This ingenious and inventive novel from the award-winning author of Jem (and Sam) at once comprises an autobiography of Aldous (Gus) Cotton, an English civil servant with breathing problems and chronic sexual learning difficulties, and an erratic history of modern England. It is also and more so the story of Helen Hardress, the serious, slim, blond young woman who quickens Gus’s pulse when they first meet in Normandy one summer in the early 1960s as she will, off and on, for the next twenty years. For no one’s life is quite the same once Helen Hardress has passed through it. Least of all, that of the long-pining Gus. “Reading Ferdinand Mount is as much fun as pink gin.”—Michael Gorra, New York Times Book Review “Fairness is funny, touching, picaresque, decked out with eccentric characters, improbable, artful and, rarest of all, unfailingly entertaining.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World “A quick, witty read with resonance.”—Baltimore Sun

Fairness (A chronicle of modern twilight): 1

Literature & Fiction

FERDINAND MOUNT

Contemporary

Vintage

Of Love And Asthma

The Selkirk Strip

Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

Theatre of Politics

Littlehampton Book Services Ltd.

If this, Uwe Timm's enchanting new novel, were a cautionary tale, the tag line would go something like this: Should you plan to be in Berlin on Midsummer Night, the time of the summer solstice -- Johannesnacht in German -- Watch Out! The narrator of Timm's story is a writer who simply can't get started on his next book. So he accepts a commission to write an article about potatoes. He has some interest in the subject because of an uncle who could, remarkably, from taste alone, differentiate one species of potato from another. Since it turns out that one of the authorities on the subject worked in East Berlin, our hero takes off to do some research. The Washington Post has lauded Uwe Timm's ability to make a place -- in this case the new Berlin -- "more real for you than the place you grew up. Timm is essentially an anthropologist of this primitive computer age, an archaeologist of newly constructed places." Rushing between the East and West sectors of the now-united city, the narrator becomes involved in a series of madcap adventures: odd, sometimes threatening encounters with all sorts of people, and strange entanglements. Being the master storyteller that he is, Uwe Timm spins a fascinating tale here, one filled with surprise, magic, comedy, and hope.

Umbrella

William Heinemann, Ltd.

Jem (And Sam)

RANDOM HOUSE UK

FAIRNESS (A CHRONICLE OF MODERN TWILIGHT)

Chatto and Windus

For the final appointment of his long career, senior civil servant Gus Cotton is offered a dead-end posting in Swansea (Dept of Driving Licences). He decides to chuck it and embrace instead the infamous governmental 'package' - only to be rescued from the ritualised humiliations of early retirement by an unexpected job offer -Thus is it that Gus finds himself in a trendy, minimalist, riverside office among decaying wharves in the East End, one of the Four Musketeers of Heads You Win: Executive search for the 21st century - Make every Job change a Life change. Two of Gus's partners - a disgraced wheeler-dealer and a convicted drug smuggler - are, like him, older men in search of one last all-out glorious fling. The fourth musketeer is a girl - a young woman with straight brown hair and a genius for IT. Gus is not so much a player as an observer, detached, insecure and ironic. His amazed and amazing narration leads the reader on a quest worthy of his favourite John Buchan adventure story.

Heads You Win

The British Constitution Now

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Mandarin

Liquidator

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Minerva

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Books by FERDINAND MOUNT