Reader's Choice

". . . and when you have gone to earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion" - the introduction to my favourite book, In The Skin of a Lion (Pan, £6.99 in the UK). Michael Ondaatje's gift for story-telling is like a good wine savoured. A young immigrant bridge-builder who learns English from the "talkies" and the girl he caught in his arms as she fell from the edge, the strange disappearance of Ambrose Small as Clara, his lover, turns in sleep like something on the floor of the ocean - the fragments of a human order carefully and beautifully placed together. A very special book.