The Big Jubilee Read - 1992-2001

17 April 2022

Throughout this year of Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the BBC and The Reading Agency are celebrating 70 great books from across the Commonwealth. Read on to discover more about The Big Jubilee Read selections drawn from 1992 to 2001.

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje (1992, Canada/Sri Lanka)

The curtain is finally closing on World War Two. In an abandoned Italian village, Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning aeroplane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories. The only clue Hana has to unlocking his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire – a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes detailing a tragic love affair.

Ondaatje’s novel caused a stir when it forced the Booker judges to split the prize between two authors for only the second time in its history.

• Bookclub - Michael Ondaatje talks about his 1992 Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient (BBC Radio 4)

The Stone Diaries

by Carol Shields (1993, Canada)

The Stone Diaries is a fictionalized autobiography chronicling the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman born in Canada in 1905. Beautifully written, yet deeply compassionate, it follows Daisy’s life through marriage, motherhood and widowhood as she ages with the century.

A subtle but affective portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life, this multi-award winning story deals with everyday issues of existence with an extraordinary vibrancy and irresistible quality.

Paradise

by Abdulrazak Gurnah (1994, Tanzania/England)

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and nor he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his 'uncle' is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father's debts.

Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition. It tells the story of a young boy's coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry (1995, India/Canada)

In an unnamed Indian city by the sea, the government has just declared a State of Emergency. Amidst a backdrop of wild political turmoil, the lives of four unlikely strangers collide forever.

Mistry’s prize-winning masterpiece is an epic panorama of modern India in all its corruption, violence, and heroism: a modern Dickensian classic brimming with compassion, humour, and insight, and a hymn to the human spirit in an inhuman state.

• Books and Authors - Download a reading extract from A Fine Balance (BBC Radio 4)

Salt

by Earl Lovelace (1996, Trinidad and Tobago)

A century after emancipation, the diverse communities of Trinidad strive to make sense of their changing homeland.

Salt is an extraordinary tour de force by one of the pre-eminent literary presences in the Caribbean, a work which explores like none before it the intermingling of cultures that is the contemporary West Indian experience. The novel blends historical and social detail with political didacticism, but never loses Lovelace's humour or his painterly boldness with language.

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy (1997, India)

The God of Small Things tells the story of Rahel and Estha, twins growing up among the banana vats and peppercorns of their blind grandmother’s factory, amid scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. Armed only with the innocence of youth, they fashion a childhood in the shade of the wreck that is their family: their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher) and their sworn enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun, incumbent grand-aunt).

Roy’s novel tells a simple story against a complex backdrop of social turmoil, communism and the caste system.

• Bookclub - Arundhati Roy talks to James Naughtie and readers about The God of Small Things (BBC Radio 4)

Disgrace

by J.M. Coetzee (1999, South Africa/Australia)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.

In this ambitious novel, Coetzee’s blends reflections on South African politics with a stark examination of the human condition.

• Meridian - How J.M. Coetzee addresses sex and politics in post-apartheid South Africa (BBC World Service)

The Blue Bedspread

by Raj Kamal (1999, India)

In a house on a Calcutta street, lit by the half-light of a yellow street lamp, lies a baby, one day old, wrapped in its hospital towel. In the next room sits a man, all alone, writing. Who is this man, at once frightened and determined? What is he writing? Where has the baby come from and where will it go? These questions will be answered when the man unravels the dark secrets he has carried all his life.

Kamal’s novel caused a publishing sensation when it became the second fastest selling book ever in India.

White Teeth

by Zadie Smith (2000, England)

Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal – two veterans of the World War Two – try to build a new life in London, only to find the past has a tricky habit of returning.

One of the most talked about debut novels of all time, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, of friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations. It is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book, and an unforgettable portrait of London.

• Bookclub - James Naughtie talks to Zadie Smith about the impact of her debut novel White Teeth (BBC Radio 4)

Life of Pi

by Yann Martel (2001, Canada)

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan – and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

With this unlikely premise, the scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction in recent years.

• Bookclub - James Naughtie and readers talk to Yann Martel about his novel Life of Pi (BBC Radio 4)