Vintage

Book Reviews

• Balthasar's Odyssey (Amin Maalouf)
  - a novel of signs and portents in the year 1666
• Chance and Necessity (Jacques Monod)
  An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
• Deterring Democracy (Noam Chomsky)
• *Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation (Olivia Judson)
  The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex
• The End of A Family Story (Peter Nadas)
  - memories of childhood woven into a complex tapestry
• **Ka (Roberto Calasso)
  - a superb synthesis of Hindu mythology
• The Secret History of Modernism (C.K. Stead)
  - looking back at life as a student in 1950s London
• The Sound of Waves (Yukio Mishima)
  - a simple love story set on a small Japanese island
• Voyage to the End of the Room (Tibor Fischer)
  - an entertaining and inventive novel
• The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
  - a Japanese mix of fantasy and historical fiction
• The World of Nagaraj (R.K. Narayan)
  - a loveable but ineffectual dilettante in small-town India