The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey (Faber, £6.99 in UK)With a title guaranteed to send wrongdoers running for cover, this hilarious and horrifying performance from one of the most …Sat Oct 09 1999 - 01:00
Light FraynHeadlong is one of those likeable, almost funny, middle-of-the-road English novels which somehow create the impression of one…Sat Oct 09 1999 - 01:00
Complete with loaded asidesTwo members of the same family experience contrasting forms of social imprisonment in Antia Desai's characteristically sharply…Sat Oct 02 1999 - 01:00
Nobel drum roll finally for novelist Gunter GrassA strong echo of "Oh ye of little faith" reverberates over the awarding of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to the gifted…Fri Oct 01 1999 - 01:00
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (HarperCollins, £6.99 in UK)Santiago is a young Spanish shepherd who dreams big dreams; or, rather, he is a restless dreamer who happens, for a while, to…Sat Sept 25 1999 - 01:00
Caught between continentsWhen Sagesse LaBasse, the daughter of an American mother and French Algerian father, sets out to tell her story, she prefaces…Sat Sept 25 1999 - 01:00
Fourth novel puts Toibin on Booker Prize shortlistThe Irish writer Colm Toibin has been short-listed for this year's Booker Prize for his fourth novel, The Blackwater Lightship…Wed Sept 22 1999 - 01:00
The Dream Mistress by Jenny Diski (Granta Books, £6.99 in UK)Yet again Diski confirms that she is an interesting, elusive, original and underrated writerSat Sept 18 1999 - 01:00
The greater the racket the deeper the griefA middle-aged couple, both marine zoologists, arrive at a beach to have a picnicSat Sept 18 1999 - 01:00
A wistful, relentlessly operatic ode to the 1960sA 16-year-OLD boy kills his mother's married lover, or does he? The crime at the centre of Joyce Carol Oates's hypnotic new novel…Sat Sept 11 1999 - 01:00
The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi (Anchor, £6.99 in UK)Set in a vaguely atmospheric 16th century Italy this slickly clever, somewhat lopsided yarn about a famous if troublesome doctor…Sat Sept 11 1999 - 01:00
An Irishwoman's DiaryNo Doubt about it, there are two great tear-jerkers: love and sportMon Sept 06 1999 - 01:00
Informing SpiritIn 1996 Anthony Cronin poet, critic, novelist, former Fianna Fail cultural advisor and biographer of Flann O'Brien, published…Sat Aug 21 1999 - 01:00
A man in fullA husband and wife, long since aware of the shaky state of their marriage, had shared the habit of a weekly roundtrip of 800 …Sat Aug 21 1999 - 01:00
A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)Barnaby Gaitlin is a hapless if philosophical 30-year-old whose life is a messSat Aug 14 1999 - 01:00
Tokyo storyCurrently acknowledged as the recognisable face of Japanese fiction - at least in the West - Murakami is a lively and original…Sat Aug 14 1999 - 01:00
Vanity caseA twice-divorced Cape Town university professor's long career as a womaniser finally ends in dismissal and public humiliation…Sat Aug 14 1999 - 01:00
A new Russian master - from GermanySo rich a tradition is that of the Russian short story that surely it must intimidate even its contemporary native writersSat Aug 07 1999 - 01:00
In the company of friendsIn 1685, two men travelling along the Highroad from Dublin to Cork paused to rest their horses at the top of a rise near the …Sat Aug 07 1999 - 01:00
Dream Story and Beatrice and Her Son both by Arthur Schnitzler (Penguin, £5.99 each in UK)The fuss generated by the release of Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's last film, has stimulated the reissue of the novella Dream…Sat Aug 07 1999 - 01:00
Another World by Pat Barker (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Having left his wife and daughter, Nick is now living with a pregnant partner, their toddler and her son, who is proving a most…Sat Jul 31 1999 - 01:00
States of mind and worlds at randomMicrocosms is the ideal title for this beautiful sequence of random observations and stories evoking entire worlds contained …Sat Jul 31 1999 - 01:00
Chekhov's stories are to read, re-read, and remember foreverWhenever writers and critics attempt to define the mysterious art of the short story, the work of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) is…Sat Jul 24 1999 - 01:00
An Irishwoman's DiarySeldom have so many people discovered they knew the words to so many songs - and all at one concertTue Jul 20 1999 - 01:00
The Rings of Saturn by W.G.Sebald (Harvill, £6.99 in UK)Sebald's imaginative masterwork is a philosophical, personal odyssey rooted in history and the randomness of life and memorySat Jul 17 1999 - 01:00
It looks like French fiction has found a saviour; it has certainly discovered a singular new voiceAn estate-agent husband comes home from work and, discovering there is no bread, sets off to buy someSat Jul 17 1999 - 01:00
The Granta Book of the American Long Story edited by Richard Ford (£9.99 in UK)Richard Ford is as fine a judge of good fiction as he is a practitionerSat Jul 10 1999 - 01:00
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks (Vintage, £7.99 in UK)Sin is the theme of this ambitious, biblical saga based on the career of the abolitionist John BrownSat Jul 10 1999 - 01:00
`He doesn't care about me at all. I care about him and that's why I kill him. You ought to understand'Now that publishing is more about business than literature, the growing secondary industry known as "last" or "lost" works inspires…Sat Jul 03 1999 - 01:00
I Married a Communist, by Philip Roth (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)Don't be misled by the title - this urgent, profound novel is far from being the stuff of a 1960s TV sitcomSat Jul 03 1999 - 01:00
The Book Of Ruth by John Irving (Black Swan, £7.99 in UK)No one could ever accuse Irving of economy or grace of styleSat Jun 26 1999 - 01:00
A Crime in the Neighbourhood by Suzanne Berne (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Xceptional. Berne's convincing, reflective debut impresses on many levelsSat Jun 26 1999 - 01:00
Wonder-boy's dazzling mastery of the absurdThe Clay Machine-Gun. By Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield. Faber & Harbord, 335pp, £9.99 in UKSat Jun 26 1999 - 01:00
Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy (Picador, £6.99 in UK)Set in 1952, only three years on from All The Pretty Horses, and re-introducing young John Grady Cole, this final volume in McCarthy…Sat Jun 12 1999 - 01:00
No sanctuary in cloying romanceAs It Is In Heaven. by Niall Williams. Picador, 310pp, £14.99 in UK.Sat Jun 12 1999 - 01:00
An Irishwoman's DiaryTrafalgar Square is one of Planet Earth's last remaining handful of constantsFri Jun 11 1999 - 01:00
Dog's story is tender, yet never sentimentalFew novels are as delightful as this, and even fewer sustain such delight without resorting to mawkishnessSat Jun 05 1999 - 01:00
Do I look like a prostitute?In one of the stronger stories in this much-praised first collection, a WASP character has a life transforming experience in …Sat Jun 05 1999 - 01:00
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (Abacus, £6.99 in UK)If ever there was a sentimental favourite for last year's Booker Prize it was this 16th novel from the five times Booker shortlisted…Sat Jun 05 1999 - 01:00
Tome, tome on the rangeWhen John Diamond, an angry, young, apiring bronco-buster in The Mud Below - one of eleven, powerful stories in this Western …Sat May 29 1999 - 01:00
She has won the licence to do pretty much as she pleases. And it showsNathan Staples is a writer; and while this presents him with many difficulties, it is comprehensively dwarfed by the overall …Sat May 22 1999 - 01:00
Big laughs from Little WolfLittle Wolf's Book of Badness by Ian Whybrow (Harper Collins), read by Griff Rhys Jones.Sat May 22 1999 - 01:00
Choirs unite in Verdi workToday marks the 125th anniversary of the first performance of Verdi's great choral work RequiemSat May 22 1999 - 01:00
`Ingenious Pain' surprise winner of Dublin awardShock rather than jubilation has greeted the announcement of the winner of this year's International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award…Tue May 18 1999 - 01:00
Stalingrad, by Antony Beevor (Penguin, £12.99 in UK)Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's ill-judged invasion of Russia, echoing Napoleon's earlier, equally doomed foray, remains the most…Sat May 15 1999 - 01:00
Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)Having made his name as the master of the macabre with novels such as The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers, McEwan …Sat May 15 1999 - 01:00
An Irishman's DiaryIt had to happen - and it did. Reader, a nun flashed headlights behind me on the Naas dual-carriagewayTue May 11 1999 - 01:00
About a Boy Nick Hornby (Indigo, £6.99 in UK)Financially secure enough never to have had to work, thanks to his dad having once written a hit Christmas song, Will is a 36…Sat May 08 1999 - 01:00
