Welcome to my library. Dog-eared paperbacks falling to pieces. Second-hand books from the stores and barrows of four continents. Modern first editions, some inscribed ...

In My Reading Life, a personal investigation into the nature of democracy, dictatorship, decency and the hardwired human condition, Bob Carr shares his profound love of books and reading - books you've never heard of, books you've always wanted to read, books you will rediscover afresh. Here are the essential clues to devouring Tolstoy, Proust, Flaubert, Solzhenitsyn and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

From the social comedies of Anthony Powell and Patrick White and the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare, to the twentieth century's darkest moment - Auschwitz - powerfully recounted by Primo Levi in If This Is a Man, Carr invites us to discover the most important testaments to the highs and lows of human nature. He discovers, through his great love of the written word, that decency can survive the greatest tests, giving us all cause for hope.