Satire Comedy

A searing portrayal of Vienna's bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife-a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a silent but frenzied tirade against these former friends, most of whom have been brought together by Joana, a woman they buried earlier that day.

Acclaimed author of The Adults Alison Espach’s short story "In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People" is an at-once hilarious and heart-breaking portrait of a dead woman’s marriage and the Volvo that stood in the middle of it all.

No matter what you heard or thought about the movie version of Strip Tease, forget it. Film simply can’t catch the layers of humor, satire, and imagination that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Hiaasen creates in each of his novels.

A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.

La tradition littéraire et philosophique s'est plu à situer ses sociétés idéales imaginaires - ou utopies - dans des îles. En 1725, Marivaux imagine à son tour, dans L'Île des esclaves, une communauté où les maîtres deviennent esclaves, en vertu d'une antique coutume, tandis que les esclaves deviennent les maîtres. Humiliation pour les uns, revanche pour les autres, le renversement des rôles ne dure qu'un temps, mais cela suffit à bouleverser l'ordre social.

From the frenzy of the 2012 Olympics to the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, here Jonathan Coe chronicles the story of modern Britain by way of a cast of characters whose world is being upended. There are newlyweds who disagree about the country’s future and, possibly, their relationship; a political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his lavish town house while his radical teenage daughter undertakes a relentless quest for universal justice; and Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father.

Flann O'Brien's most popular and surrealistic novel concerns an imaginary, hellish village police force and a local murder.

Weird, satirical, and very funny, its popularity has suddenly increased with the mention of the novel in the TV series Lost.

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world...or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A 30-something-year-old “millennial everywoman”, she has recently left her white-collar desk job - in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time - as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women - alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her.

"Monsieur Haneda était le supérieur de monsieur Omochi, qui était le supérieur de monsieur Saito, qui était le supérieur de mademoiselle Mori, qui était ma supérieure. Et moi, je n'étais la supérieure de personne. On pourrait dire les choses autrement. J'étais aux ordres de mademoiselle Mori, qui était aux ordres de monsieur Saito, et ainsi de suite, avec cette précision que les ordres pouvaient, en aval, sauter les échelons hiérarchiques. Donc, dans la compagnie Yumimoto, j'étais aux ordres de tout le monde."

Set in the 26th century A.D., Yevgeny Zamyatin's masterpiece describes life under the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor." Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us all if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

Abridged novel depicting the sinister affair of the 18th century cow-creamer and the small, brown, leather-covered notebook tests the Wooster soul as it has never been tested before. Friends and relations, in urgent need, queue up to beg for assistance in a variety of troublesome situations, and ruthless enemies stop at nothing in their determination to bring Bertie down.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov.

He was born into an ancient powerful dynasty and, through no fault of his own, became one of the most recognisable men on the planet. His life was a constant barrage of press intrusion and manipulation. Until finally, he demanded that it stop. In order to get the privacy he so craved, he has written a frostbite-and-all book that goes deep inside the castle walls and exposes every shouting match, fist-fight, betrayal, teddy bear, awkward hug and tear-stained wedding rehearsal for the world to feast their eyes on.

This is the tale of the happy but ill-fated Candide and his progressive disillusionment with the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds. His tutor, Dr. Pangloss, embodies this philosophy of good cheer, even in the face of ever more absurd misfortunes. Luckily, Candide's other companions provide an over-supply of good sense.

Many view "hitting rock bottom" as a foundation on which to rebuild one's life, a place from which one can only ascend. Gamers know to search for a secret door leading down to the sewer.

Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.

Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, creates a compelling reality in this tale about an illiterate America in the not-too-distant future. Lenny Abramov may just be penning the world’s last diary. Which is good, because while falling in love with a rather unpleasant woman and witnessing the fall of a great empire, Lenny has a lot to write about.

Ex-reporter Joe Winder had been working in the public relations department of a sleazy family entertainment park, The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, when he chanced upon a news-breaking story inspired by the disappearance of two blue-tongued voles and the bizarre death of Orky, the killer whale.