Wednesday 4 January 2012

The Literary Year 2012
Taken from the Telegraph online…

JANUARY The year in books begins with the ultimate English legend: The Death of King Arthur: A New Verse Translation (Faber), in which Simon Armitage follows his interpretation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with a reshaping of the 15th-century Alliterative Morte Arthure for modern ears. As quintessentially American as Arthur is English is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (Fourth Estate), the door-stopping debut novel about baseball that has had its young author hailed as the new voice of his nation. Harbach’s equivalent in non-fiction is surely Jodi Kantor, the celebrated New York Times reporter whose unique White House access resulted in The Obamas: A Mission, A Marriage (Allen Lane). And what would her subjects think of Roger Scruton’s conservative programme for conservation, Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet (Atlantic)?

FEBRUARY There’s much gritty wilderness in Booker-nominated Kate Grenville’s new novel Sarah Thornhill (Canongate), a dark love story which returns to the early Australia of her celebrated The Secret River. Another hotly anticipated novel is Hope: A Tragedy (Picador), a mordant look at the burdens of history – and mothers – by the cult memoirist Shalom Auslander, who surely deserves a place in Colm Tóibín’s essays on writers and families, New Ways to Kill Your Mother (Viking). In Religion for Atheists (Hamish Hamilton) Alain de Botton chooses what best to steal from religion to feel good. The ultimate in literary non-fiction comes from Granta in the form of Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, translated by Michael Hofmann. From the big dog of Austro-Hungarian letters to Hollywood’s most famous canine star: Susan Orlean has written the definitive biography of Rin Tin Tin (Atlantic); and a more esoteric cinematic history comes from the genre-busting Geoff Dyer, whose study of the Russian film Stalker, Zona (Canongate), spirals off into unexpected directions. Traditionalists who prefer their history linear, human and unashamedly British will appreciate All the King’s Men: The British Soldier from the Restoration to Waterloo by the celebrated historian Saul David (Viking).

MARCH At last, the long-awaited personal history from an extraordinary former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway. Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir is published, of course, by Canongate. Also set in the Scottish capital is a novel by Jennie Erdal, Naim Attallah’s one-time ghostwriter: The Missing Shade of Blue is a tale of philosophy and friendship. Capital is both title and subject of John Lanchester’s hefty new novel from Faber about the state of the nation post-financial crisis; William Boyd turns his attention to the many crises in wartime Europe with Waiting For Sunrise (Bloomsbury); and, after a seven year wait, Tim Lott is to publish a new novel, Under the Same Stars (Simon & Schuster) about two brothers driving across America’s Deep South. Travels of a more fantastical hue are to be found in Gulliver’s Travels, illustrated and updated by cartoonist Martin Rowson (Atlantic). In another homage to a past writer, Peter Ackroyd tackles his hero in Wilkie Collins (Vintage). Masha Gessen’s new book, The Man Without a Face (Granta), tells the story of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. Another big book in world affairs will be Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West by Ahmed Rashid (Allen Lane). After which serious business you can cheer yourself up with Various Pets Dead and Alive, a wry comedy about the offspring of hippy parents by Marina Lewycka.

APRIL Spring is heralded by two novels of the Eighties, Skagboys (Jonathan Cape) by Irvine Welsh, a prequel to Trainspotting, and Can We Still Be Friends?, the debut by Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman (Fig Tree) about a group of young women in the age of big hair and pixie boots. Another literary look at past relationships is The Beginner’s Goodbye (Chatto) by that faultless veteran Anne Tyler, a bittersweet ghost story about what happens to a marriage when a dead spouse reappears. Bound to be every bit as moving is The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey (Faber), in which a museum, a grieving lover and a 200-year-old automaton teach lessons about the science of love. For the same subject in non-fiction form try The Science of Love and Betrayal by Robin Dunbar (Faber): the Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology shows what new discoveries in psychology and ethology tell us about falling in love. One man who knew a thing or two about love was Tolstoy, the subject of a new biography by AN Wilson (Atlantic). Savage Continent sounds like it too could be a book about the rocky terrain of the heart but is in fact an incisive new portrait of Europe after the Second World War by Keith Lowe (Viking). An alternative version of post-war history can be found in the book of poems edited by Carol Ann Duffy on the occasion of a very special anniversary: in Jubilee Lines (Faber), 60 poets each write about one of the years of Her Majesty’s reign. Another permutation of biography by proxy is offered by Philip Hensher, whose Scenes from Early Life (Fourth Estate) is a fictionalised memoir of his husband’s Bengali family in war-torn Seventies Pakistan.

MAY May promises rich pickings for history buffs, kicking off with What, When, How and Why (Weidenfeld), a memoir by Bernard Lewis, aka “the White House’s favourite historian”. The Spectre of Vichy by Allan Massie (Jonathan Cape) undertakes to remind us of the noble aims of Vichy France; and Just Send Me Word: A Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag by Orlando Figes (Allen Lane) tells of a huge and extraordinary set of letters sent between lovers separated by war and gulag. Major current affairs titles to beef up your armchair pontificating are This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel by David Goldberg (Faber), a liberal London rabbi’s controversial take on Jews and the Middle East, and Islamism and Islam by Bassam Tibi (Yale), which elucidates some crucial differences between the religion and its attendant “-ism”. Sure to be a hit is Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady (Bloomsbury) by Kate “Mr Whicher” Summerscale, a spicy tale of romantic intrigue in 19th-century Edinburgh. But 2012’s two most important books by and about women are Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (Jonathan Cape), the genius American artist and writer’s follow-up to her award-winning memoir Fun Home, this time concentrating on the women she has loved; and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) a novelisation of the downfall of Anne Boleyn, that pivotal event in Tudor history. Roads to our past don’t come much richer than The A303: Highway to the Sun by Tom Fort (Simon & Schuster) a meditation on the great route to the west and its ancient origins. Further unexpected treats are to be found in Hedge Britannia by Hugh Barker (Bloomsbury), a look at how hedges contribute to national identity; and if you like that, you’ll love the complete history of wayfaring, Ramble On by Sinclair McKay (Fourth Estate).

JUNE Still rambling on (in the most sensitive and intelligent way possible) is Robert Macfarlane, whose The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Hamish Hamilton) charts his walks along the byways of Cambridgeshire. Also keeping their eyes to the ground are the heroes of Reading the Rocks: How a Club of Gentleman Geologists Changed the World by Brenda Maddox (Bodley Head), an introduction to the major figures of Victorian geology whose discoveries redefined life on Earth. That unique chronicler of houses and streets, Gillian Tindall, focuses on Three Houses, Many Lives (Chatto) to evoke four centuries of social change in England. Or for a fictional look at the lives behind the facades of pretty houses, Faber is publishing Michael Frayn’s Skios, a story of mistaken identity on the sun-baked Greek island. Less sunny but equally insightful will be Canada by the Pulitzer-winning Richard Ford (Bloomsbury), the tale of one boy’s road-trip with his fugitive parents. Another much-admired American writer and thinker, Siri Hustvedt, has a collection of essays about Living, Thinking, Looking – ie being human – coming from Sceptre, and two titles on Yale’s list complement it nicely: The Woman Reader, a history by Belinda Jack and My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann, the proceeds of 2009’s discovery of the correspondence between the novelist and her German teacher-turned-assistant.

JULY Wharton would surely have approved of How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life by Robert and Edward Skidelsky (Allen Lane), a radical new assessment of what we really want from life. And what is and isn’t worth wanting is the theme of the new novel by Stuart Evers, the supercool winner of last year’s London Book Award: If This is Home (Picador) follows a confused Englishman who runs away to Las Vegas. Similarly hip and pacy is Booker-nominated James Kelman’s Mo Said She Was Quirky (Hamish Hamilton), a race through 24 hours in the life of an ordinary young woman. And don’t forget the latest offering by Lionel Shriver, The New Republic (HarperCollins). Expect political satire, journalists and terrorism.

AUGUST August, typically a spare month for fiction, nevertheless has two strong contenders for the prize of top summer read. Picador is buzzing with excitement after securing the rights to Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann, the debut novel by the great-great-great-granddaughter of Herman Melville, which takes us on a jazz-imbued tour of the glossy East Coast lives of a wealthy Fifties family. By contrast, Enid Shomer’s The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (Simon & Schuster) promises little glitz or glamour but heat and mud aplenty in an atmospheric imagining of the friendship that grew between Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert on their 1849 Nile journey.

SEPTEMBER Egypt and its neighbours are thoroughly analysed by Jeremy Bowen in Anatomy of a Revolution (Simon & Schuster), the BBC correspondent’s view of the Arab Spring. Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer’s Soldaten (Simon & Schuster) is a selection of transcripts from secretly-recorded conversations between German soldiers in the Second World War. Already a bestseller on the Continent, it promises an unsanitised glimpse into the Nazi barracks. It’s the English Civil War that provides the setting for Lawrence Norfolk’s keenly anticipated novel John Saturnall’s Feast (Bloomsbury), whose hero is a 17th-century orphan who becomes the greatest cook of his generation. A less jolly but no doubt equally rewarding read will be Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury), a literary attack on the internet. The internet – and celebrity cooks – are sure to feature in Modernity Britain, the follow-up to Austerity Britain by David Kynaston (also Bloomsbury).

OCTOBER-DECEMBER One of the most talked-about books of autumn will be Empire of the Mind: The Dawn of the Techno-Political Age (John Murray) by Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, and Jared Cohen, a US government adviser. With insights from politics and industry, it claims to be the first comprehensive study of the interplay between technology and world affairs. It’s the role of new technologies in music that concerns Talking Heads’ David Byrne in How Music Works (Canongate), apparently the closest he’ll ever get to writing an autobiography. And finally, there’s a true biographical treat in store with the long-awaited arrival of Patrick Leigh Fermor by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper (John Murray), the sure-to-be-glorious life of the 20th century’s greatest Hellenic traveller. What more civilised way to round off a varied and inspiring year in books?

Will this year be the year you write that book? Why not contact a member of the Words Worth Reading Ltd team and find out how they can help you make it happen!


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