An epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must test his bravery and cunning to the full.

The characters in Julian Barnes' new collection of stories are growing old and facing the end of their lives - some with bitter regret, some with resignation and others still with raging defiance.

This is the semi-autobiographical account of a soldier's experiences. The hero of the story, Kien, is a captain. After 10 years of war and months as a MIA body-collector, Kien suffers a nervous breakdown in Hanoi as he tries to re-establish a relationship with his former sweetheart.

In the Polish city of Gdansk, our narrator Pawel tells of the driving lessons he took in the early 1990s, shortly after the end of communism.

Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan at the beginning of World War I. Despite their religious and cultural differences they have loved each other since childhood, but their own tolerence does not protect them from others.

Offers a frightening look at oil-boom Nigeria, a world of robberies, road blocks and intimidation in which those who are meant to be protecting a country's citizens are in reality supervising the looting.