The Search Warrant - Patrick Modiano

In December 1988, while researching documents dating back to the Occupation, Patrick Modiano chanced upon an old notice in the New Year's Eve edition of Paris Soir, 1941, placed there by the parents of a young Jewish girl who had escaped from the convent that was hiding her during this period. Fascinated by what happened to the young girl who chose to run away on a bitterly cold winter's night at the height of German reprisals, Patrick Modiano set off on a quest to find out all he could about her. But besides a mention of her name in the list of Jews deported to Auschwitz, the details of her existence remain an impenetrable unknown. What little he discovers in official documents and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the period—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Through this young girl, Modiano delivers an account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Occupation and the paranoia of the Petain regime as he tries to find connections to her.

Conqueror - Conn Iggulden

Number one bestselling author Conn Iggulden takes on the story of the mighty Kublai Khan. An epic tale of a great and heroic mind; his action-packed rule; and how in conquering one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land, he changed the course of history forever.A scholar who conquered an empire larger than those of Alexander or Caesar.A warrior who would rule a fifth of the world with strength and wisdom.A man who betrayed a brother to protect a nation.From a young scholar to one of history’s most powerful warriors, Conqueror tells the story of Kublai Khan – an extraordinary man who should be remembered alongside Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known.Kublai dreams of an empire stretching from sea to sea. But to see it built, this scholar must first learn the art of war. He must take his nation’s warriors to the ends of the known world. And when he is weary, when he is wounded, he must face his own brothers in a bloody civil war

Eggs to hay, chickens to hatch - Chris van Wyk

Agnes, the Van Wyks’ Zulu housekeeper, had a special friendship with young Chris in the late sixties to early seventies. He would defend her whenever she came to work with a hangover on a Monday morning and made a mess of the cleaning. In turn, Agnes never told on Chris when he played truant from school. As the years passed, the two grew closer, swopping stories about coloureds and Zulus, life in Riverlea and Soweto, pass laws, politics and falling in love. She taught him to count in Zulu and he promised to teach her to read in English. Whenever the clock ran against her, Agnes would stop almost in mid-sentence, grab a broom or cloth, and declare: ‘I have to rush. I have eggs to lay, chickens to hatch.’ What an odd, ungrammatical thing to say, Chris often mused. But many years later, he played a CD by Louis Jordan, a 1940s American jazz singer, and it all became clear. Eggs to lay, chickens to hatch (forthcoming end April 2010) is Chris van Wyk’s second childhood memoir about growing up in Riverlea and his colourful interactions with the men and women who lived the African proverb that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. But mostly it is the story of a wonderful friendship between a young coloured boy and a Zulu

Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, the calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he witnesses a tragic accident: a hot-air balloon with a boy trapped in its basket is being tossed by the wind, and in the attempt to save the child, a man is killed. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety. But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day--something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Brilliant and compassionate, this is a novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

Philida - Andre P Brink

Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink, the son of her master. The year is 1832 and the Cape is rife with rumours about the liberation of the slaves. Philida decides to risk her whole life by lodging a complaint against Francois, who has reneged on his promise to set her free.

His father has ordered him to marry a white woman from a prominent Cape Town family, and Philida will be sold on to owners in the harsh country up north. Unwilling to accept this fate, Philida continues to test the limits of her freedom, and with the Muslim slave Labyn she sets off on a journey across the great wilderness on the banks of the Gariep River, to the far north of Cape Town. Philida is an unforgettable story of one woman’s determination to survive and be free.

Stoner - John Williams

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

30 Nights in Amsterdam - Ettienne van Heerden

Zan de Melker is a beautiful but eccentric woman. She is Zan of the unpredictable seizures and Xusan of the mysterious glass room. She's the Susan whose inappropriate sexual behaviour scandalises the community she lives in. And she is Xan the political activist, and sometimes Xusan Dimelaki, star of the Amsterdam stage. Zan's nephew Henk de Melker is a museum assistant in a small Eastern Cape town. Self-effacing and introverted, he is a meticulous researcher who writes slim monographs of unremarkable historical figures. Out of the blue, he receives a letter from an Amsterdam lawyer informing him that his long-lost Aunt Zan has died and has left him her house in the city. He must come to Amsterdam to claim his inheritance. But Henk is unprepared for what awaits him in Amsterdam. Not only does he have to decide whether to move there permanently, or give up his aunt's legacy, but he finds himself being drawn into the maelstrom of life in the Dutch city with its canal belt, pickpockets, prostitutes and street musicians. More than this, he finds that he himself is changing in a way that forces him to confront his past - those secrets of his childhood that were 'never talked out'. The thirty nights he spends in Amsterdam will change him for ever.