Recommendations
for London
White Teeth
Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut is street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical. It is set in London and is rich of sights and smells of the world that England has inherited.
This book is unique for the evocation of a place through the rhythm of language - as used in conversation, or in suggesting how certain characters are thinking. It is very London - specifically parts of London that I know, where I have lived and met friends. It holds true for a wide perspective of time, from the eighties to the present.
Mark Harrington
Damage
Reading the story of mutual obsession is like being kidnapped. Josephine Hart has created a portrait of psychological and erotic obsessions that is so compelling that it sucks all the oxygen out of the air.
The story of a solid British PM who gives into his primal desires. I love books that show the underside of slick, constructed facades. This one is very particular to a certain circle in London. We watch what happens when the passionate nature that effectively drove one man to success, is now his undoing.
Melissa Unger
Night Walks
Charles Dickens describes his time as an insomniac, when he decided to cure himself by walking through London in the small hours, and discovered homelessness, drunkenness and vice on the streets. This collection of essays shows Dickens as one of the greatest visionaries of the city in all its variety and cruelty.
Night Walks is the perfect example of how artists think, humble, looking at trivial questions, paying attention to the often invisible.
Margaret Heffernan
Street Haunting: A London Adventure
A snapshot of the life on a London street one evening, through the eyes of one of the most wonderfully descriptive writers and flaneurs of the twentieth century.
Crash
The definitive cult, postmodern novel is a blend of violence, transgression, and eroticism based in a sinister London.
Mrs. Dalloway
The Last London: True Fictions From An Unreal City
London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed.