Anita Desai

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Salman Rushdie

'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian 
 
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. 
 
However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious. 
 
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE* 
 
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK** 
 
WITH A NEW 40TH ANNIVERSARY INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Midnight's Children

A special edition of the booker-prize winning novel

Discover Salman Rushdie’s critically acclaimed magical realist study of good and evil. 
 
'A masterpiece' Sunday Times 
 
Just before dawn one winter's morning, a plane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble, clutched in an embrace, towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices. 
 
Washed up, alive, on an English beach, their survival is a miracle. But there is a price to pay. Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But chosen by whom? And which is which? And what will be the outcome of their final confrontation? 
 
'A great novelist, a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett

The Satanic Verses

Audrey Niffenegger

Rediscover the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry. 
 
The pair met when Clare was just six and Henry thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. 
 
Impossible but true. 
 
The Time Traveler's Wife is the international bestselling novel of a time-altering love. Henry is a librarian who suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets, finding himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. Meanwhile, Clare is an artist waiting all her life for her great love Henry to appear. In the face of this force neither can prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable. 
 
'Dark, unpredictable, incredibly clever and a modern romance' Grazia

The Time Traveler's Wife

The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie’s phantasmagoric epic 
 
Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy, they shared the son that they all claim to have borne on the same night. Raised at their six breasts, Omar's mothers teach him to live a life without shame. And it is training that proves very useful when he leaves his mothers’ fortress and makes the fateful mistake of falling in love. For he finds himself an unwitting player in an ongoing duel between the families of two men – one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure – living in a world caught between honour and humiliation, where a moment of shame could prove fatal. 
 
‘Shame is every bit as good as Midnight's Children. It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperatives’ The Times

Shame

Isabel Allende

As a girl, Clara del Valle can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. 
 
Following the mysterious death of her sister, Rosa the Beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon to the stern and volatile landowner Esteban Trueba. 
 
Set in an unnamed Latin American country over three generations, The House of the Spirits is a magnificent epic of a proud and passionate family, secret loves and violent revolution. 
 
'Extraordinary... Powerful... Sharply observant, witty and eloquent' New York Times 
 
'Intensely moving. Both entertaining and deeply serious' Evening Standard 
 
'The only cause The House of the Spirits embraces is that of humanity, and it does so with such passion, humor, and wisdom that in the end it transcends politics&hellip;The result is a novel of force and charm, spaciousness and vigor' Washington Post

The House of the Spirits

Vintage Quarterbound Classics

The extraordinary literary debut of Salman Rushdie: ‘A firework of a book, funny and endlessly surprising’ Ursula Le Guin 
 
Flapping Eagle is a young Axona Indian gifted with immortal life after drinking an elixir from his wayward sister. But after 777 years of sailing the world’s seas, he becomes weary of life, and sets out to find the mystical Calf Island, a place where his fellow immortals have gathered and created their own version of the human race. 
 
But Calf Island is a strange place – like its inhabitants, it is both blessed and cursed. Sensing a terrible darkness at the heart of the island, Flapping Eagle sets out to scale the island’s peak and confront its mysterious and potent creator, Grimus himself. 
 
'A mixture of science fiction and folktale, past and future, primitive and present day... Grimus is a parallel form of life, and conjuring of an alternative society' Financial Times

Grimus

H. Rider Haggard

Read the thrilling Victorian blockbuster, with an introduction from Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood. 
 
A note from The Editor: 
 
I feel it incumbent upon me to explain how this wonderful and mysterious history found its way into my hands. I received a letter and two parcels- one a manuscript, the other containing a scarab and an ancient sherd - from a brief acquaintance of mine called Mr Horace Holly. Mr Holly and his ward Leo Vincey had passed through a most uncommon African adventure, a tale of a nature so marvellous that I fear the reader might disbelieve it. To me the story seems to bear the stamp of truth upon its face. But I must leave the reader to form his own judgment... And with this explanation I introduce the world to Ayesha - She-who-must-be-obeyed - and the Caves of Kôr.

Shani Mootoo

EVERYONE THINKS MALA IS A MURDERER 
 
'A Caribbean classic' Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch 
 
------- 
 
Everyone in Paradise thinks Mala Ramchandin is a murderer. But with no body, no evidence and no witnesses, Mala is sent to an Alms House as a madwoman instead of prison. Here she meets Tyler, the only openly queer person on the island of Lantanacamara with whom she feels an affinity as an outsider. Despite Mala's muteness, she manages to communicate with Tyler about her missing sister, Asha. 
 
This is Mala's story, and an appeal to find Asha, told in Tyler's words. He dives deeply into Mala's family history, uncovering years of trauma passed down through generations and - staggeringly, beautifully - the love that has survived through it all. 
 
With an introduction by Ingrid Persaud. 
 
'Visceral, sensual and heartbreakingly tender' Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, author of When We Were Birds 
'A story of magical power' Alice Munro, author of Dear Life 
'Will remind many readers of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things' Kirkus 
'Clearly ahead of its time' Bookseller 
 
FINALIST FOR THE GILLER PRIZE 
FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

Cereus Blooms at Night

The Booker-Longlisted Queer Classic

Haruki Murakami

Enter the surreal and enchanting world of Haruki Murakami 
 
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. 
 
His wife is growing more distant every day. 
 
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. 
 
As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out. He embarks on a bizarre journey, guided by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell. 
 
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times 
 
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS series - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

José Saramago

Watching a rented video, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is shocked to notice that one of the actors is identical to him in every physical detail. He embarks on a secret quest to find his double and sets in motion a train of events that he cannot control. Saramago's novel explores the nature of individuality and examines the fear and insecurity that arise when our singularity comes under threat, when even a wife cannot tell the original from the imposter...

The Double

(Enemy)

Erin Morgenstern

A beautiful hardback edition of the modern fantasy classic, from the bestselling author of The Starless Sea. 
 
'The only response to this novel is simply: wow. It is a breathtaking feat of imagination, a flight of fancy that pulls you in and wraps you up in its spell' The Times 
 
The circus arrives without warning. 
 
It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon an iron gates reads: 
 
Opens at Nightfall 
Closes at Dawn 
 
Full of breath-taking amazements, Le Cirque des Rêves seems to cast a spell over all who wander its circular paths. But behind the glittering acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists a fierce competition is underway. 
 
Celia and Marco are two young magicians in the Circus, who have been trained since childhood for a deadly duel. With the lives of everyone at the Circus of Dreams at stake, they must test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love. 
 
The circus is open. 
Get ready to enter the fantastical world of the Night Circus. 
 
'Lush, evocative, dreamlike...a magical, coming-of-age story' Sunday Times 
 
'A beguiling, gripping read... Morgenstern has crafted a thrilling and transporting tale' Economist 
 
Vintage Quarterbound Classics: Bound to be beautiful

The Night Circus

Salman Rushdie, a self-described ‘emigrant from one place and a newcomer in two’, explores the true meaning of home. Writing with insight, passion and humour, he looks at what it means to belong, whether roots are real and homelands imaginary, what it is like to reconfigure your past from fragments of memory and what happens when East meets West. 
 
Selected from the books Shame, Imaginary Homelands and East, West by Salman Rushdie 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
 Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
 Love by Jeanette Winterson 
Liberty by Virginia Woolf 
Race by Toni Morrison 
 Sisters by Louisa May Alcott

Home

Vintage Minis

Patrick White

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MALOUF 
 
Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu, Miss Hare wanders, half-mad. In the wilderness she stumbles upon an Aborigine artist and a Jewish refugee. They place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. In a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.

Riders in the Chariot

In early eighteenth-century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost his left hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where women are burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by love of an unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the Crown and the Church clash, they purse his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Baltasar & Blimunda

A special hardback edition of Murakami's epic, magical masterpiece, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, now with a new introduction from the author 
 
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. 
 
His wife is growing more distant every day. 
 
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. 
 
As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell. 
 
'Visionary...a bold and generous book' New York Times 
 
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Angela Carter

Discover Angela Carter's classic feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales woven in seductive, luminous storytelling. 
 
Beauty is turned into a Beast, Little Red Riding’s grandmother is stoned to death as a witch and, in the title story, a beautiful young pianist is swept into the world of a rich and sinister aristocrat, a man whose previous three wives have all died in mysterious circumstances. 
 
From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories. 
 
'Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality' Ian McEwan 
 
'A quirky, original, and baroque stylist' Margaret Atwood 
 
With an introduction from award-winning short story writer Helen Simpson

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

A special edition of the feminist cult classic

Wu Ming-Yi

'You must love the land, my children, and ring it in with your love' 
 
On the island of Wayo Wayo, every second son must leave on the day he turns fifteen as a sacrifice to the Sea God. Atile'i however is determined to defy destiny and become the first to survive. Across the sea, Alice Shih's life is interrupted when a vast trash vortex comes crashing onto the shore of Taiwan, bringing Atile'i with it. 
 
In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Atile'i and Alice retrace her late husband's footsteps into the mountains, hoping to solve the mystery of her son's disappearance. On their journey, memories will be challenged, an unusual bond formed, and a dark secret uncovered that will force Alice to question everything she thought she knew. 
 
'A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told. I wept at the description of the dying whales and the approaching tsunami... I think this work will be a classic' Hugh Howey, author of Wool 
 
VINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.

The Man with the Compound Eyes

A novel from the Vintage Earth collection

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake? 
 
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH WATERS 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
'A spellbinding achievement' Literary Review 
 
'Raunchy, raucous...a rich, turn of the 19th century world, which reeks of human and animal variety' The Times

Nights at the Circus

Toni Morrison

Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home, the farm where she was kept as a slave. 
 
Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, she is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, &lsquo;Beloved&rsquo;. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison&rsquo;s enduring masterpiece and best-known work. 
 
&lsquo;Dazzling. . . Magical. . . An extraordinary work&rsquo; New York Times 
 
&lsquo;Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours&hellip; Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all&rsquo; Margaret Atwood 
 
&lsquo;An American masterpiece&rsquo; A. S. Byatt 
 
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE 
 
**One of the BBC&rsquo;s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Beloved

A special edition of the award-winning classic

THE ICONIC PULITZER PRIZE WINNING NOVEL

Lured South by tales of buried treasure, Milkman embarks on an odyssey back home. 
 
As a boy, Milkman was raised beneath the shadow of a status-obsessed father. As a man, he trails in the fiery wake of a friend bent on racial revenge. Now comes Milkman&rsquo;s chance to uncover his own path. Along the way, he will lose more than he could have ever imagined. Yet in return, he will discover something far more valuable than gold: his past, his true self, his life-long dream of flight. 
 
&lsquo;A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story&rsquo; Daily Telegraph 
 
&lsquo;Song of Solomon&hellip;profoundly changed my life&rsquo; Marlon James 
 
INTRODUCED BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR MARLON JAMES 
 
**Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction**

Song of Solomon

Julio Cortázar

When a group of Argentinians win a mysterious lottery, their prize – a luxury cruise – seems too good to question. But as the voyage unfolds, strange and unsettling events begin to mount. The passengers find themselves trapped aboard a ship run by a silent, secretive crew, and the true nature of their journey grows ever more uncertain. 
 
Funny, frightening, and richly lyrical, The Winners is a philosophical thriller of tangled fates and wayward love – an incisive meditation on power, exile, and the myth of the New World.

The Winners

Jewelle Gomez

Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors.

In this radically reimagined vampire myth, the night hides many things... 
 
Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. 
 
Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men's clothing and seem to know others' innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to 'share the blood' and live forever. They name her Gilda. 
 
Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world. But can Gilda truly outrun the darkness of history and face a future where the lives of everyone she loves are at stake? 
 
'A groundbreaking work of Afrofuturism before the term was even coined' Guardian 
 
'A lush, exciting, inspiring read' Sarah Waters 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Gilda Stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The classic, moving tale of a man born old, destined to die young, and live at odds with his time 
 
Born in the body of a 70-year-old man, Benjamin Button is cursed to live life in reverse. As he ages backwards, he embraces life, finds love and seeks out adventure, all while getting younger and younger. But time, however skewered, waits for no man, and even youth waits to rob Benjamin Button of the one rare thing we all share: life. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mervyn Peake

THE FINAL PART OF THE MIGHTY GORMENGHAST TRILOGY 
 
'I would not for anything have missed Gormenghast' C S Lewis 
 
In this final part of the trilogy, we follow Titus, now almost twenty, as he escapes from the Castle, flees its oppressive Ritual, and becomes lost in a sandstorm. Helped by the owner of a travelling zoo, Muzzlehatch, and his ex-lover Juno, Titus ends up stranded in a big, bustling city. No one there having heard of Gormenghast, the general consensus is that the boy is deranged, and with no papers, he's soon arrested for vagrancy. 
 
But there are a few people who believe in his story, or at least who are intrigued by it, and they try to help him. And now Titus, the deserter, the traitor, longs for his home, and looks for it all the time to prove, if only to himself, that Gormenghast is truly real. 
 
'[The Gormenghast Trilogy] is one of the most important works of the imagination to come out of the age that also produced The Four Quartets, The Unquiet Grave, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, Animal Farm and 1984.' Anthony Burgess

Titus Alone

In an unnamed country, on the first day of the New Year, people stop dying. There is great celebration and people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Soon, though, the residents begin to suffer. Undertakers face bankruptcy, the church is forced to reinvent its doctrine, and local 'maphia' smuggle those on the brink of death over the border where they can expire naturally. 
 
Death does return eventually, but with a new, courteous approach – delivering violet warning letters to her victims. But what can death do when a letter is unexpectedly returned?

Death at Intervals

ENTER THE CRUMBLING WORLD OF GORMENGHAST... 
 
'A modern classic' Anthony Burgess 
 
'A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination' 
New Yorker 
 
'A perfect creation' Neil Gaiman 
 
Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons (and his eccentric and wayward subjects) according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls. 
 
'Peake's books are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before' C. S. Lewis

The Gormenghast Trilogy

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Informed by traditional African storytelling, discover Ngugi wa Thiong'o's masterpiece. 
 
 To honour the Ruler's birthday, the Free Republic of Aburiria set out to build a tower; a modern wonder of the world that will reach the gates of Heaven. But behind this pillar of unity a battle for control of the Aburirian people rages. Among the contenders: the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank. 
 
'Mythological but also cheerfully disenchanted; political and playful; cartoonish but also epical... the African novel may well have delivered its greatest masterpiece' Sunday Herald

Wizard of the Crow

A beautifully packaged hardback edition of Haruki Murakami's mesmerizingly evocative classic, now with a new introduction by the author 
 
Eyes mark the shape of the city 
 
The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari's help. 
 
Meanwhile Mari's beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is 'too perfect, too pure' to be normal; it has lasted for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the television screen in her room, even though its plug has been pulled out. 
 
Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night? 
 
'A captivating mood piece, delicate and wistful' Evening Standard

After Dark

Murakami’s atmospheric masterpiece, now in a deluxe gift edition

In 1970s Paris, a group of revolutionaries plot the daring kidnapping of a powerful Latin American official. But among them is Andrés, a man adrift in a world of high-stakes politics. 
 
As Andrés spirals into a crisis of identity, Cortázar intersects the group’s story with real-life documents, newspaper clippings, and personal reflections to construct a compelling mosaic that explores the complexities of revolution, commitment, and the human spirit.

A Manual for Manuel

Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. 
 
The man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank. 
 
His girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase. 
 
‘A science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas’ Independent 
 
‘A highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship’ New Yorker 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

A Wild Sheep Chase

the surreal, breakout detective novel, now in a deluxe gift edition

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Here, from Anita Desai to Salman Rushdie, are five books about families, India, marriage and the rest, to keep you going as the series moves on.

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