals that he is in fact a beautiful woman in disguise. From this moment on Ambrosio finds himself seduced into a lurid maelstrom of sin and vice that it is impossible for him to resist. Among the darkest and most horrifying Gothic novels of the late eighteentb century.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE ITALIAN by Ann Radcliffe (1797) "It seemed as if a shuddering pre-sentiment of what this monk was preparing for him, had crossed his mind." From the first moment Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young Neapolitan nobleman, sets eyes on the veiled figure of Ellena, he is captivated by her enigmatic beauty and grace. But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her confessor to come between them. Schedoni, formerly a leading figure of the Inquisition, is a demonic, scheming monk with no qualms about the task, whether it entails abduction, torture – or even murder. THE ITALIAN secured Ann Radcliffe's position as the leading writer of Gothic romance of the late eighteenth century, for its atmosphere of supernatural and nightmarish horrors, combined with her evocation of sublime landscapes and chilling narrative.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO by Horace Walpole (1764) 'An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions . . . Every murmur struck her with new terror . . . Every suggestion that horror could inspire rushed into her mind'. On the day of his wedding Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. Fearing the end of his dynasty, his father, Manfred, determines to marry Conrad's betrothed Isabella, until a series of supernatural events stands in his way. A giant helmet falls from the moon, a portrait sighs, a statue bleeds and spirits warn of impending tragedy, as the curse on Manfred's house inexorably works itself out. First published pseudonymously in 1764 as 'a scholarly translation from an ancient Italian text', THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO arguably has never been out of print. With its compelling blend of psychological realism and supernatural terror, it has influenced a literary tradition stretching from Ann Radcliffe and Bram Stoker to Daphne du Maurier and Stephen King. • With a critical introduction, a chronology of Walpole's life and works, explanatory notes, further reading and a full selection of early responses to the novel • The cover shows a detail from "Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma", 1783, by Henry Fuseli ©️ Tate, London, 2001.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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EREWHON by Samuel Butler (1872) 'We object to progress', said the venerable Professor of Worldly Wisdom. When the traveller Higgs discovers the remote land of Erewhon he finds a strange race who have forbidden the use of machines, who treat their sick like criminals and their criminals like sick people, who suppress originality and hold that the greatest scholarly achievement is proficiency in the study of unreason and hypothetics. The great debunker of the social and religious hypocrisy of his day, Samuel Butler began to write this satirical novel shortly after he had read THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, which influenced him greatly. First published in 1872, EREWHON still retains its freshness and originality and we have as much to learn from it as ever. The cover shows a detail from St Jerome after Giovanni Bellini, in the National Gallery, London.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER by Thomas de Quincey (1821) Charming and highly gifted, De Quincey was also something of a fugitive from respectable society. His thirty perilous years of drug addiction both eased his considerable social anxieties and created new, devastating mental and physical torments. Throughout this time he fought a constant and bitter struggle against the incapacity and torpor that opium – then as readily available as aspirin – incurred. This agonizing conflict is at the heart of the book. They are a 'meditation on the mechanism of the imagination' and bring vividly to life the 'celestial' dreams and the terrifying nightmares which transport and destroy the addict. De Quincey's powerful evocation of his drug-induced experience gives a fearful insight into the degeneration of a brilliant mind. This edition follows the first edition of 1821. An appendix includes the most valuable passages from the longer but inferior edition of 1856.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA by Roddy Doyle (1993) It is 1968. Patrick Clarke is ten. He loves George Best, Geronimo, and the smell of his hot water bottle. He hates zoos, kissing, and the boys from the Corporation houses. He can't stand his little brother. He wants to be a missionary like Father Damien. He coerces the McCarthy twins and Willy Hancock into playing lepers. He never picks the scabs off his knees before they're ready. Kevin is his best friend. Their names are all over Barrytown, written with sticks in wet cement. They play football, knick-knack jumping to the bottom the sea. Shoplifting Robbing 'Football Monthly' means four million years in purgatory. But a good confession before you died and you'd go straight to heaven. He wants to know why no one jumped in for him when Charles Leavy had been going to kill him. He wants to stop his da arguing with his ma. He's confused: he sees everything but he understands less and less . . . Witty and poignant, earthy and exuberant PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA charts the triumphs, indignities and bewilderment of Patrick Clarke and his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, love, and slaps across the face.

A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

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