Join us as we discuss six recent international novels that have made a big impact despite their slim length. In settings that span the globe, we will examine how these diverse writers have managed to weave magic in a mere 200 pages or less: Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel depicts an eccentric houseboat community living along the Thames as they float between loneliness and connection. The Sense of an Ending from Julian Barnes follows a middle-aged man as he confronts a forgotten past. In the Café of Lost Youth, Nobel Prize-winner, Patrick Modiano explores memory and forgetting in the shadowy world of a 1950's Paris café. Embers by Sandor Marai Is an intense novel set almost entirely over a single night in a decaying Hungarian castle, circling around an old betrayal between two former friends, now in their seventies, who meet again after forty-one years of silence. Orbital, Samantha Harvey's 2024 Booker prize- winning novel takes us aboard the International Space Station where six astronauts navigate bereavement, loneliness and spiritual fatigue. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is set in a small Irish town in 1985, where the discovery of the abuse of young women in a Magdalene laundry leads the main character to confront the town's silence.
Week 1: Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
Week 2: Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
Week 3: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Week4: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Week 5: In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano
Week 6: In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano
Week 7: Embers by Sandor Marai
Week 8: Embers by Sandor Marai
Week 9: Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Week 10: Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Week 11: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Week 12: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending, Vintage, 2012.
• Fitzgerald, Penelope, Offshore, Mariner Books, January, 1998.
• Harvey, Samantha. Orbital, Grove, 2024.
• Keegan, Claire. Some Things Like These, Grove Press, 2021.
• Marai, Sandor, Embers. 1942. Knopf, 2001.
• Modiano, Patrick, In the Café of Lost Youth, New York Review Books, 2016.