Cheri

The story of a life. The story of the summer.

'Lessons shows [McEwan] at the very peak of his powers. He has written his masterpiece' Daily Telegraph

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Twenty-five years later Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes, and he is left alone with their baby son. Her disappearance sparks of journey of discovery that will continue for decades, as Roland confronts the reality of his rootless existence and attempts to embrace the uncertainty - and freedom - of his future.

'Hypnotic, pitiless and told brilliantly' Bret Easton Ellis

Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across America, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other.

Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support groups have the corner on human warmth.

Read the subversive, savagely funny novel that defined a generation.