The Mimic Men
VS Naipaul
Naipaul was just the type of writer I wanted to be. This novel, published in 1967 is about a man who comes to England from the West Indies...
The Best and the Brightest
David Halberstam
This is a history of the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, during the Vietnam War. I was a student in London at the time and it had...
Collected Essays
George Orwell
After reading 1984 as a student, I bought all four volumes of Orwell’s essays. I love his observations about English manners and customs in the 1930s and 40s...
The Book of Daniel
EL Doctorow
This novel is about a child whose parents were tried and executed for spying in the America of the 1950s. Based on the story of Julius and Ethel...
The Outsider
Albert Camus
Camus was writing about the alienation felt by a Frenchman living in Algeria, but also about the idea that we are all outsiders. I certainly identified with this....
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne
I’d always thought of Osborne as a bit of a rebel and didn’t realise until later that he was quite right wing. I agree with the critic Kenneth...
Comments
I also read Camus' Outsider in French as part of A level studies and got the true feeling of isolation and existing on the perimeter, not being accepted.
i read the Outsider at school and could not get over the feeling that if you didn't show your feelings appropriately for an occasion , then you would be deemed to be somehow lacking in sensitivity. I might go back and read it again.
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