Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Hannah Rothschild recommends her 6 favorite novels
The author recommends works by Elena Ferrante, Leo Tolstoy, and more
Hannah Rothschild, former chair of London's National Gallery, is a writer, documentary maker, and philanthropist. House of Trelawney, her second novel, satirizes a family of British aristocrats who are reeling after the 2008 financial crisis.
Surely the biggest, baddest baddie in literature, Augustus Melmotte, a foreigner intent on swindling dumb British toffs out of their last inheritance, arrives in London with a load of fake shares and a beautiful daughter. He nearly succeeds, but his comeuppance when it comes is thoroughly enjoyable. This often-overlooked social satire has spooky resonances with today: It should be given to all self-important tycoons.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
This was a present from my grandmother to mark my 15th birthday that I've treasured ever since. Mitford's satire tells a loosely autobiographical tale of a charming and bonkers aristocratic family. Hidden under layers of satire is a tragic tale of lost opportunity and the perils of romantic love.
Discovering Ferrante later than most, I read these books back to back, only pausing/sleeping from absolute necessity. Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, she tells the story of two friends from childhood to middle age and how fate, choice, and random events affect their lives. Husbands, lovers, family, and children are bit players on a stage dominated by one central extraordinary and destructive female friendship.
Sign up for our Culture & Life newsletter
Your weekly digest of stories about entertainment and leisure, delivered every Friday
An utterly absurd but brilliant tale of mistaken identity: A newspaper sends its nature correspondent to cover an African civil war. This fast, light, and lethal novel skewers journalists and the privileged.
One-line synopsis: the story of an entrancing, beautiful woman who lives and then dies for passion. It should be required reading for anyone wanting to learn about themselves or others. On every page, Tolstoy lays bare the frailties and peccadilloes of human behavior.
Nine Americans from disparate backgrounds come together to save a forest. This extraordinary novel transformed my view about nature — never again will I pass a great tree without offering a quiet but heartfelt incantation of thanks, gratitude, and wonder. Nor will I take for granted trees' importance to every aspect of our ecosystem, or our duty to protect them.
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, try the magazine for a month here.
