(This is Part 2 of a 2 part Cassette edition) The Tin Drum, one of the great novels of the twentieth century, became a runaway best-seller and catapulted its young author to the forefront of world literature. Now on the book s fiftieth anniversary comes this new translation by Breon Mitchell, one that is faithful to Grass s style and rhythm, restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of the original work. This is the story of Oskar Matzerath, a dwarfish hunchback detained in a mental hospital, convicted of a murder he did not commit. From his third birthday when he received a tin drum, it has become the means of his expression, allowing him to draw forth memories from his past as well as from the Nazi era. Oskar s imaginative distortion and exaggeration of history reveals a startlingly true portrayal of the human situation.

In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience -- the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.

You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted," he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, disease, and violence, as well as the boy's spirit-companions, who are constantly trying to trick him back into their world. Okri fills his tale with unforgettable images and characters: the bereaved policeman and his wife, who try to adopt Azaro and dress him in their dead son's clothes: the photographer who documents life in the village and displays his pictures in a cabinet by the roadside: Madame Koto, "plump as a mighty fruit," who runs the local bar: the King of the Road, who gets hungrier the more he eats.At the heart of this hypnotic novel are the mysteries of love and human survival. "It is more difficult to love than to die," says Azaro's father, and indeed, it is love that brings real sharpness to suffering here. As the story moves toward its climax, Azaro must face the consequences of choosing to live, of choosing to walk the road of hunger rather than return to the benign land of spirits. The Famished Road is worth reading for its last line alone, which must be one of the most devastating endings in contemporary literature (but don't skip ahead). --R. Ellis

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**These are beguiling, provocative stories about manipulative men and the women who outwit them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments which change or haunt a life. Alice Munro's stories surprise and delight, turning lives into art, expanding our world and shedding light on the strange workings of the human heart.