Shelfology Book Pairing

Introduced by Christopher Hitchens

by Isabel Allende

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s classic novel is both a richly symbolic family saga and the riveting story of an unnamed Latin American country’s turbulent history. In a triumph of magic realism, Allende constructs a spirit-ridden world and fills it with colorful and all-too-human inhabitants. The Trueba family’s passions, struggles, and secrets span three generations and a century of violent social change, culminating in a crisis that brings the proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter to opposite sides of the barricades. Against a backdrop of revolution and counterrevolution, Allende brings to life a family whose private bonds of love and hatred are more complex and enduring than the political allegiances that set them at odds. The House of the Spirits not only brings another nation’s history thrillingly to life, but also makes its people’s joys and anguishes wholly our own.

THE ICONIC PULITZER PRIZE WINNING NOVEL

by 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, ‘Beloved’. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison’s enduring masterpiece and best-known work. ‘Dazzling. . . Magical. . . An extraordinary work’ New York Times ‘Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all’ Margaret Atwood ‘An American masterpiece’ A. S. Byatt WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**