Most people today, though, detest Blunt's memory, because the secret turned out to have been that he was a Soviet spy. An intimate and recruit of the younger Guy Burgess, he began to work for the Soviets in 1937... read more
This in itself should be enough to have hardened McEwan fans anxiously flicking back to check that it is indeed his name on the dust jacket... read more
Eugenides's first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), was a dreamy, slender book about the gulf in understanding between the adolescent boys in a Michigan suburb and the five daughters of a strict Roman Catholic couple living in their neighborhood... read more
From January to June 1919, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and the United States met in Paris to decide the outcome of the war they had just won against the Central Powers... read more
Felix's aria continues in this droll vein, variations on extortion and protection involving mainly insurance, liquor and the public payroll, the notes soaring until they nearly fly off the page... read more
A century later Freud made the same crossing and in ''The Future of an Illusion'' tried to reduce most of religion to that ''oceanic feeling.''... read more
