In the summer of 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on one of the Kindertransports and placed with foster parents in Wales. For reasons of their own, the childless Calvinist couple erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity.

A castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains in the 1930s. Two men, inseparable in their youth, meet for the first time in 41 years. They have spent their lives waiting for this moment. Four decades earlier a murky, traumatic event had led to their sudden separation.

A group of American expats en route to adventure, inspiration, or perhaps even history in the making in exotic Prague, somehow get sidetracked and settle instead for the enigmatic and enlightening city of Budapest. With humour, the author captures the character of his contemporaries and renders the Hungary of the past.

Winner of the Booker Prize and international bestseller

First published in 1935, this is the story of a distinguished scholar in Germany between the wars. It builds up the elements in the scholar himself, and in his personal relationships, which will lead to his destruction. The author won the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Anxious to please his father, Mihaly has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy, Mihaly 'loses' his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic journey.