Going back to school in the best Retros out now: The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury,

THE HISTORY MAN by Malcolm Bradbury (Picador £10.99, 272pp)

The History Man is available now

This 1970s campus novel should feel outdated compared with today’s students.

An anarchic sociology tutor at a new university on the south coast, Howard Kirk – a Northern grammar-school boy – sleeps with both colleagues and ­students. His more intelligent wife ­Barbara, trapped by motherhood, seeks solace in an affair in London.

But some issues feel very today in this sharp social satire. Should geneticist ­Mangel, condemned by some as a racist, be allowed to speak at college?

Should Howard fail a student’s essays because he disagrees with his political stance? And behind the sexual freedom, dope parties and ­posturing, real people are unravelling in pain as theory and practice collide. Bradbury’s detached observation skewers everyone equally.

EVENING CLASS by Maeve Binchy (Orion £9.99, 528pp)

Disappointed by the lack of an expected promotion, middle-aged Latin teacher Aidan launches an Italian evening class at his school, taught by Signora, who has recently returned to Dublin after 26 ­secretive years in Sicily.

Thirty people enrol – all for different ­reasons – and Binchy intertwines the ­stories of several, including young, besotted banker Bill and his spendthrift lover Lizzie, hard-working Kathy and her devoted older sister Fran and thuggish Lou, reluctantly dragged into crime.

No one conjures up themes of duty, desire, loneliness, late-blossoming romance or painful family secrets with quite the warmth and wit of Binchy and this will have you booking an autumn break in Rome.

GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE by Flannery O’Connor (Faber £9.99, 304pp)

From America’s South, O’Connor, a white Catholic, delves deep into religious ­differences and racial ­tension (warning: she uses the ‘N-word’) to create Gothic tales of shocking brutality and ­violence that question boundaries of good and evil.

In the title story, PhD graduate Hulga, despite a weak heart and an artificial leg, considers herself superior to the poor Bible salesman she secretly mocks, but who ­cruelly turns the tables.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find contrasts the mundane detail of a family outing with the appearance of a murderous stranger confused by the grandmother’s evocation of God’s Grace. 

O’Connor writes superbly, but disturbingly, of human imperfection.