Offers an interview with Salman Rushdie, relating specifically to the texts under discussion. This guide deals with Rushdie's themes, genre and narrative technique,and a close reading of the texts can provide a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels.

A collection of writings about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes towards girls.

Aristocrat, literary celebrity, 'Rose Queen', devoted wife, lesbian, recluse, iconoclast - Vita Sackville-West was many things, but she was never straightforward. Her life is re-told here in a dazzling new biography.

Modern poetry is often represented as difficult or remote from most people's experience. This is a passionate attempt to introduce and examine all aspects of contemporary poetry and make it a familiar part of our lives.

Since 1965 Geoffrey Shepherd's edition of Philip Sidney's "Apology" has been the standard, and this revision, with a new introduction and extensive notes, is designed to introduce the soldier-poet's work to a new generation of readers at the beginning of the 21st century.

An account English weather, which is at the very heart of English life and culture, as it is experienced physically, emotionally and spiritually. It catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals: 'Bloody cold', says Jonathan Swift in the 'slobbery' January of 1713; Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud and John Ruskin wants to bottle one.

From the tenant of 221b Baker Street to the Golden Age of detective writing between the wars, P.D. James shares her personal thoughts about a genre which has fascinated her for nearly fifty years as a novelist. Widely regarded as the queen of the detective novel, this book by P.D. James is sure to appeal to all aficionados of crime fiction.

Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. Examining literature since the sixteenth century, this book traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life.

Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1994.

One of France's most high-profile writers and a Nobel Prize-winner, Albert Camus experienced both public adulation and acrimonious rejection during his career, which was cut short by a fatal car accident in 1960. Edward J. Hughes unravels the life of a complex personality whose work and stance were the subjects of intense interest and scrutiny.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) is one of France's most important writers and theorists of the second half of the twentieth century. Andy Stafford offers a clear-sighted, readable account of Barthes' work and life. This cogent introduction to a vital figure will interest students and specialists alike.

A thoroughly researched, balanced new biography of author, journalist and adventurer Ernest Hemingway.

The essential biography

Every bookshop has a story.

Providing an introduction to the whole range of Ian McEwan's work, examining his novels, short stories and screenplays, this title draws on McEwan's obsessions with childhood and the body, with regression and abjection, showing how these are deployed to raise disturbing political questions about gender, power, pleasure and narrative.

An introductory text to the history, major writers and critical issues of this genre, this volume clarifies the different uses of pastoral covering: the history of the genre; the pastoral impulse of retreat and return; and an examination post-pastoral texts.

The sequel to the hugely enjoyable and poignant childhood memoir by Hunter Davies - The Co-op's Got Bananas!

A guide that explains and celebrates various parallel poetry projects. It examines the range of contemporary tendencies - from the baroque swagger of the Dandies to the restrained elegance of the Oxford Elegists; from the layered, haunting verse of Mythopoesis to the inventive explorations of the New Formalists.

An academic critical history and survey of West Indian literature in English.

Being Literate in the 21st Century tackles some of the most difficult questions for the next generation around literacy and thought, as we continue to move into a digital culture. It explores research from multiple disciplines on what it means to be literate, and addresses the problem of universal literacy.

Ordinary life is full of words, images, and stories: we spend our days talking and writing about what's going on, and what has happened. Rachel Bowlby makes us think again about this life: always the same, always slightly changing. Drawing out the stories that surround us, she explores everyday stories, old and new-in literature and in real life.

Seth Lerer explores our relationship to the literary past in an age marked by historical self-consciousness, critical distance, and shifts in cultural literacy. He examines a range of fiction, poetry, and criticism in order to understand the ways in which the literary past makes us, and how we create canons for reading, teaching, and scholarship.

'Simply unforgettable ... one of the most beautiful and haunting books of recent times' - Alexander McCall Smith

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature.