Book of the Month
Refuge
by Andrew Brown
Richard Calloway, a middle aged criminal lawyer is hitting a point in his life where his frustrations with his life – with his marriage, with his career and the low-lifes he finds himself defending, and most importantly with himself are starting to boil over. Call it a mid-life crisis if you will, but that kind of generic term serves to detract from the real issues that bring Richard to this place of turmoil. The entrance of Abayomi, a Nigerian immigrant who (in Richard’s head anyway) offers the possibility of an alternative path for his future, is the catalyst that could lead Richard towards complete implosion or a more real, worthwhile existence. Of course there is also the option that the interaction with Abayomi will soon be binned under the heading “past dalliance” and that Richard will return relieved, refreshed and happy to be back in the safe arms of his current life. Refuge is an outstanding novel, the writing is subtle and sensitive, the portrayal of the two main Nigerian characters provide a much-needed class in stereotype-busting and in Richard, Andrew has created a character with whom it is easy to empathise. There are times when you want to whack him over the head, but there’s just enough there for you to want to give him a hug too at times. Most importantly though, you want to know what happens next, as Refuge runs at a cracking pace without ever feeling contrived. Andrew Brown is one of our finest writers and one of our most versatile ones. Refuge is his best work yet.
Fiction special
It’s that time of year when publishers give us a glut of gorgeous fiction, and the pickings this month are very rich indeed…
Ordinary Thunderstorms
by William Boyd
This wonderful new novel, from the author of Any Human Heart explores the consequences of losing, as a result of a single, momentary decision, everything – home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone. This is what happens to a young man called Adam Kindred, one May evening in Chelsea, when a series of malign accidents and a split-second decision turns his life upside down for ever. The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in the huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down – underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing that throng the lowest level of London’s population as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he encounters all manner of London’s denizens – aristocrats, prostitutes, priests and policewomen amongst them – and version after new version of himself.
William Boyd’s electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the scandal of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
by Stieg Larsson
At last – it’s here! The third and final part of Stieg Larsson’s highly acclaimed and HUGELY popular Millennium Trilogy.
A young girl lies in a hospital room, her tattooed body very close to death – there is a bullet lodged in her brain. Several rooms away is the man who tried to kill her, his own body grievously wounded from axe blows inflicted by the girl he has tried to kill. She is Lisbeth Salander, computer hacker and investigator, and the man is her father, a murderous Russian gangster. If Salander recovers from her injuries, she is more than likely to be put on trial for three murders – the authorities regard her as a dangerous individual. But she won’t see the inside of a courtroom if her father manages to kill her first.
This is the high-tension opening of the third book in Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful trilogy of crime novels which the late author (a crusading journalist) delivered to his publisher just before his death. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest brings together all the elements that have made the previous books of the sequence so successful.
“Crime fiction has seldom needed to salute and mourn such a stellar talent as Larsson’s in the same breath.” Sunday Times
“The ballyhoo is fully justified…At over 500 pages this hardly sagged…The novel scores on every front – character, story, atmosphere.” The Times
“What a cracking novel! I haven’t read such a stunning thriller debut for years. The way Larsson interweaves his two stories had me in thrall from beginning to end. Brilliantly written and totally gripping.” Minette Walters
Juliet, Naked
by Nick Hornby
Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan’s case, an obsession rather than an interest) is not enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker’s ‘new release’, a terrible demo of his most famous album, it’s the last straw – Duncan cheats on her and she promptly throws him out. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie’s harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn’t agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time. Nick Hornby’s compelling new novel, four years after A Long Way Down, is about the nature of creativity and obsession, and how two lonely people can gradually find each other.
“Juliet, Naked is Hornby’s best novel to date.” Spectator
“Subtle and insightful, and really quite touching.” Independent on Sunday
“It’s good to have him back. Nick Hornby’s first adult novel in four years is a comic delight. Hornby’s writing has an easy, fluent tone, as if he is right inside his characters’ heads.” Evening Standard
“In Hornby’s fiction, music is never just about music; among contemporary writers, only Jonathan Lethem has his sure sense for the way popular cultural artefacts become entwined, for good or ill, with ordinary relationships; and in particular, how pop songs minister to deep needs while exposing all too many fresh ones.” TLS
Homer and Langley
by E.L. Doctorow
Brilliant brothers Langley and Homer Collyer are born into bourgeois New York comfort in settled times, their home a fin-de-siecle mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, their future rosy. But before he is out of his teens Homer begins to lose his sight, Langley returns from the War in Europe with his lungs seared by gas, and when the death of their parents in the influenza epidemic of 1918 leaves the brothers orphaned, they seem perilously ill-equipped to deal with the new era. Around Central Park carriages give way to motor cars, Prohibition to free love, but Homer and Langley adapt – their townhouse fills and empties and fills again, with servants, lodgers, tea-dancers and gangsters. They are mocked and spied on, embraced by hippies and besieged by bailiffs, but as the world turns ever more incomprehensible Homer and Langley hold fast to their principles of self-reliance, courage, kindness and love, and they endure.
Amulet
by Roberto Bolaño
It is September 1968 and the Mexican student movement is about to run head-on into the repressive right-wing government of Mexico: hundreds of young people will soon die. When the army invades the university, one woman hides in a fourth-floor ladies’ room and for twelve days she is the only person left on campus. Staring at the floor, she recounts her bohemian life among the young poets of Mexico City – inventing and reinventing freely – and along the way she creates a cosmology of literature. As they grow ever more hallucinatory, her ‘memories’ become mythologies before completely transforming into riveting dark prophecies. Hair-raising and enthralling, Amulet is a heart-breaking novel and another brilliant example of the art of Roberto Bolavño, “the most admired novelist,” as Susan Sontag noted, “in the Spanish-speaking world“.
“The strength and the originality of [Bolaño's] vision lies in the devastating scepticism which be brought not only to magical realist methods but to the very springs of fiction itself. To say that his books have a dreamlike quality is to give scant sense of the way their author shuttles weirdly between oneiric wildness and shrewd, concrete observations of the gritty realities of contemporary life in Latin America.” Guardian
“This short, dense, poetical novel aims to encapsulate the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history in the musings of one woman…Nothing happens but everything happens; Bolaño’s prose is spare but beautifully compacted. Other writers love him because he makes writing seem so important.” The Times
Love and Summer
by William Trevor
It’s summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn’t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs Connulty’s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn’t know that the Connultys were said to own half the town; and, in any case, he had come to Rathmoye only to see the scorched remains of the cinema. But Mrs Connulty’s daughter, liberated at last by the death of her imperious mother, resolves to keep an eye on Florian Kilderry, and it’s she who comes to witness the events that follow. A few miles out in the country a farmer called Dillahan lives with the knowledge that he was accidentally responsible for the deaths of his wife and baby. He has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. But she falls in love with Florian and though he plans to leave Ireland, a dangerously reckless attachment develops between them . In a characteristically masterly way Trevor (author of Felicia’s Journey) evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.
“A fabulously benign book…a work of sympathetic magic.” Sebastian Barry, Guardian
“I can’t think of anything I’ve read recently that has chronicled more accurately the thumping chaos of human hearts or felt more questioning and youthful and alive.” Julie Myerson, Financial Times
Transition
by Iain Banks
A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? On the Concern’s books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher. And then there’s the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.
Noah’s Compass
by Anne Tyler
Quintessential Tyler, yet full of surprises – a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah’s Compass chimes gently and heartbreakingly with our times. Anne Tyler’s new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he’s just been ‘let go’ from his teaching job, and downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on his first night. Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. His ex-wife (sensible Barbara) and daughters worry about him but Liam blunders on, His teenage daughter Kitty is sent to stay – though it’s not clear who is minding whom. Noah’s Compass is about memory and its loss, about incidents and relationships which open up sight lines into a painful past long dead for a man who becomes aware that merely trying to stay afloat may not be enough.
Sunnyside
by Glan David Gold
From the author of the brilliant Carter Beats the Devil comes a grand entertainment with the wonder realised figure of Charlie Chaplin at its centre – a novel at once cinematic and intimate, thrilling and darkly comic, which dramatises the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.
Sunnyside follows three overlapping fortunes: Leland Wheeler, son of the last (and worst) Wild West star, as he heads to the battlefields of France; snobbish Hugo Black, drafted to fight in Russia under the British general, Edmund Ironside; and Chaplin himself, contending with studio moguls, accusations of cowardice, his unchecked heart and, most menacing of all, his mother, as he pursues the goal of making a movie ˜as good as he was’.
With a cast of enthralling characters both historical and fictional, Sunnyside is a heart-rending, spellbinding novel about dreams, ambition and the dawn of the modern age.
“An insanely ambitious novel…entertaining and thought-provoking.” Aravind Adiga, Financial Times
“A rare fictional portrayal of this enigmatic figure, and Gold’s rendition is marvellous…a nuanced portrait that is as moving, and at times as funny, as Chaplin’s best works.” TLS
“An epic – and suitably cinematic – tale…Gold displays a prodigious gift for storytelling, with a succession of scintillating set pieces and audacious one-liners…fantastic.“ Time Out
“A breathless stupendous novel…From lighthouse to Hollywood to starlets to war to stardom to madness to genius Gold’s startling narrative carries us across the world and back. Gold proves himself yet again to be the hungriest craftiest funniest and most humane novelist we have.” Junot DÃaz (author of A Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
The Anthologist
by Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker’s new novel, The Anthologist, is narrated by Paul Chowder, a poet of some little reknown who is sitting in his barn most of the time trying to write the introduction to a new anthology of poetry called Only Rhyme. He’s having a hard time getting started because his career is falling apart, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and actually deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised his readers that he will reveal many wonderful secrets and tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he’d thought. What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry, among other things; Paul tells us about all of the great poets, from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the contemporary scene as well as the editorial staff of The New Yorker’s editorial department. And what he reveals about the rhythm and music of poetry itself is astonishing and makes you realise how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul manages just barely to grasp all of this himself and what results is a tender, wonderfully romantic, often hilarious, and inspired novel. The Anthologist bears all the beloved hallmarks of Baker’s novels: it is witty, erudite, articulate and stylish, and full of the whimsical, compulsive elements that have made its author a worldwide success.
A Week in December
by Sebastian Faulks
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With Faulks’ usual skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this biting but humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it – and party on as though tomorrow is a dream. Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.
Walking in Pimlico
by Ann Featherstone
To ˜walk in Pimlico’ colloq. to be handsomely dressed
Murray’s Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Flash Words and Phrases (1857, 3rd ed.).
Murray’s Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Flash Words and Phrases (1857, 3rd ed.).
Stumbling across Bessie Spooner’s murdered body, comedian Corney Sage is caught in a tangle of deception and lies. He flees from his concert-room job in London’s Whitechapel to a comfortable spa town, and then to a circus and music hall. But try as he might, he cannot elude the killer. And in Corney’s world of theatricals, clowns and showmen, where appearances are surface deep and secrets are deadly, any one of them might be the murderer . . .
From the drawing rooms of polite society to dingy lodging houses, through shabby pump-room pavilions, fairgrounds and freak shows, Ann Featherstone brilliantly reconstructs nineteenth-century England in this gripping psychological thriller.
Pollard
by Laura Beatty
To fifteen-year-old Anne, the woods that lie beyond her house are a temporary refuge from her noisy, chaotic family, until one day she gathers her courage and steps into the woods, never to return. Slowly, she makes a new life for herself, learning to forage and to hunt, to build a house from the bounty of the woods and to listen to the voices of the trees. As she endures her first, terrible winter she develops the strength of character that will carry her through the dangers of her unconventional life and the bitter beauty of falling in love, but as the outside world encroaches on her secret existence Anne faces a terrible tragedy.
`A…fierce and wonderful book…This is just the sort of generous, provocative novel the Booker judges should cherish.’ Observer
‘This is a moving novel, delicate yet powerful, whose unusual heroine charms absolutely.‘ Econimist
Wanting
by Richard Flanagan
This is a novel of magnificent power and reach by a hugely original and impressive novelist (author of The Unknown Terrorist and Gould’s Book of Fish).
1844. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot aboriginal girl sits for her portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilisation – one that will determine whether science, Christianity and reason can be imposed in place of savagery, impulse and desire. A quarter of a century passes. Somewhere in the Arctic, Sir John Franklin has disappeared, along with his crew and two ships on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified as reports of cannibalism filter back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his soul. As several lives become conjoined by unexpected events and tragedies, Wanting transforms into a remarkable meditation on the ways in which desire – and its denial – shape our lives. Highly recommended.
“This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more. This is no literary anaesthetic; Wanting shakes us rudely from our stupors, wakes us up to history. There can be no author more passionate or unfettered than Flanagan.” Sydney Morning Herald
“Wanting is a novel you never want to end. As a reader, I can offer no greater accolade.“ Canberra Times
“Flanagan is a beautiful writer and Wanting is a beautiful and considered addition to his oeuvre.” The Age
Daddy’s Girl
by Margie Orford
Sharply intelligent and beautiful, investigative journalist turned profiler Dr Clare Hart has a reputation: she can see into the darkest places of the violent criminal mind.
Riedwaan Faizal is a member of the South African Police’s elite Gang Unit. Tough and streetwise, he is used to being a target. But when the danger of his one-man anti-gang war envelopes his only daughter, and he becomes the prime suspect in her abduction, there is little he can do. Distraught, Faizal turns to a sceptical Clare Hart for help. Their desperate search for the missing child, whose chances of survival diminish with each hour, unravels a tangled web of deception and danger that puts all their lives at terrible risk. Dr Clare Hart is back…Orford’s chilling prequel to Like Clockwork raises the stakes and the suspense to gripping new levels.
Riedwaan Faizal is a member of the South African Police’s elite Gang Unit. Tough and streetwise, he is used to being a target. But when the danger of his one-man anti-gang war envelopes his only daughter, and he becomes the prime suspect in her abduction, there is little he can do. Distraught, Faizal turns to a sceptical Clare Hart for help. Their desperate search for the missing child, whose chances of survival diminish with each hour, unravels a tangled web of deception and danger that puts all their lives at terrible risk. Dr Clare Hart is back…Orford’s chilling prequel to Like Clockwork raises the stakes and the suspense to gripping new levels.
Margie Orford is an award-winning journalist, photographer, film director, author and Fulbright scholar. Previous projects include Women Writing Africa, Fabulously 40 and Beyond: Women Coming into their Own and Fifteen Men: Words and Images from Behind Bars.
The Boy Next Door
by Irene Sabatini
As Zimbabwe breaks free of British colonial rule, young Lindiwe Bishop encounters violence at close hand when her white neighbour is murdered. But this is a domestic crime, apparently committed by the woman’s stepson, Ian, although he is released from prison surprisingly quickly. Intrigued, Lindiwe strikes up a covert friendship with the mysterious boy next door, until he abruptly departs for South Africa.
Years later, Ian returns to find Lindiwe has been hiding her own secret. It is to bring them closer together, but also test a relationship already contending with racial prejudice and the hostility of Lindiwe’s mother. And as their country slides towards chaos, the couple’s grip on happiness becomes ever more precarious.
Vividly evoking the traumatic history of a nation once brimming with promise, The Boy Next Door tells an engrossing, unpredictable story of love against the odds, and of the shadows cast by the past.
The Book of the Dead
by Kgebetli Moele
Khutso grows up poor in Masakeng. He studies hard, despite many distractions, and goes to the University of the North where he meets Pretty. Although she is scarred by her past relationships with men, the two fall in love and get married. Soon after, their son, Thapelo, is born. But there is no happily ever after here.
Even with her successful career, surrounded by beautiful things in her big house, Pretty is lonely. Their son seems to favour his father and Thapelo and Khutso seem to have their own secret club that she is not a part of. So Pretty has an affair. She contracts HIV, and their short marriage starts falling apart…
An explosive new novel from the author of Room 207.
And Short Stories Too…
Freedom: Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which starts memorably with Article 1: We are all born free and equal.
Freedom is an enthralling anthology of short stories by some of the world’s top writers. Most of the stories have been written especially for this anthology by a renowned array of internationally acclaimed writers, including Paulo Coelho, Yann Martel, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Amit Chaudhuri, Ariel Dorfman, Helen Dunmore, Marina Lewycka, Walter Mosley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, James Meek, Kate Atkinson, David Mitchell, Hector Aguilar Camin, Ishmael Beah, Boris Akunin, Alice Pung and Banana Yoshimoto.
Each acclaimed contributor has chosen one of the thirty UDHR rights as the basic inspiration for his or her story, and the result is an anthology that contains a complete mix of thoughtful, serious, funny and thrilling stories that provide some completely unexpected takes on the issue of human rights. Published in association with Amnesty International, Freedom is an eclectic collection that will prompt readers to engage imaginatively with what human rights mean for all of us.
Knockemstiff
by Donald Ray Pollock
A native of the very real Knockemstiff, Ohio, Pollock delivers poignant and raunchy fictional (perhaps) accounts of his hometown’s sad and stagnant residents, in his debut story collection that may remind readers of its thematic forefather, Winesburg, Ohio. The works span 50 years of violence, failure, lust and depravity, featuring characters like Jake, an abandoned hermit who dodges the draft during WWII, lives in a bus and discovers two young siblings committing incest on the bank of a creek; and Bobby, a recovering alcoholic who must face the imminent death of his abusive father.
The language and imagery of the novel are shockingly direct in detailing the pitiful lives of drug abusers, perverts and a forgotten population that isn’t welcome anywhere else in the world. Many of the characters appear in more than one story, providing a gritty depth to the whole, but the character that stands out the most is the town, as dismal and hopeless as the locals. Pollock is intimate with the grimy aspects of a small town (especially one named after a fistfight) full of poor, uneducated people without futures or knowledge of any other way to live. The most startling thing about these stories is they have an aura of truth
History and Science: How We Got Here and Why
Newton and the Counterfeiter
by Thomas Levinson
Already famous throughout Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, looking for a chance to move to London, Isaac Newton was offered and decided to accept the responsibility of running the Royal Mint. There Newton was drawn into a battle with William Chaloner, the most skilful of counterfeiters, a man who not only got away with faking His Majesty’s coins (a crime that the law equated with treason), but was trying to take over the Mint itself.
But Chaloner had no idea who he was taking on. Newton pursued his enemy with the cold, implacable logic that he brought to his scientific research. Set against the backdrop of early eighteenth-century London with its sewers running down the middle of the streets, its fetid rivers, its packed houses, smoke and fog, its industries and its great port, this dark tale of obsession and revenge transforms our image of Britain’s greatest scientist.
The Darwin Notebooks/The Newton Notebooks
These two beautiful volumes gather together notes, drawings and other ephemera from two of our most influential scientific geniuses.
From their early schooling and education and the development of their ideas, through their breakthrough discoveries and further investigations these books are written, designed, and illustrated to resemble a personal notebook or journal.
Both beautifully designed, and an informative insight into great minds and the times in which they lived, these are a treasure trove for anyone interested in science, its history, and the minds of those who still inform us today.
1001 Inventions that Changed the World
by Jack Challoner
1001 Inventions that Changed the World aims to give a wide and varied offering of scientific and technological breakthroughs that have shaped and aided human development throughout history. From the first stone flints sharpened by prehistoric man to the spoke wheel and from the first steam powered machine to manual manoeuvring units for space walks, this book explores the stories behind the innovations and traces the development from concept to completion. From the big ideas to the smaller objects, discover when the first pair of scissors was used, or how the world wide web was created inventions and ideas that have become integral to modern life now. Perfect to dip into and an endless source of intriguing discoveries, 1001 Inventions that Change the World presents the history of the world through all the brilliant ideas that came to fruition. It is a fascinating and comprehensive study of human endeavour throughout the ages.
God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
by James Hannan
This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective ‘medieval’ has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilised behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution.
In God’s Philosophers, James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus ‘prove’ that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. God’s Philosophers is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages – advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, God’s Philosophers brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Exploring the Mystery of Matter: The ATLAS Experiment
by Kerry-Jane Lowery
This is the history of the future of science – an extraordinary, complex, fascinating and sometimes incomprehensible story of our attempts to understand and recreate the origins of matter and our universe.
It is the story of the design and construction of one of the most significant technological wonders of the modern world that may change our understanding of matter. ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at the headquarters of CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. This new ˜atom smasher’, the result of more than eighteen years of research, design and construction is a 7000 ton behemoth of metal, glass, plastic, cables and computer chips, with 27km of underground tunnels and thousands of magnets operating at below minus 270° Celsius that produces particles for ATLAS to observe.
Protons, travelling at nearly the speed of light, collide within the heart of ATLAS, sending out showers of debris to recreate 30 million times a second the conditions that existed millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the event that many physicists believe set our universe in motion. The ATLAS experiment is the result of a Herculean collaboration of more than 2000 engineers and physicists from 36 countries that was designed to find a particle called the Higgs boson, one of the last remaining pieces of the puzzle that describes how our universe works. This is the fully-documented story of the fascinating journey of these passionate scientists as they toiled in cramped spaces and at dizzy heights to complete an extraordinary feat of engineering that may change our understanding of how our universe came into being.
Something Else Entirely
The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
by Douglas Rogers
“Walking past a chalet on the way home, I heard the moaning of people humping. For some reason I thought of Lonely Planet. The Bible for international budget travelers had written glowingly of Drifters [backpacker lodge] over the years and had helped make it the hot spot it became on the Cape to Cairo backpacker trail. I wondered what a new edition might make of the current scene: ˜Pizzas have given way to prostitutes at this rustic lodge in the beautiful Eastern Highlands. Comfortable chalets are ideal for coupling, even if the beds are a bit narrow, but the women in the bar are friendly and charge a bargain rate. Good music.’”
Zimbabwean-born journalist Douglas Rogers had moved to London and then New York to escape the ˜boring’ farm life, returning to visit his parents only sporadically, watching with dismay as the farm and lodge they had built ran into disrepair. On his next visit though, things were looking distinctly better – there was a new TV and the place had been smartened up. Curious, he asked his parents about this reversal of fortune – they were understandably cagey. He discovers, to his absolute astonishment, that marijuana is growing instead of maize; prostitutes, diamond dealers and refugee white farmers prop up the loge bar; and war veterans and youth militia, loyal to Mugabe, hover outside the gates.
Having left Africa in search of adventure and excitement, he discovers that the great story he had been looking for was happening in his parents’ back yard. And in going home he discovers there is a lot more to his country, himself and his parents than he ever imagined.
Compelling, beautifully written, funny, shocking and moving, this is a very, very good read – highly recommended.
Transit Maps of the World
by Mark Ovendon
Transit Maps of the World is the first and only comprehensive collection of historic and current maps of every rapid-transit system on earth. Using glorious, colorful graphics, Mark Ovenden traces the history of mass transit-including rare and historic maps, diagrams, and photographs, some available for the first time since their original publication. Transit Maps is the graphic designer’s new bible, the transport enthusiast’s dream collection, and a coffee-table essential for everyone who’s ever traveled in a city. A suprising, intriguing and beautiful book.
“Ovenden does what no other design history book has ever done. Transit Maps of the World is a must-have.” New York Times Book Review
“This book is the stuff that dreams are made of.” Newsday
“A fabulous collection. These maps are almost works of art, and can kindle a remembrance of a past trip or a dream of a future journey.” Seattle Times
“Even if you are not a “map person” this book makes it so easy to experience the unique perspective of rail-based transit. Artistically a treat with its interesting colors, shapes and design; it’s a coffee table essential. Ovenden brings a unique perspective to maps and to travel in general. Transit Maps of the World is a must-read for the literary traveler.” Literary Traveller.com
“A vibrant tip of the hat to the world’s urban train systems.” National Geographic Intelligent Traveller
“The sort of book you couldn’t imagine you needed until you got it and now you can’t imagine how you could do without it . . . It’s fantastic!” Robert Elms, BBC London
“An object lesson in information design.” Wallpaper
Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionised Ocean Science
by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano
Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. Though he has degrees in engineering and oceanography, he’s never held a traditional academic post, choosing instead to consult, for everyone from the oil companies to Seattle sewage treatment facilities to the Navy; and along the way following his interests, researching many different aspects of ocean currents.
In May 1990 a Korean freighter was wracked by a storm and spilled its cargo – over 60,00 Nike sneakers – into the North Pacific. Soon, these sneakers were carried away on the ocean’s currents and found washing up on coasts around the world. Ebbesmeyer realised that he could use the exact time and location of the spill, along with the location that each sneaker (conveniently individually tagged) was salvaged to track the ocean current which brought it there. This new science technique quickly captured the imaginations of beachcombers and media around the world, particularly after the spill of 29,000 plastic toy ducks in 1992. Ebbesmeyer gathered a worldwide team of volunteers, and continued to search out and document the location at which the objects, set afloat by cargo spills, finally hit the shore. It is a fascinating look at the creativity and energy of a most unusual man – as well as offering an amazing look at what currents have meant for the world and especially mankind through the centuries.
Through My Lens: A Photographic Memoir
by Alf Kumalo
Alf Kumalo is one of South Africa’s foremost photo-journalists. He has been working in the field for fifty years and still freelances for The Star. In the sixties he was part of the now famous Drum team. Kumalo’s work has appeared in international newspapers such as The Observer, The New York Times, and the British Sunday Independent. He is the author of two books, Mandela: Echoes of an Era and Alf Kumalo: South African Photographer.
This is an insider’s account, brimming with colourful anecdotes, humour and passion, of South Africa’s turbulent past. Kumalo shares intimate moments of pain and of triumph, in pictures and words. He was the one who escorted Nelson Mandela’s aged mother through the menacing crowds at the Rivonia Trial. He was there at HF Verwoerd’s funeral. He was a guest at Mohammad Ali’s home in Chicago and at the Rumble in the Jungle fight in Kinshasa. Kumalo joined Mandela on his first visit to America as SA president.
Kumalo’s life’s work is a visual documentary of a nation’s transformation, but he is also a storyteller of note. His first-person account of historic events and private moments is filled with humour and compassion.
The Bicycle Diaries
by David Byrne
Byrne is fascinated by cities, especially as visited on a trusty fold-up bicycle, and in these random musings over many years while cycling through such places as Sydney, Australia; Manila, Philippines; San Francisco; or his home of New York, the former Talking Heads artist offers his frank views on urban planning, art and postmodern civilisation in general. For each city, he focuses on its germane issues, such as the still troublingly clear-cut class system in London, notions of justice and human migration that spring to mind while visiting the Stasi Museum in Berlin, religious iconography in Istanbul, gentrification in Buenos Aires and Imelda Marcos’s legacy in Manila. He notes that the condition of the roads reveals much about a city, like the impossibly civilised, pleasant pathways designed just for bikes in Berlin versus the fractured car-mad system of highways in some American cities, giving way to an eerie post apocalyptic landscape such as Detroit. Candid and self-deprecating, Byrne offers a work that is as engaging as it is cerebral and informative.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
by Selina Hastings
For nearly sixty years Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was one of the most famous writers in the world, and yet his personal life was largely kept hidden. An enormously successful playwright and the author of over a hundred short stories and twenty-one novels – several of which, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale and The Razor’s Edge, are now established classics – Maugham early became an expert at concealment. Predominantly homosexual, Maugham made a disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, although deeply in love with the charming but dissolute Gerald Haxton. It was partly to escape his wife that Maugham undertook the extensive journeys in the Far East that inspired so many of his memorable short stories. A talented linguist, during both world wars Maugham worked for British Intelligence. In between he moved in literary and theatrical circles in London, New York and Hollywood and entertained lavishly at his luxurious villa in the south of France. Outwardly his life was richly rewarding, but privately he suffered anguish from an unrequited love affair and a shocking final betrayal.
Acclaimed biographer Selina Hastings has had access to Maugham’s extensive private correspondence as well as to important family testimony, which sheds a fascinating new light on this complex and extraordinary man.
“[Hastings] provides a searing emotional history…her closing chapter…is so powerfully written, in places so shocking, as to give a series of physical jolts to the reader. Hastings’s book cannot be bettered.” Richard Davenport-Hines, Sunday Telegraph
“The places and people she describes are portrayed with such graphic clarity and assurance. She sets a scene or establishes a personality with great economy and intensity.” William Boyd, Observer
“Hasting’s talent as a biographer is to create three-dimensional novelists…her Life of Maugham is pitch-perfect: supple, confident and written with something of the same beady detachment (and enjoyable signature streak of malice) as the great tale-teller himself.” Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph
Suggs and the City: My Journeys through Disappearing London
by Suggs
Madness frontman Suggs takes us on a journey through the main drags and side streets of his beloved London town, uncovering the city’s hidden treasures as he goes.
Armed with a spirit of adventure, a passion for London and a trusted A-Z, Suggs embarks on an unpredictable journey through the bustling main drags and little-known side streets to explore the eccentric story of his extraordinary home town. Having lived in London all his life, this is Suggs’s personal take on an ever-changing city, whose traditions and foibles are under threat from the encroaching modernism. From the suited and booted tailors of Savile Row to the sex traders of bohemian Soho, by way of quaint and quirky habitats, brilliant but beleaguered boozers, the exotic eateries that have made London a gastronomic heartland and a music scene that’s both the envy of the world and dear to Suggs’s own heart. Suggs and the City is a guided tour of the quirks of London’s chaotic centre and the surprises of its sleepy suburbs. And it’s a love letter from one of its favourite sons.
Armed with a spirit of adventure, a passion for London and a trusted A-Z, Suggs embarks on an unpredictable journey through the bustling main drags and little-known side streets to explore the eccentric story of his extraordinary home town. Having lived in London all his life, this is Suggs’s personal take on an ever-changing city, whose traditions and foibles are under threat from the encroaching modernism. From the suited and booted tailors of Savile Row to the sex traders of bohemian Soho, by way of quaint and quirky habitats, brilliant but beleaguered boozers, the exotic eateries that have made London a gastronomic heartland and a music scene that’s both the envy of the world and dear to Suggs’s own heart. Suggs and the City is a guided tour of the quirks of London’s chaotic centre and the surprises of its sleepy suburbs. And it’s a love letter from one of its favourite sons.
Venice
by Peter Ackroyd
In this sumptuous vision of Venice, Peter Ackroyd turns his unparalleled skill at evoking place to Italy, and the city of myth, mystery and beauty, set like a jewel in its glistening lagoon. His account is at once romantic and packed with facts, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the fiestas and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and a trading empire, the wars against Napoleon and the tourist invasions of today.
Everything is here: the merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the mosaics of St Mark’s and the glass blowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of lepers; the doges and the destitute and the artists with their passion for colour and form – Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. There are wars and sieges, scandals and seductions, fountains playing in deserted squares and crowds thronging the markets. And there is a dark undertone too, of shadowy corners and dead ends, prisons and punishment. The language and way of thinking of the Venetians sets them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. “The moon rules Venice,” Ackroyd writes: “It is built on ocean shells and ocean ground; it has the aspect of infinity. It is the floating world…changing and variable and accidental.” We could have no better guide to Venice.
Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? A Graphic Novel
by Brian Fries
Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? tells the story of a young boy and his relationship with his father. It covers the period from the 1939 New York World’s Fair to the last Apollo space mission in 1975. Told through the eyes of the son as he grows up in an era that is optimistic and ambitious, fueled by industry, engines, electricity, rockets and atoms, it is an insightful look at relationships and the promise of the future, presenting the story in a way that only comics and graphic novels can.
Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy: A Short, Short History of South Africa
by Francis Wilson
An asteroid the size of Table Mountain crashed into what was to become South Africa over 2 billion years ago, marking the spot. The country’s history since then has always been robust and full of energy. This book takes you in record time from that moment, when the earth’s richest gold reefs were shaped, to the advent of democracy in 1994, another event that stunned the world.
Along the way you will encounter some of the most ancient dinosaurs on record, the very first people on the planet, and the first cultures. You will see outsiders moving in to reshape history: hunters and gatherers, cultivators and herders, iron-workers from the north, and immigrants from Europe and Asia. They fought and made peace; they stumbled upon gold and diamonds; they rose to the heights of excellence and sunk to the depths of oppression, until one day they all queued as equals to elect a government.
This beautifully illustrated and handy little book is already a huge hit at the Book Lounge – fill in the gaps in your knowledge of South African history, then buy one for all your friends for Christmas!
Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen
by Ira B. Nadel
The flamboyant life of Canadian singer/ songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen is given straightforward treatment in this authorised biography by Nadel, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia. Clearly an admirer of Cohen’s work, Nadel is unstinting in his depiction of his subject as one who has “led a life of unfettered romance, largely free of obligations or responsibility.” From Cohen’s precocious childhood in the Jewish community of Montreal through his years as one of Canada’s most promising young poets, to his intermittent career as a sort of lugubrious rock star – “the prince of bummers” – the artist comes across as egotistical, charming, dilettantish and moody, swinging wildly between vainglory and self-pity. He was an improbabale singer: even Cohen compared his voice to a bumblebee – in theory it shouldn’t fly, but it does. The melodrama of his life seems manufactured to fit his gifts as both singer and songwriter – and this book tells that drama so well.
For the Young…and the Young at Heart
The Magical World of Milligan
by Spike Milligan
The Magical World of Milligan is a sparkly new children’s compendium that gathers together a grand selection of Milligan favourites, including such delightful poems and stories as ‘On the Ning Nang Nong’, ‘The Terrible Monster Jelly’ and lots of Twits. Full colour and complete with Milligan’s drawings and sketches, The Magical World of Milligan also includes poems from Silly Verse for Kids to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in 1959. This wonderful new book will appeal to the legion of Milligan fans and open the door to new ones, young and old alike.
The Things They Said…
“What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
“I’ve never been a millionaire, but I know I’d be just darling at it.” Dorothy Parker