When was the last time you picked up a novel?
Here at the Library, we love books. Not just textbooks, manuals and commentaries, but great fiction for everyone to enjoy. We love books with great stories, books that you can lose yourself in, books to read on the bus, in bed, or on a sunny beach. And whether you are travelling abroad or staying at home this summer, we have some fantastic titles for you to borrow over the vacation period.
We have put a display of some of the new titles on the front desk.
Where are they? – 4.L & 4.O (upstairs in right cloister)
Or, if you want to stock up on study materials for the Summer then we have added 130 new books since April, please see the list below:
New Books 6 April to 14 june 2017
Why not try one of our top recommendations?
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood (4.L.689)
Set within the totalitarian theocratic Republic of Gilead (a dystopian state situated geographically within the borders of the former United States of America), The Handmaid’s Tale follows the fortunes of its central protagonist, Offred – one of a select group of ‘handmaids’ allocated to members of the ruling elite for reproductive purposes – as she tries to understand what has happened to her family. Engaging with issues of class, gender, politics, and religious fanaticism, Atwood’s chilling evocation of a society oppressed by a dangerous fundamentalist regime continues to haunt readers more than twenty years after the book was first published. While it often makes for uncomfortable reading, The Handmaid’s Tale remains an enduring classic and warning to us all.
Americanah (2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4.L.689)
Drawn in part from the personal experience of its author, Americanah is the story of Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who moves to the United States as a college student, and of Obinze, Ifemelu’s childhood friend and sweetheart who, having been denied American visa entry in the aftermath of 9/11, moves to London. From this point, the novel recounts the experiences of Ifemelu and Obinze as they struggle to adapt to their new homes. A pointed observation of and meditation on, amongst other things, race, identity, ethnocentrism, and life in modern America, Americanah is at turns thought-provoking, highly moving, and utterly compelling.
Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan (4.L.687)
When thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis walks in on her sister, Cecelia, and friend, Robbie Turner, as they share an intimate moment in the library of the Tallis family home, her dire misreading of the situation triggers a series of tragic events for which she will spend the rest of her life seeking to atone. A book which explores the often blurred line between what we see and what we think we see, and which places the act of writing and re-writing of history at its centre, Atonement is a story that grapples with love, perception, the past, and the long-lasting consequences of misinterpretation.
Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie (4.L.695)
Midnight’s Children is, on the one hand, a book about the formation of the modern state of India, and on the other, the intertwining of the supernatural with the humdrum reality of everyday life. Born at the exact moment of the creation of an independent India on the 15th August 1947, Saleem Sinai is, like India’s other midnight’s children, imbued with special powers which bind him to the turbulent and violent history of his homeland. Moving from the Partition of India and Pakistan to the Emergency of Indira Gandhi’s government, Midnight’s Children ranges across and touches upon, amongst other things, myth, religion, popular culture, politics, family and food. Epic both in size and scope, it is a funny, painful, sometimes puzzling, but ultimately timeless masterpiece.