Non-Fiction
William Wilberforce
By William Hague
The decision to abolish the slave trade was taken by Parliament on February 24, 1807 and William Hague's biography of the abolitionists' figurehead, William Wilberforce, was scheduled to appear on its 200th anniversary. Given the resurgence of the modern Tory Party and his role in it, it is not surprising his book was late - but was it worth the wait? In short, yes. Wilberforce, like Hague, was a Yorkshire MP and celebrated orator who joined the House young. Unlike Hague he was a career politician, devoting himself first to campaigning against vice (though not before trying his hand at wine, women and cards) and only later to abolishing the slave trade. However, Hague's account of how his subject finally won is never less than fascinating - and while the scholarship may not be new, he tells his tale with elan. Unsurprisingly, Hague is strongest on Wilberforce the politician, but his affection for the man gives his portrait real warmth.
HarperPress, £25
To buy this book
The Boy Who Loved Books
By John Sutherland
John Sutherland, eminent professor of English literature, has already written a memoir about his alcoholism. This one is more traditional, the life and times of a grammar-school boy who made it good. Sutherland grew up in working-class Colchester, his father died on a RAF training exercise and his mother left him to decamp to Argentina with an admirer. From then on it was school, jazz, university (Leicester) and booze. There's a lot of anger in this account - with his mother, with the system, with himself - hence the drinking. It took over to such an extent that he once served a bottle of his own urine to dinner guests instead of wine, but through it all he managed to keep his academic career going - just. This is not an edifying read; nor does Sutherland delve deeply into his family history or his own reasoning. It is, though, an honest tale. Just be careful if he invites you to dinner.
John Murray, £16.99
To buy this book
Blood River
By Tim Butcher
If you are looking for Africa's heart of darkness, then the Congo (aka Zaire, Belgian Congo) has a copper-bottomed claim. Although rich in natural resources, it is poor in all human institutions and continues to suffer a traumatic post-independence malaise, characterised by poverty, corruption and violence. Tim Butcher, the Africa correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, decided he wanted to follow Henry Morton Stanley's route along the Congo River to Kisangani (Stanleyville) to see the place properly for himself. His is a vivid narrative of the very worst of the continent - a 44-day journey largely by motorbike and boat, where every village was populated by gun-toting militias and where personal safety is an alien concept. He protected himself by keeping on the move. Since the Congo has lost ten per cent of its population in post-Mobutu fighting, Butcher wisely didn't want to become part of the statistics.
Chatto & Windus, £12.99
To buy this book
How to Kill
By Kris Hollington
The history of assassination is as long as it is bloody, but its results have always been unpredictable. From Julius Caesar to Alexander Litvinenko, political murder has unleashed a cascade of unforeseen consequences. Kris Hollington looks at modern assassinations and attempts from the Cold War on, and his conclusion? Try as they might, public figures - and therefore the course of history - will always be vulnerable to the killer's bullet or bomb. His case studies include Martin Luther King, JFK and John Lennon, as well as those who survived (Ronald Reagan, John Paul II). Some were the victims of loners with irrational hatreds or desperate for a place in history, others of government-sponsored terror, including the Soviet-leaning PM of Iraq, bumped off by a young Saddam Hussein in the pay of the US and Egypt. Hollington looks at the bunglers, too. It all makes for a fascinating roll call, but noble causes and assassination don't sit well together.
Century, £11.99
To buy this book
Fiction
After Dark
By Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami's Japan is a place of strangeness and dreams, where cats can talk and spirits frequently visit. It is also an ultra-modern setting of malls, neon, American brands and noodle bars. This trick of adding a magic realist top layer to an unfamiliar cultural base - to Western readers at least - has made him a cult writer. After Dark is set between midnight and dawn one night. Mari and Takahashi meet in a restaurant - she's a translator for a Chinese prostitute, he's a musician. Her sister has been asleep for two months (a familiar Murakami ploy) only to disappear and emerge as a ghostly presence on a TV screen. There are numerous other weirdnesses among the hotel rooms and bright lights of one of Tokyo's 'amusement districts'. It's cinematic, atmospheric and puzzling. It might be a tale of alienation and it might not - but whatever it is, Murakami-land is like no other.
Harvill Secker, £14.99
To buy this book
Murder at Deviation Junction
By Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin's crime series, featuring his railway detective Jim Stringer, has been gathering pace for a couple of years now. Stringer is a turn-of-the-century porter turned sleuth whose patch is the North Eastern Railway from York to Middlesbrough. Coming from the wrong side of the tracks, things aren't easy for him, but he's honest, dogged and quietly ambitious. Here it is 1910 and a train is stuck in a snowdrift in the hills. As the shovels clear the track, they uncover a body that has clearly been dead for some time. Stringer's investigations point to a defunct club of wealthy factory owners who travelled the line in private carriages, but things are rapidly complicated by a psychopathic Scotsman. Martin has grown in confidence with each book and has honed his ear for dialogue. The minutiae of a soot-encrusted world are just one of the pleasures offered by this picaresque yarn.
Faber, £10.99
Picture this
Shuffle by Christian Marclay
This is a difficult 'book' to pin down. First and foremost, it's a box of picture cards by Christian Marclay, who has rather obsessively photographed musical ciphers spotted in unexpected places, to show how intricately music has infiltrated our everyday lives. But there's a trick thrown in to complicate our perception and satisfy the music buffs: Marclay is a composer as well as visual artist, so he also intends the images to form a 'spontaneous musical score' that each reader can organise differently. In the end, it's a book, a pack of cards, a manuscript-in-waiting and an interactive collage of images and sounds: with Shuffle to play with, who needs an iPod?
Aperture, £19.95
To buy this book
Paperbacks
Having It So Good
Peter Hennessy's impressive history of Britain in the 1950s examines the set-piece scenes of the decade with impressive clarity - Suez, Profumo, the birth of consumerism et al. It was this period, says the professor, and not the Sixties that shaped the nation.
Penguin, £9.99
To buy this book
The Lay of the Land
Frank Bascombe reaches the third volume of Richard Ford's trilogy with an errant second wife, a real estate agency, prostate cancer and an eye on imminent mortality. Inviting his first wife to a Thanksgiving gathering adds complications that Ford develops stylishly.
Bloomsbury, £7.99
To buy this book
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
In this memoir Bill Bryson, everyone's favourite American, returns to his childhood in 1950s Iowa - the best of times and places. He was a child with an eccentric mother, a tight-fisted father and a rich imagination. There's humour and warmth on every page.
Black Swan, £7.99
To buy this book
Donne: The Reformed Soul
John Donne was a far from fey poet: his career encompassed spells as a sailor, celebrated preacher and apostate, too. John Stubbs does him credit in this fine life, unpicking the poems with lucidity, the man who wrote them with acuity, and the times with vigour.
Penguin, £9.99
To buy this book
Books is edited by Edwin Reardon
Last week’s Big Book: Fateful Choices
More reviews in She’s Gotta Have It
