麻豆社

17 April 2022

Throughout this year of Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the 麻豆社 and The Reading Agency are celebrating 70 great books from across the Commonwealth. Read on to discover more about The Big Jubilee Read selections drawn from 1962 to 1971.

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess (1962, England)

Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?

A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters.

• A previously unseen manuscript for a follow-up to writer Anthony Burgess's novel has been unearthed (麻豆社 News)

The Girls of Slender Means

by Muriel Spark (1963, Scotland)

The May of Teck Club 'exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years'. Nevertheless, the members find time, between elocution lessons, to jostle one another over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. Can a love of literature, fine clothes and amorous young men save these young ladies from the horrors of the real world?

Spark’s novel explores the beauty and fragility of youth against the backdrop of war.

• Horses, hoarding and haute couture: The surprising world of Muriel Spark, the crème de la crème of twentieth-century novelists

The Interrogation

by J.M.G. Le Clézio (1963, France/Mauritius)

Adam Pollo, an amnesiac ex-student, has broken into an empty seaside villa. He visits the town at rare intervals to make scanty purchases - cigarettes, biscuits and beer. Soon, his lack of human contact affects him like a drug. He experiences other modes of being, seeing through a dog's eye or a rat's, adding up to a terrifying world of glaring hallucinatory experience. Then he is arrested and removed to an asylum where the interrogation begins.

With this stunning debut novel, Le Clézio was acclaimed as the most exciting figure to appear on the French literary scene since the death of Camus. The Interrogation still holds the power to grip and astonish today.

• World Book Club: Nobel Laureate J.M.G. LeClezio talks to a studio audience about his novel, Desert (麻豆社 World Service)

Arrow of God

by Chinua Achebe (1964, Nigeria)

Ezeulu, headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But his authority is under threat from his rivals in the tribe, from those in the white government and even from his own family. He still feels he must be untouchable - surely he is an arrow in the bow of his God?

Spare and powerful, Arrow of God is an unforgettable portrayal of the loss of faith, and the struggle between tradition and change. Continuing the epic saga of the community in Things Fall Apart, this is the second volume of Achebe's African trilogy, and is followed by No Longer at Ease.

• (麻豆社 Culture)

Death of a Naturalist

by Seamus Heaney (1966, Northern Ireland)

Heaney was one of the most famous Irish poets to emerge in the 20th Century, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for ‘works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth’. Death of a Naturalist, Heaney's debut collection published in 1966, draws on his rural childhood to explore family relationships.

The collection won the Cholmondeley Award, the E.C. Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

• - Interviews and readings of Heaney’s poetry from the 麻豆社 archive

Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys (1966, Dominica/Wales)

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness. Her husband, on the other hand, is destined to end up in the arms of another novel's heroine.

Rhys's classic study of betrayal tells the backstory of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.

• Wide Sargasso Sea: Sarah Dillon explores the stories of how great works were written (麻豆社 Radio 3)

A Grain of Wheat

by Ng农g末 wa Thiong'o (1967, Kenya)

It is 1963 and Kenya is on the verge of Uhuru - Independence Day. The mighty British government has been toppled, and colonized and colonizer alike reflect on what they have gained and lost.

In the village of Thabai, men and women have been transformed irrevocably by the uprising. Kihika, legendary rebel leader, was fatally betrayed to the whiteman. Gikonyo's marriage to the beautiful Mumbi was destroyed when he was imprisoned, while Mugo, brave survivor of the camps and now a village hero, harbours a terrible secret. As events unfold, compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed and loves are tested.

• World Book Club: Readers and students discuss A Grain of Wheat (麻豆社 World Service)

Picnic at Hanging Rock

by Joan Lindsay (1967, Australia)

It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows, further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned.

A classic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls. Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, readers must decide for themselves.

• Picnic at Hanging Rock on the 麻豆社 (clips from the 2018 drama series that aired on 麻豆社 Two)

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

by Ayi Kwei Armah (1968, Ghana)

The novel’s unnamed narrator is a railway clerk who resists temptations and easy satisfactions, but his refusal to take bribes earns him nothing but scorn.

Armah’s debut novel explores corruption in Ghana in the 1960s, as the country goes through a military coup.

When Rain Clouds Gather

by Bessie Head (1968, Botswana/South Africa)

Escaping South Africa and his troubled past, Makehaya crosses the border to Botswana, in the hope of leading a peaceful, purposeful life. In the village of Golema Mmidi he meets Gilbert, a charismatic Englishman who is trying to modernise farming methods to benefit the community. The two outsiders join forces, but their task is fraught with hazards: opposition from the corrupt chief, the pressures of tradition, and the unrelenting climate threaten to bring tragedy.

Head’s reflective novels chart the shortcomings of pre- and post-colonial Africa.

• Free Thinking: Bessie Head - Anne McElvoy looks at the career of Botswana's most influential writer (麻豆社 Radio 3)