You Are Here: a Portable History of the Universe
by Christopher Potter, Hutchinson 304pp £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). A few years ago, a successful publisher named Christopher Potter had a nervous breakdown and decided to write a book "that examined the mysteries of the universe", said Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian. The result is You Are… [continued]
Burnt Shadows
by Kamila Shamsie, Bloomsbury, 384pp, £14.99, Week Bookshop £13.49 (incl. p&p). Kamila Shamsie's fifth novel is an "epic" of "huge ambition", said Maya Jaggi in the Guardian. Unfolding in four sections, it follows the fate of a Japanese woman and her family from Nagasaki in 1945, where she… [continued]
A View from the Foothills
by Chris Mullin, Profile, 448pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). "It is a rule almost without exception that the only good political diaries are written by bad politicians – politicians who were not very good at doing what they were supposed to do," said Andy McSmith in the… [continued]
The Ends of Life
by Keith Thomas, OUP, 416pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). Keith Thomas made his mark as a historian with Religion and the Decline of Magic, a landmark study of the 16th century witch craze, said John Carey in the Sunday Times. "The kind of history he writes is… [continued]
Alone in Berlin
by Hans Fallada, Penguin, 608pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). This "truly great book", published in 1947, has only now been translated into English for the first time, said Justin Cartwright in the Sunday Telegraph. After the war, a minister in the new German government gave the novelist… [continued]
The Kindly Ones
by Jonathan Littell, Chatto & Windus, 992pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). "This epic novel, nearly 1,000 pages long, has already made publishing history in France," said Antony Beevor in the Times. Written in French by an American now living in Spain, it is the fictional memoir of… [continued]
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire
by Iain Sinclair, Hamish Hamilton, 581pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). "More than anyone else, it is Iain Sinclair who launched the literary cult of London in the past couple of decades," said Phil Baker in the Sunday Times. His books blend fact and fiction, mixing esoterica with… [continued]
Strangers
by Anita Brookner, Fig Tree, 202pp, £16.99, Week Bookshop £15.29 (incl. p&p). "Bleak, bleak, bleak," said Sebastian Smee in the Spectator. The main character of Anita Brookner's latest novel is Paul Sturgis, a retired bank manager, who lives in a dark little flat in Kensington. He has no friends… [continued]
The Girl on the Landing
by Paul Torday, Weidenfield & Nicolson, 304pp, £12.99, Week Bookshop £11.69 (incl. p&p). "Paul Torday writes easily about unease," said Kate Kellaway in the Observer. In this, his third novel, the author of the wildly successful 2007 satire Salmon Fishing in the Yemen tells the story of a man… [continued]
Dancing to the Precipice
by Caroline Moorehead, Chatto & Windus, 496pp, £20, Week Bookshop £18 (incl. p&p). "Lucie de la Tour du Pin was an ordinary woman who lived through extraordinary times," said Christopher Hart in the Sunday Times. Born into the heart of the ancien regime, 19 years before the French Revolution,… [continued]
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