A novel that establishes the author's reputation with a large audience tour-de-force of comic satire on sex and the American ways of life.

In the title story of this collection of twelve, which established Carver's reputation as a master story teller, the hand of a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see.

Meursault leads a bachelor life until he commits a random act of violence. His lack of emotion and failure to show remorse serve to increase his guilt in the eyes of the law. This novel explores the predicament of the individual who refuses to pretend and is prepared to face the indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.

Presents a terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. This book is a vision of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the mad agendas of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.

A novel, divided into seven parts and exploring immortality. This is the author's seventh novel. His previous works include The Joke , The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being . He has written one play, Jacques and his Master .

Features the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat.