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_UNDERWORLD_ BY DON DELILLO (Scribner, $20).

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"250px_wide","fid":"205848","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"381","style":"display:

block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"250"}}]] Few writers have a genuine sense of social sweep — of how

to manage a large vision of society sentence by sentence — but DeLillo's masterpiece makes you believe that a novelist can wield magical powers. All of his books depict the individual

struggling with gigantic forces, and I return to him often. His talent is of the kind that drives other writers forward. SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind

the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE SIGN UP FOR THE WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the

best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. _MRS.

DALLOWAY_ BY VIRGINIA WOOLF (Mariner, $14). "Nobody is simply one thing," Woolf wrote, and Mrs. Dalloway is filled with a beautiful sense of its characters' multiplicity.

Everybody can be otherwise, but that doesn't stop their being distinctive and vivid. _THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE_ BY MURIEL SPARK (Harper Perennial, $14). Not all novels can

withstand the weight of their author's own story, but this book possesses both universality and the unmistakable stamp of Spark's school days in 1930s Edinburgh. Her slightly evil

way of tightening the net around Jean Brodie's "girls" feels like a brilliant displacement of her own girlish anxieties, yet you read the novel for the delightfully nostalgic

feeling of wondering what people might make of themselves. A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com _THE EITINGONS_ BY MARY-KAY

WILMERS (Verso, $25). This investigative memoir feels like a book written from the center of Wilmers' nervous system. The book tells the story of the author's colorful Russian

relatives. But mainly there is Wilmers, who becomes the most interesting person she can't pin down. _METAMORPHOSIS AND OTHER STORIES_ BY FRANZ KAFKA (Penguin, $16). Waking up as someone

else is one thing, but as a giant bug? The title story, like Peter Pan or "Jekyll and Hyde," just seems too mythic and perhaps too psychologically astute to have been written by

one person. _IN PATAGONIA_ BY BRUCE CHATWIN (Penguin, $17). Self-invention can be a matter of style — high style in some cases — or it can merely gloss over the truth. Both possibilities

feel present in Chatwin's work. Yet In Patagonia consorts with the outside world in a way that adds something new to our conception of a modern person. Nobody is one thing; no place is,

either. — _Novelist and journalist Andrew O'Hagan is the author of eight books, including_ Our Fathers_, a Booker Prize finalist. His new work,_ The Secret Life_, gathers "three

true stories of the digital age," including how he almost partnered with Julian Assange._