New in 2010: A taste of books to come
The Eerie Silence
Penguin Books
Non fiction/Science
On April 8, 1960, a young American astronomer, Frank Drake, turned a radio telescope toward the star Tau Ceti and listened for several hours to see if he could detect any artificial radio signals. With this modest start began a worldwide project of potentially momentous significance. Known as SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it is an amalgam of science, technology, adventure, curiosity and a bold vision of humanity's destiny.
Drake has said that SETI is really a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place might be in the grand cosmic scheme of things. Yet with one tantalizing exception, SETI has produced only negative results. After millions of hours spent eavesdropping on the cosmos astronomers have detected only the eerie sound of silence.
What does that mean? Are we in fact alone in the vastness of the universe? Is ET out there, but not sending any messages our way? Might we be surrounded by messages we simply don't recognize? Is SETI a waste of time and money, or should we press ahead with new and more sensitive antennas? Or look somewhere else? And if a signal were to be received, what then? How would we - or even should we - respond?
Chef
Bloomsbury
Fiction
Kirpal Singh is travelling on the slow train to Kashmir. As India passes by the window in a stream of tiny lights, glistening fields and huddled, noisy towns, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years Kirpal, Kip to his friends, is timorous and barely twenty when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar's camp, nestled in the shadow of the mighty Siachen Glacier that claimed his father's life. He is placed under the supervision of Chef Kishen, a fiery, anarchic mentor with long earlobes and a caustic tongue, who guides Kip towards the heady spheres of food and women.
'The smell of a woman is a thousand times better than cooking the most sumptuous dinner, kid,' he muses, over an evening beer. Kip is embarrassed - he has never slept with a woman, though a loose-limbed nurse in the local hospital has caught his eye. In Srinagar, Kashmir, a contradictory place of erratic violence, extremes of temperature and high-altitude privilege, Kip learns to prepare indulgent Kashmiri dishes such as Mughlai mutton and slow-cooked Nahari, as well as delicacies from Florence, Madrid, Athens and Tokyo.
Months pass and, though he is Sikh, Kip feels secure in his allegiance to India, the right side of this interminable conflict. Then, one muggy day, a Pakistani 'terrorist' with long, flowing hair is swept up on the banks of the river, and changes everything. Mesmeric, mournful and intensely lyrical, "Chef" is a brave and compassionate debut about hope, love and memory, set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir.
Thinking of Answers
Bloomsbury
NoN Fiction/Philosophy
The essays in this book, drawn mainly from A. C. Grayling's columns in "Prospect", the "Dubliner" and "The Times", are in fact responses to questions set by editors and readers. If beauty existed only in the eye of the beholder, would that make it an unimportant quality? Are human rights political? Can ethics be derived from evolution by natural selection? If both sides in a conflict can passionately believe that theirs is the just cause, does this mean that the idea of justice is empty? Does being happy make us good? And does being good make us happy? Are human beings especially prone to self-deception? As in his previous books of popular philosophy, including the best-selling "The Reason of Things and The Meaning of Things", rather than presenting a set of categorical answers Grayling offers instead suggestions for how to think about every aspect of a question, and arrive at one's own conclusions. As a result "Thinking of Answers" is both an enjoyable and inspirational collection.
Point Omega
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
In the middle of a desert 'somewhere south of nowhere', to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war adviser has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar - an outsider - when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. For two years he tried to make intellectual sense of the troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition.
He was to map the reality these men were trying to create. At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character - 'Just a man against a wall'.
The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by.
And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits - an 'otherworldly' woman from New York - who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Bloomsbury
Fiction
It was New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children.
The hunters are questioned and sent away. As they descend the mountain, a large dark car rises past them in the gloom. The woman within barely acknowledges their presence.
The Judge, Dominique Carpentier, is in charge of the investigation. Commissaire Andre Schweigen is waiting for her. They have encountered this suicide sect before.
In the chalet they find a strange leather-bound book, written in mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. The book of "The Faith" leads them to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated in "The Faith"? And so the pursuit begins.
Carpentier, Schweigen and the Judge's idiosyncratic assistant Gaelle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music. Carpentier, known as the sect hunter, prides herself on her ability to expose frauds and charlatans. She also likes to win.
Has she met her match in the Composer? Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of "Hallucinating Foucault" is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Bloomsbury
Fiction
It was New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children.
The hunters are questioned and sent away. As they descend the mountain, a large dark car rises past them in the gloom. The woman within barely acknowledges their presence.
The Judge, Dominique Carpentier, is in charge of the investigation. Commissaire Andre Schweigen is waiting for her. They have encountered this suicide sect before.
In the chalet they find a strange leather-bound book, written in mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. The book of "The Faith" leads them to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated in "The Faith"? And so the pursuit begins.
Carpentier, Schweigen and the Judge's idiosyncratic assistant Gaelle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music. Carpentier, known as the sect hunter, prides herself on her ability to expose frauds and charlatans. She also likes to win.
Has she met her match in the Composer? Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of "Hallucinating Foucault" is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.
Fool's Girl
Bloomsbury
Children's/Teenage Fiction
Violetta and Feste have come to London to rescue the holy relics taken from the church in Illyria by the evil Malvolio. Their journey has been long and their adventures many, but it is not until they meet the playwright William Shakespeare that they get to tell the entire story from beginning to end!
But where will this remarkable tale ultimately lead Violetta and her companion? And will they manage to save themselves, and the relics from the very evil intentions of Malvolio?
Beirut 39 : New Writing from the Arab World
Bloomsbury
Fiction
'Beirut39' is a Hay Festival project which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the best young Arab writers as a centrepiece of the Beirut World Capital festivities in April 2010. Following the successful launch of 'Bogota 39', which identified many of the most interesting upcoming Latin American talents, including Wendy Guerra, Junot Diaz (Pulitzer Prize), Santiago Roncagliolo and Juan Gabriel Vasquez (short-listed for the IFFP), 'Beirut 39' will bring to worldwide attention the best work from the Arab world. The judges will select from more than 300 submissions and the writers' names were unveiled in September 2009.
This year, for the first time, the winners--nominated by publishers, literary critics, and readers across the Arab world and internationally, and selected by a panel of eminent Arab writers, academics, and journalists--will be published together in a one-of-a-kind anthology. Edited by Samuel Shimon of "Banipal "magazine, the collection will be published simultaneously in Arabic and English throughout the world by Bloomsbury and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
The book will be published in English throughout the world (except the Arab world) by Bloomsbury, and in Arabic throughout the world and in English in the Arab World by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.
Beirut 39 "provides an important look at the Arab-speaking world today, through the eyes of thirty-nine of its brightest young literary stars.
Telling Times : Writing and Living, 1950-2008
Bloomsbury
Journalism/Essays
Nadine Gordimer's life reflects the true spirit of the writer as moral activist, political visionary and literary icon. Telling Times collects together all her non-fiction for the first time, spanning more than half a century, from the twilight of colonial rule in South Africa, to the long, brutal fight to overthrow South Africa's apartheid regime and to her leadership role over the last 20 years in confronting the dangers of AIDS, globalisation, and ethnic violence. The range of this book is staggering, from Gordimer's first piece in The New Yorker in 1954, in which she autobiographically traces her emergence as a brilliant, young writer in a racist country, to her pioneering role in recognising the greatest African and European writers of her generation, to her truly, courageous stance in supporting Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC during their years of imprisonment.
Given that Gordimer will never write an autobiography, Telling Times is an important document of twentieth-century social and political history, told through the voice of one of its greatest literary figures.
The Great Perhaps
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
Meet the Caspers, a family beset by cowardice and anxiety. Jonathan is a palaeontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric squid. His wife, Madeline, an animal behaviourist, cannot explain why the pigeons she is studying are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Their older daughter Amelia is a disappointed teenage revolutionary, while their younger, Thisbe, has become a devout Christian. Meanwhile, the girls' grandfather, Henry, is slowly absenting himself from life: each day he gives away a possession and speaks one word fewer, until the time comes when he will have spoken his last ever word. Before that can happen, however, Jonathan and Madeline decide to separate - and, suddenly, each family member has to confront their fears about the world in which they live.
Set in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, "The Great Perhaps" is a tale of the nuclear family in the nuclear age; a witty, revealing story about just how complicated and ambiguous modern life can be.
Half Life
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
'It's time to stop fighting, and go home'. Those were the words that finally persuaded Aruna to walk out of her East London flat in the middle of breakfast, wearing flimsy sandals on a brisk Spring day, carrying nothing more substantial than a handbag, and keep on walking.
Leaving behind her marriage to Patrick, her adoring husband of less than a year, she gets on a plane to Singapore, running back home to the city and the old life she had run away from in the first place.
And there she finds her childhood friend and former lover, Jazz, troubled by the pleas of the dying father he refuses to forgive, who has never stopped waiting for her to return. After years spent fleeing the ghosts of her past - the life that she and Jazz tried and failed to make together, the terrible revelation that tore their relationship apart, and the troubling psychological diagnosis she would rather forget - Aruna is about to discover that running away is easy. It is coming home - making peace with herself, Jazz and those they have loved - that is hard.
Young Romantics : The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives
Bloomsbury
Literary Biography
'The web of our lives is a mingled yarn', observed Keats. True enough, though Keats himself is not to the forefront of this book; of all people, Leigh Hunt, radical satirist and editor of "The Examiner", takes centre stage in a circle that was to include Shelley and his wife Mary, author of "Frankenstein" and mother of two by the time she was 20 (and mother of none by the time she was 22), Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont who became Byron's lover and he the father of her child, as well as Hunt's sister-in-law Elizabeth; shattering the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, Daisy Hay tells the story of the scandal and tragedy, gossip and poetry of the turbulent communal existence of of this brilliant and astonishingly youthful group between 1814 and 1824. Allowing wives and mistresses to emerge from the shadows of the fascinating men that traditionally attract scholarly attention is an end in itself; here are strong-minded women who gleefully and courageously snubbed the conventions of society in favour of liberal ideals of free-love and community.
Some, like Lady Caroline Lamb, would drive themselves to the point of insanity for the love of their men; others would descend into a depression that could only end in suicide. The smouldering turmoil of strained relationships and insular friendships would ferment to inspire the Gothicism of Frankenstein, the heady idealism of Shelley's poetry, and the self-loathing, self-loving Byronic persona so prevalent in his poetry. Above all the characters are vital and full of life, and this is a fabulously, gloriously entrancing read, the debut of a young biographer of enormous promise, marking the green shoots of recovery in the genre of literary biography.
The Balfour Declaration : The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction/History
On 2 November 1917, after much discussion, the British War Cabinet under Lloyd George finally approved and issued a statement in the form of a short letter from the Foreign Office to the English Zionist, Lord Rothschild. It was signed by the foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour and contained the key short paragraph that began: 'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object '. "The Balfour Declaration", as it came to be known, set in motion a series of events, entirely unforeseen by its authors, which shaped the modern world and continues to shape it.
Conceived against a backdrop of the First World War, its midwives were an extraordinary cast of diplomats, scholars, soldiers and spies, Arab insurgents and Zionist zealots. It is a tale full of intrigue, betrayal, adventure, death and triumph. And ranges from London to Cairo to the Deserts of Arabia, where the enigmatic figure of T.E.
Lawrence achieved lasting fame. Alongside the scrap of paper with which Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, the "Balfour Declaration" is one of the most important documents of the last 100 years and Jonathan Schneer's scrupulously researched and vivid retelling brings to life this key episode in one of the world's longest lasting and most damaging conflicts.
The Flavour Thesaurus
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction/Cookery
In this lively and exceptionally enjoyable book, Niki Segnit takes 160 popular ingredients and explores all the ways they might be combined in the kitchen. She has scoured thousands of recipes in countless recipe books, talked to dozens of food technologists and chefs, and visited hundreds of restaurants - all in her quest for flavour pairings. The result is a unique book that is full of quirky observations, practical information (hundreds of recipes are embedded in the narrative) and good jokes.
Here are a couple of randomly chosen entries: Celery and Dill: Like a couple of spry septuagenarians who still bother to find the right necklace for their frock, wear silver shoes to the theatre and are more than capable of a waspish, flirty conversation if given the attention they deserve. Come alive in the red-blooded company of beef, or more workaday tinned tuna, but left to their own devices can make a thrifty but classy soup. Coriander Leaf and Peanut: Substitute coriander and peanut for basil and pine nuts and you have a delicious Vietnamese-style take on pesto.
Process a large bunch of coriander leaf with a tbsp ground nut oil, a tsp fish sauce, maybe a few mint leaves if you have them, some chilli and a squeeze of lime. Add half a handful of ground peanuts. Toss through warm noodles - egg or rice - and serve with more peanuts scattered on top.
Beautifully packaged, "The Flavour Thesaurus" is not only a highly useful, and covetable, reference book that will immeasurably improve your cooking - it's the sort of book that might keep you up at night reading.
Sex and Stravinsky
Bloomsbury
Fiction
The time is 1995, but everybody is linked by their past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. Josh has bizarre origins in a South African mining town, but now teaches mime in Bristol.
Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for ballet lessons; a thing denied her until, on a school French exchange, she meets a runaway boy in a woodland hut. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie Thomas, Josh's first love, has taken to writing girls' ballet books from the turret of her fabulous house - that's when she can carve out the space between the forceful presence of Herman and her crosspatch daughter Cat who, after some illicit snooping, is secretly planning a make-or-break essay on mask dancers in Mali. Hattie wakes from a dream of Stravinsky's Pulcinella and asks herself about the composer, 'Do his glasses look sexy?' His glasses are just like Josh's glasses from two decades earlier.
From far and wide, they are all drawn together; drawn to Jack's place. Or is he Jacques? Or Giacomo?Beautiful, mysterious Jack, the one-time backyard housemaid's child who, having journeyed via Mozambique and Senegal to Milan, is back exactly where he started - only not for long. In its mix of people from different spheres, the book throws up the complexity, cruelty and richness of the global world while, as a sequence of personal stories, it comes together like a dance; a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.
Capitalism 4.0
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction
The global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 ruined businesses and banks, individuals and even nations, and seemed to land a mortal blow to the capitalist system. But capitalism has not been destroyed, rather it has been irrevocably altered: the forces that precipitated the crisis are now contributing to the evolution of a new, stronger version of the capitalist model. Tracing the development of capitalism from the late eighteenth century through three distinct historical phases, Kaletsky shows how at each of these transitions the existing economic order appeared to be fatally threatened, only for capitalism to reinvent itself and emerge stronger than before.
The turning point for our most recent age of capitalism came on 15 September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off market forces which, had it not been for government bailouts and guarantees, would have toppled every bank in the Western world, an incident which marked the fourth major systemic transformation in capitalism's history - Capitalism 4.0. "Understanding Capitalism 4.0" will be critical to the continued recovery of our global economies. In this controversial and wide-ranging book, Anatole Kaletsky, one of the world's foremost economists, puts recent financial events into historical and ideological perspective.
He describes the emerging features of this new capitalist model, explains how it differs from the previous versions - and how it will change politics, finance, international relations and economic thinking in the next decade.
Kraken
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears? For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.
A god that someone is hoping will end the world.
Sunset Limited
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
A novel in dramatic form – set to become a film staring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life-or-death decision must be made.
In that small apartment, ‘Black’ and ‘White’, as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history – mining the origins of two diametrically opposing world views, they begin a dialectic redolent of the best of Beckett.
White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men – though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is to deny it.
Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life.
Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deeply intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.
Ilustrado
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River - taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Missing, too, is the only manuscript of his final book - meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the corrupt roots of power behind the Filipino ruling families.
His student, Miguel, investigates, journeying home from a city still in shock from terrorist attacks to a country caught between reckless decay and desperate progress. To understand his mentor's death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador's trajectory via his poetry, stories, interviews, novels, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a generations-long saga of revolution, familial duty, political intrigue, and a people's enduring struggle against their own worst tendencies.
This is a clever, bravura, and exuberant debut novel from a new literary sensation.
Dead Like You
Pan MacMillan
Crime Fiction
Don't imagine for one moment that I'm not watching you...The Metropole Hotel, Brighton. After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked.
Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender...Detective Superintendent Roy Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced? When more women are assaulted, Grace becomes increasingly certain that they are dealing with the same man.
And that by delving back into the past - a time in which we see Grace and his missing wife Sandy still apparently happy together - he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery. Soon Grace and his team will find themselves in a desperate race against the clock to identify and save the life of the new sixth victim...
The Passage
Orion
Fiction
Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world.
She is.
Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row.
He's wrong.
FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming.
There is.
"Every so often a novel-reader's novel comes along: an enthralling, entertaining story wedded to simple, supple prose, both informed by tremendous imagination. Summer is the perfect time for such books, and this year readers can enjoy the gift of Justin Cronin's "The Passage. Read fifteen pages and you will find yourself captivated; read thirty and you will find yourself taken prisoner and reading late into the night. It has the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve. What else can I say? This: read this book and the ordinary world disappears."--Stephen King
March
The Eerie Silence
Penguin Books
Non fiction/Science
On April 8, 1960, a young American astronomer, Frank Drake, turned a radio telescope toward the star Tau Ceti and listened for several hours to see if he could detect any artificial radio signals. With this modest start began a worldwide project of potentially momentous significance. Known as SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it is an amalgam of science, technology, adventure, curiosity and a bold vision of humanity's destiny.
Drake has said that SETI is really a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place might be in the grand cosmic scheme of things. Yet with one tantalizing exception, SETI has produced only negative results. After millions of hours spent eavesdropping on the cosmos astronomers have detected only the eerie sound of silence.
What does that mean? Are we in fact alone in the vastness of the universe? Is ET out there, but not sending any messages our way? Might we be surrounded by messages we simply don't recognize? Is SETI a waste of time and money, or should we press ahead with new and more sensitive antennas? Or look somewhere else? And if a signal were to be received, what then? How would we - or even should we - respond?
Chef
Bloomsbury
Fiction
Kirpal Singh is travelling on the slow train to Kashmir. As India passes by the window in a stream of tiny lights, glistening fields and huddled, noisy towns, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years Kirpal, Kip to his friends, is timorous and barely twenty when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar's camp, nestled in the shadow of the mighty Siachen Glacier that claimed his father's life. He is placed under the supervision of Chef Kishen, a fiery, anarchic mentor with long earlobes and a caustic tongue, who guides Kip towards the heady spheres of food and women.
'The smell of a woman is a thousand times better than cooking the most sumptuous dinner, kid,' he muses, over an evening beer. Kip is embarrassed - he has never slept with a woman, though a loose-limbed nurse in the local hospital has caught his eye. In Srinagar, Kashmir, a contradictory place of erratic violence, extremes of temperature and high-altitude privilege, Kip learns to prepare indulgent Kashmiri dishes such as Mughlai mutton and slow-cooked Nahari, as well as delicacies from Florence, Madrid, Athens and Tokyo.
Months pass and, though he is Sikh, Kip feels secure in his allegiance to India, the right side of this interminable conflict. Then, one muggy day, a Pakistani 'terrorist' with long, flowing hair is swept up on the banks of the river, and changes everything. Mesmeric, mournful and intensely lyrical, "Chef" is a brave and compassionate debut about hope, love and memory, set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir.
Thinking of Answers
Bloomsbury
NoN Fiction/Philosophy
The essays in this book, drawn mainly from A. C. Grayling's columns in "Prospect", the "Dubliner" and "The Times", are in fact responses to questions set by editors and readers. If beauty existed only in the eye of the beholder, would that make it an unimportant quality? Are human rights political? Can ethics be derived from evolution by natural selection? If both sides in a conflict can passionately believe that theirs is the just cause, does this mean that the idea of justice is empty? Does being happy make us good? And does being good make us happy? Are human beings especially prone to self-deception? As in his previous books of popular philosophy, including the best-selling "The Reason of Things and The Meaning of Things", rather than presenting a set of categorical answers Grayling offers instead suggestions for how to think about every aspect of a question, and arrive at one's own conclusions. As a result "Thinking of Answers" is both an enjoyable and inspirational collection.
Point Omega
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
In the middle of a desert 'somewhere south of nowhere', to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war adviser has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar - an outsider - when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. For two years he tried to make intellectual sense of the troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition.
He was to map the reality these men were trying to create. At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character - 'Just a man against a wall'.
The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by.
And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits - an 'otherworldly' woman from New York - who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Bloomsbury
Fiction
It was New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children.
The hunters are questioned and sent away. As they descend the mountain, a large dark car rises past them in the gloom. The woman within barely acknowledges their presence.
The Judge, Dominique Carpentier, is in charge of the investigation. Commissaire Andre Schweigen is waiting for her. They have encountered this suicide sect before.
In the chalet they find a strange leather-bound book, written in mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. The book of "The Faith" leads them to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated in "The Faith"? And so the pursuit begins.
Carpentier, Schweigen and the Judge's idiosyncratic assistant Gaelle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music. Carpentier, known as the sect hunter, prides herself on her ability to expose frauds and charlatans. She also likes to win.
Has she met her match in the Composer? Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of "Hallucinating Foucault" is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Bloomsbury
Fiction
It was New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children.
The hunters are questioned and sent away. As they descend the mountain, a large dark car rises past them in the gloom. The woman within barely acknowledges their presence.
The Judge, Dominique Carpentier, is in charge of the investigation. Commissaire Andre Schweigen is waiting for her. They have encountered this suicide sect before.
In the chalet they find a strange leather-bound book, written in mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. The book of "The Faith" leads them to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected to every one of the dead. Surely he must be implicated in "The Faith"? And so the pursuit begins.
Carpentier, Schweigen and the Judge's idiosyncratic assistant Gaelle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music. Carpentier, known as the sect hunter, prides herself on her ability to expose frauds and charlatans. She also likes to win.
Has she met her match in the Composer? Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of "Hallucinating Foucault" is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.
April
Fool's Girl
Bloomsbury
Children's/Teenage Fiction
Violetta and Feste have come to London to rescue the holy relics taken from the church in Illyria by the evil Malvolio. Their journey has been long and their adventures many, but it is not until they meet the playwright William Shakespeare that they get to tell the entire story from beginning to end!
But where will this remarkable tale ultimately lead Violetta and her companion? And will they manage to save themselves, and the relics from the very evil intentions of Malvolio?
Beirut 39 : New Writing from the Arab World
Bloomsbury
Fiction
'Beirut39' is a Hay Festival project which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the best young Arab writers as a centrepiece of the Beirut World Capital festivities in April 2010. Following the successful launch of 'Bogota 39', which identified many of the most interesting upcoming Latin American talents, including Wendy Guerra, Junot Diaz (Pulitzer Prize), Santiago Roncagliolo and Juan Gabriel Vasquez (short-listed for the IFFP), 'Beirut 39' will bring to worldwide attention the best work from the Arab world. The judges will select from more than 300 submissions and the writers' names were unveiled in September 2009.
This year, for the first time, the winners--nominated by publishers, literary critics, and readers across the Arab world and internationally, and selected by a panel of eminent Arab writers, academics, and journalists--will be published together in a one-of-a-kind anthology. Edited by Samuel Shimon of "Banipal "magazine, the collection will be published simultaneously in Arabic and English throughout the world by Bloomsbury and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
The book will be published in English throughout the world (except the Arab world) by Bloomsbury, and in Arabic throughout the world and in English in the Arab World by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.
Beirut 39 "provides an important look at the Arab-speaking world today, through the eyes of thirty-nine of its brightest young literary stars.
Telling Times : Writing and Living, 1950-2008
Bloomsbury
Journalism/Essays
Nadine Gordimer's life reflects the true spirit of the writer as moral activist, political visionary and literary icon. Telling Times collects together all her non-fiction for the first time, spanning more than half a century, from the twilight of colonial rule in South Africa, to the long, brutal fight to overthrow South Africa's apartheid regime and to her leadership role over the last 20 years in confronting the dangers of AIDS, globalisation, and ethnic violence. The range of this book is staggering, from Gordimer's first piece in The New Yorker in 1954, in which she autobiographically traces her emergence as a brilliant, young writer in a racist country, to her pioneering role in recognising the greatest African and European writers of her generation, to her truly, courageous stance in supporting Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC during their years of imprisonment.
Given that Gordimer will never write an autobiography, Telling Times is an important document of twentieth-century social and political history, told through the voice of one of its greatest literary figures.
The Great Perhaps
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
Meet the Caspers, a family beset by cowardice and anxiety. Jonathan is a palaeontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric squid. His wife, Madeline, an animal behaviourist, cannot explain why the pigeons she is studying are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Their older daughter Amelia is a disappointed teenage revolutionary, while their younger, Thisbe, has become a devout Christian. Meanwhile, the girls' grandfather, Henry, is slowly absenting himself from life: each day he gives away a possession and speaks one word fewer, until the time comes when he will have spoken his last ever word. Before that can happen, however, Jonathan and Madeline decide to separate - and, suddenly, each family member has to confront their fears about the world in which they live.
Set in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, "The Great Perhaps" is a tale of the nuclear family in the nuclear age; a witty, revealing story about just how complicated and ambiguous modern life can be.
Half Life
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
'It's time to stop fighting, and go home'. Those were the words that finally persuaded Aruna to walk out of her East London flat in the middle of breakfast, wearing flimsy sandals on a brisk Spring day, carrying nothing more substantial than a handbag, and keep on walking.
Leaving behind her marriage to Patrick, her adoring husband of less than a year, she gets on a plane to Singapore, running back home to the city and the old life she had run away from in the first place.
And there she finds her childhood friend and former lover, Jazz, troubled by the pleas of the dying father he refuses to forgive, who has never stopped waiting for her to return. After years spent fleeing the ghosts of her past - the life that she and Jazz tried and failed to make together, the terrible revelation that tore their relationship apart, and the troubling psychological diagnosis she would rather forget - Aruna is about to discover that running away is easy. It is coming home - making peace with herself, Jazz and those they have loved - that is hard.
May
Young Romantics : The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives
Bloomsbury
Literary Biography
'The web of our lives is a mingled yarn', observed Keats. True enough, though Keats himself is not to the forefront of this book; of all people, Leigh Hunt, radical satirist and editor of "The Examiner", takes centre stage in a circle that was to include Shelley and his wife Mary, author of "Frankenstein" and mother of two by the time she was 20 (and mother of none by the time she was 22), Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont who became Byron's lover and he the father of her child, as well as Hunt's sister-in-law Elizabeth; shattering the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, Daisy Hay tells the story of the scandal and tragedy, gossip and poetry of the turbulent communal existence of of this brilliant and astonishingly youthful group between 1814 and 1824. Allowing wives and mistresses to emerge from the shadows of the fascinating men that traditionally attract scholarly attention is an end in itself; here are strong-minded women who gleefully and courageously snubbed the conventions of society in favour of liberal ideals of free-love and community.
Some, like Lady Caroline Lamb, would drive themselves to the point of insanity for the love of their men; others would descend into a depression that could only end in suicide. The smouldering turmoil of strained relationships and insular friendships would ferment to inspire the Gothicism of Frankenstein, the heady idealism of Shelley's poetry, and the self-loathing, self-loving Byronic persona so prevalent in his poetry. Above all the characters are vital and full of life, and this is a fabulously, gloriously entrancing read, the debut of a young biographer of enormous promise, marking the green shoots of recovery in the genre of literary biography.
The Balfour Declaration : The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction/History
On 2 November 1917, after much discussion, the British War Cabinet under Lloyd George finally approved and issued a statement in the form of a short letter from the Foreign Office to the English Zionist, Lord Rothschild. It was signed by the foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour and contained the key short paragraph that began: 'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object '. "The Balfour Declaration", as it came to be known, set in motion a series of events, entirely unforeseen by its authors, which shaped the modern world and continues to shape it.
Conceived against a backdrop of the First World War, its midwives were an extraordinary cast of diplomats, scholars, soldiers and spies, Arab insurgents and Zionist zealots. It is a tale full of intrigue, betrayal, adventure, death and triumph. And ranges from London to Cairo to the Deserts of Arabia, where the enigmatic figure of T.E.
Lawrence achieved lasting fame. Alongside the scrap of paper with which Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, the "Balfour Declaration" is one of the most important documents of the last 100 years and Jonathan Schneer's scrupulously researched and vivid retelling brings to life this key episode in one of the world's longest lasting and most damaging conflicts.
The Flavour Thesaurus
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction/Cookery
In this lively and exceptionally enjoyable book, Niki Segnit takes 160 popular ingredients and explores all the ways they might be combined in the kitchen. She has scoured thousands of recipes in countless recipe books, talked to dozens of food technologists and chefs, and visited hundreds of restaurants - all in her quest for flavour pairings. The result is a unique book that is full of quirky observations, practical information (hundreds of recipes are embedded in the narrative) and good jokes.
Here are a couple of randomly chosen entries: Celery and Dill: Like a couple of spry septuagenarians who still bother to find the right necklace for their frock, wear silver shoes to the theatre and are more than capable of a waspish, flirty conversation if given the attention they deserve. Come alive in the red-blooded company of beef, or more workaday tinned tuna, but left to their own devices can make a thrifty but classy soup. Coriander Leaf and Peanut: Substitute coriander and peanut for basil and pine nuts and you have a delicious Vietnamese-style take on pesto.
Process a large bunch of coriander leaf with a tbsp ground nut oil, a tsp fish sauce, maybe a few mint leaves if you have them, some chilli and a squeeze of lime. Add half a handful of ground peanuts. Toss through warm noodles - egg or rice - and serve with more peanuts scattered on top.
Beautifully packaged, "The Flavour Thesaurus" is not only a highly useful, and covetable, reference book that will immeasurably improve your cooking - it's the sort of book that might keep you up at night reading.
Sex and Stravinsky
Bloomsbury
Fiction
The time is 1995, but everybody is linked by their past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. Josh has bizarre origins in a South African mining town, but now teaches mime in Bristol.
Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for ballet lessons; a thing denied her until, on a school French exchange, she meets a runaway boy in a woodland hut. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie Thomas, Josh's first love, has taken to writing girls' ballet books from the turret of her fabulous house - that's when she can carve out the space between the forceful presence of Herman and her crosspatch daughter Cat who, after some illicit snooping, is secretly planning a make-or-break essay on mask dancers in Mali. Hattie wakes from a dream of Stravinsky's Pulcinella and asks herself about the composer, 'Do his glasses look sexy?' His glasses are just like Josh's glasses from two decades earlier.
From far and wide, they are all drawn together; drawn to Jack's place. Or is he Jacques? Or Giacomo?Beautiful, mysterious Jack, the one-time backyard housemaid's child who, having journeyed via Mozambique and Senegal to Milan, is back exactly where he started - only not for long. In its mix of people from different spheres, the book throws up the complexity, cruelty and richness of the global world while, as a sequence of personal stories, it comes together like a dance; a masquerade in which things are not always what they seem.
Capitalism 4.0
Bloomsbury
Non Fiction
The global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 ruined businesses and banks, individuals and even nations, and seemed to land a mortal blow to the capitalist system. But capitalism has not been destroyed, rather it has been irrevocably altered: the forces that precipitated the crisis are now contributing to the evolution of a new, stronger version of the capitalist model. Tracing the development of capitalism from the late eighteenth century through three distinct historical phases, Kaletsky shows how at each of these transitions the existing economic order appeared to be fatally threatened, only for capitalism to reinvent itself and emerge stronger than before.
The turning point for our most recent age of capitalism came on 15 September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off market forces which, had it not been for government bailouts and guarantees, would have toppled every bank in the Western world, an incident which marked the fourth major systemic transformation in capitalism's history - Capitalism 4.0. "Understanding Capitalism 4.0" will be critical to the continued recovery of our global economies. In this controversial and wide-ranging book, Anatole Kaletsky, one of the world's foremost economists, puts recent financial events into historical and ideological perspective.
He describes the emerging features of this new capitalist model, explains how it differs from the previous versions - and how it will change politics, finance, international relations and economic thinking in the next decade.
Kraken
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears? For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.
A god that someone is hoping will end the world.
Sunset Limited
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
A novel in dramatic form – set to become a film staring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life-or-death decision must be made.
In that small apartment, ‘Black’ and ‘White’, as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history – mining the origins of two diametrically opposing world views, they begin a dialectic redolent of the best of Beckett.
White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men – though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is to deny it.
Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life.
Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deeply intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.
Ilustrado
Pan MacMillan
Fiction
It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River - taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Missing, too, is the only manuscript of his final book - meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the corrupt roots of power behind the Filipino ruling families.
His student, Miguel, investigates, journeying home from a city still in shock from terrorist attacks to a country caught between reckless decay and desperate progress. To understand his mentor's death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador's trajectory via his poetry, stories, interviews, novels, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a generations-long saga of revolution, familial duty, political intrigue, and a people's enduring struggle against their own worst tendencies.
This is a clever, bravura, and exuberant debut novel from a new literary sensation.
June
Dead Like You
Pan MacMillan
Crime Fiction
Don't imagine for one moment that I'm not watching you...The Metropole Hotel, Brighton. After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked.
Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender...Detective Superintendent Roy Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced? When more women are assaulted, Grace becomes increasingly certain that they are dealing with the same man.
And that by delving back into the past - a time in which we see Grace and his missing wife Sandy still apparently happy together - he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery. Soon Grace and his team will find themselves in a desperate race against the clock to identify and save the life of the new sixth victim...
The Passage
Orion
Fiction
Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world.
She is.
Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row.
He's wrong.
FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming.
There is.
"Every so often a novel-reader's novel comes along: an enthralling, entertaining story wedded to simple, supple prose, both informed by tremendous imagination. Summer is the perfect time for such books, and this year readers can enjoy the gift of Justin Cronin's "The Passage. Read fifteen pages and you will find yourself captivated; read thirty and you will find yourself taken prisoner and reading late into the night. It has the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve. What else can I say? This: read this book and the ordinary world disappears."--Stephen King