Britain’s biggest specialist book chain, Waterstone’s, asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982,
the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. The list features the
cream, both male and female, of the modern international literary world
of the last quarter of a century – from Umberto Eco and Bill Bryson to
Robert Harris and Ian McEwan, from Margaret Atwood and Jung Chang to
Zadie Smith and Zoe Heller.