G.

by John Berger

John Berger's novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize. Its hero, G., is the illegitimate son of an Italian merchant and a wealthy American woman, raised on an English farm at the end of the nineteenth century. He moves through a Europe heading towards the First World War, from the Milan uprising of 1898 to the first flight across the Alps, seducing women as he goes. Berger mixes historical fiction and a coming-of-age story with essays, poems and drawings to write about desire, love and solidarity. This centenary edition from NYRB Classics has a new introduction by Ben Lerner.