When I Lived in Modern Times is the story of Evelyn Sert, a 20-year old hairdresser from Soho, of Latvian-Jewish heritage. After the war, she sets sail for Palestine, aiming to be part of the creation of a "new Jewish world" along with the refugees and idealists gathering there.

This is a Palestine still under the last throes of British colonial rule, and Evelyn is uncertain of her place in the embroyonic years of the creation of the Jewish nation. Unable to speak Hebrew (or in fact any languages other than English) she is initially at the whims of those around her, spending her first confusing months in a kibbutz before hitching a ride to the idealistic White City of Tel Aviv with the mysterious Johnny.

Blonde Roots has a concept that’s hugely appealing in its simplicity: it imagines a world in which the history of the slave trade is inverted, where “blak Aphrikans” are the masters and “whyte Europanes” the enslaved. Its central character is Doris Scagglethorpe, a white Englishwoman who is kidnapped as a child and taken on a slave ship to the New World (in the "West Japanese" islands) where she is acquired by the plantation owner Bwana, also known as Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I. She is ultimately moved to the imperial capital of Londolo, in the island of Great Ambossa where she becomes a "house slave" until her attempt to escape. As punishment, she is returned to the plantation and ends up labouring in the fields, suffering incredible hardship and dreaming of a final escape.

The Inheritance of Loss is a novel that focuses on the diverse experiences of the inhabitants of a decaying colonial-era mansion in Kalimpong, and their relatives and friends. The primary focus is on two characters: Sai, an orphan living with her grandfather, retired judge Jemubhai Patel; and Biju, the son of the house's cook, who is living in New York illegally.

The God of Small Things is the story of two non-identical twins, Rahel and Estha, in Ayemenem, a village in the Kerala region of India. The non-linear narrative flits between the build up to a tragic incident in their youth, involving a visit from England of their cousin Sophie, and their return to their village as adults in 1993.

The Ghost Road is the final part of a trilogy, crucially one of which I haven’t read the first two parts (more on that later.) The Regeneration Trilogy is set predominantly during World War 1, and blends historical characters including war poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, with fictional characters including the central character Billy Prior, a working-class officer created to parallel and contrast with the poets.

Sacred Hunger is a 620-page epic centred around the a slave ship, the Liverpool Merchant, in the 1750 and 60s. The ship is owned by the Kemp family, with the younger Erasmus Kemp one of its principle players. His cousin, against whom Erasmus bears a childhood grudge, Matthew Paris, has recently been released from a prison sentence for spreading proto-Darwinist propaganda, a crime which also inadvertently led to the death of his wife Ruth. He elects to join the crew of the Merchant as ship’s doctor, as a form of penitence and attempt to escape from his former life, much to the chagrin of the vessels’ terrifying commander, Captain Thurso.

The Remains of the Day focuses on Stevens, an experienced butler at the top of his trade, but coming towards his twilight years, and in the employ of a newly-arrived American businessman following years of dedicated service to the aristocratic Lord Darlington. The first-person narrative is located in the 1950s, with Stevens in charge of much-reduced staff from his glory days, and beginning to notice small errors in his previously perfectionist work. He accepts his employer’s offer of a break, for the purposes of which he borrows his car and heads off on a tour of the South West of England, part of which will involve a visit to an old colleague, Miss Kenton.

Oscar and Lucinda describes the lives of two very different characters whose lives become intertwined when they meet on a long sea journey to Australia in the mid nineteenth century and discover a shared passion for the (then illicit) world of gambling. Oscar Hopkins is a devout Christian, from an evangelical background with a memorably fanatical father, who converts to Anglicanism, which while relatively moderate, still is very much unable to tolerate his increasing addiction to the card table and racecourse. Lucinda Laplastrier is an Australian orphan and heiress who ploughs her fortune into a glass factory. When their paths cross, a mutual love develops between the unlikely pair, but despite them ending up cohabiting, it remains tragically unspoken.

Kerewin Holmes, sometime painter and amateur musician, is getting on with her somewhat solitary life in her self-built Tower home on the coast of New Zealand’s South Island, when she is visited by a troubled yet precocious mute child going by the name of Simon. Simon, the victim of the shipwreck of a European vessel in which his parents were presumed killed, is in the care of Joe, a local man of mostly Maori heritage, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Kerewin based (largely) on his willingness to keep her company playing chess, cooking various largely fish-based meals and drinking alarming quantities of alcohol.

Midnight’s Children is a novel of many parts, meanings and interpretations. It tells the story not just of the complex and fantastic life of a man, Saleem Sinai, but of a young nation for whom Saleem is a mirror / proxy. It covers a large time period (from 30 years prior to the birth of Saleem / India to the present day), movements across the whole Indian subcontinent, wars, rises and falls of families and political dynasties, and people (including real people, proxies for real people, fictional inventions and fantastical creations.) There are, as they say, many worlds contained within these pages.

Rites of Passage kicks off the 1980s by taking us back in time to the start of the nineteenth century. The aristocratic Edmund Talbot embarks upon a long voyage to Australia, and keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back home in England. In cramped quarters on a dilapidated warship, he recounts tales of the ship’s varied inhabitants from all classes of society, in a witty and extremely lively narrative that prods and interrogates the structures and conflicts of the English class system in microcosm.

Staying On is a kind of coda to Scott’s Raj Quartet, set in the same small town of Pankot, but some decades later. It focuses primarily on two minor characters from that series, Tusker and Lucy Smalley. They are among the few colonial Brits who “stayed on” after Independence, and the novel covers a sort of twilight period - of their lives, of Empire - and touches significantly on themes of nostalgia and regret, particularly through the character of Lucy.

Two intertwining stories of women in India. The framing narrative is an unnamed woman who travels to India in the present day (1970s) to learn more about the experiences of her step-grandmother, Olivia, during the days of the British Raj in the 1920s.

A dense, occasionally impressionistic and highly symbolic look at the life of a wealthy industrialist, Mehring, who buys a farm in Apartheid-era South Africa as a tax write-off. He's the "Conservationist" of the title, telling himself that he's conserving nature via his lifestyle choice while actually conserving the foundations of Apartheid.

J.G. Farrell's first "standard" Booker winner is the second part in his "Empire" trilogy, this time jumping back to the Indian Rebellion of 1857 for a by turns hilarious and meditative look at a pivotal (if not decisive) moment in British Colonial history, told via a graphic evocation of a four month siege of a British garrison by the uprising sepoys.

A road trip through "Africa" featuring two fairly awful Brits, a colonial official and his colleague's wife. The backdrop is a violent coup by the president to unseat the King, the latter the preference of the colonists.

It's 1919 and Major Brendan Archer, soon after returning from the Trenches, heads over to Ireland to meet a woman he seems to be engaged to, despite not being entirely sure whether he is or not.