A plagiarist in a kitchen and a horse walking into a bar; Dublin crimes and Washington misdemeanours; relationships, revolutions and relaxations ... leading writers reveal their summer recommendations
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A book I absolutely loved wasMargo JeffersonsNegroland(Granta), a memoir of her life as part of the African American economically privileged class. It is a sharply honest, biting, reflective look at America, and a useful guide on how race and class do not merely intersect, but race becomes class. Im looking forward to readingSalt Houses (Hutchinson), a novel byHala Alyan, which feels very promising.The Big Stick (Basic) byEliot Cohen has been on my to-read pile for a while and I plan to get to it this summer. AndHouse of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a new poetry collection, byIshion Hutchinson.
William Dalrymple Summer for me is coming back from the blistering Indian heat to the cool and cloudy skies of Scotland. This year I am packingAdam NicolsonsThe Seabirds Cry (HarperCollins) to read at Seacliff, the worlds most beautiful beach, which lies directly opposite one of the places Nicolson writes about: the Bass Rock, the worlds biggest gannetry, with 150,000 resident seabirds. Nicolson writes that they sound like a regiment of Cossacks cheering Ura, Ura, Ura .Maya Jasanoffs masterpieceThe Dawn Watch (William Collins) will take us rather further afield up the Congo in Conrads footsteps. Judging by the opening chapters, this is one of the most important books on colonialism to be written in our time, and by one of our most brilliant young historians. Finally, Im looking forward to finishingThe Epic City (Bloomsbury), a beautifully observed and even more beautifully written new study of Calcutta. In its author,Kushanava Choudhury, we clearly have an important new talent.
Richard Ford If youre interested in Dublin, or if youre interested in the novelistJohn Banville, or if youre just interested in radiantly superb sentences about whatever Im all three thenTime Pieces: A Dublin Memoir(Hachette Ireland) is a book youll not be able to put down. Banville walks the streets of his adopted hometown both sides of the Liffey giving us history (his, in some instances), wry anecdote, cultural commentary, architecture, famous personages and savages, ultimately providing a privileged glimpse into what makes this rambunctious old hodge-podge a genius disguised as a town. Take it along on your holiday.The City Always Wins(Faber),Omar Robert Hamiltons vivid debut novel, reads at times like gritty frontline reporting of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. But it is a novel through and through felicitous, immensely perceptive and thorough in its insights, and scrupulously humane. Its portrayal of the young, who are committed against insuperable odds to the salvation of the Egyptian ideal, is a bitter history lesson coupled with a riveting human story about political innocence and passions that wont die.
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Kazuo Ishiguro Universal Harvester(Scribe),John Darnielles novel set amid the cornfields and small communities of Iowa, starts like a spooky thriller, then opens out into a moving, beautifully etched picture of Americas lost and profoundly lonely. Both Evan Davis and Matthew dAncona recently published excellent books on our so-called post-truth era, but Id like to highlightJames BallsPost-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World(Biteback) for its vivid analysis of how the business models and incentives currently prevailing in digital media render decent discourse all but inaudible. Many people tell me the emergence of young Irish novelistSally Rooney is a moment of real significance, so Im going to read herConversations with Friends(Faber) to find out if theyre right.
Mark Lawson At a time when either a vacation or a staycation is likely to find the reader in a country recently subject to an unexpected election result, Im looking forward to the explanation of maverick candidates offered by a fine political commentator,Steve Richards, inThe Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost Its Way (Atlantic). Among the small squad of good novels about football,A NaturalbyRoss Raisin (Cape) is said by reliable scouts to be well worth its purchase fee. And, after being impressed by howSusie Steiner managed to find fresh ground in the police procedural with last yearsMissing, Presumed, Im keen to team up with her intriguing cop, DS Manon Bradshaw, again inPersons Unknown (Borough).
Eimear McBride Not many writers can straddle short and long form fiction as well asSarah Hall. This summer she has her short story hat on and if the rest of the stories are as good as Evie Im bettingMadame Zero (Faber) will be superb. The excellent bookseller Katia Wengraf, from the excellent Review Bookshop in Peckham, recently gave me a copy ofSphinx(Deep Vellum)byAnne Garrta by a friend who said Id like it. Best described as Its a genderless love story and written by one of the few female members of the Oulipo writers group, and I think shell probably be right. Modernism might not be makingWill Self a millionaire but its certainly helping him prove what a great writer he is. Im still thinking aboutUmbrella andShark, so I cant wait to readPhone(Viking), the final instalment of the trilogy. Self is one of the few writers whose language and ideas are at constant war with the easy-access tonelessness churned out by many though not all of todays creative writing industries. He has a brilliant mind, is a master of the compound pun and never writes for idiots; whats not to adore?
Pankaj Mishra
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Writers from Russia and Eastern Europe remain the most eloquent witnesses to the insidious appeal of authoritarianism and demagoguery, especially as it goes global. InMiosz: A Biography(Harvard)Andrzej Franaszeks life ofCzesaw Miosz, we see a profound sensibility living through, and grasping, the inherent nihilism of three very different promises of power and wealth: nazism, Stalinism and Americanism.Ivan KrastevsAfter Europe (Pennsylvania), a sober reckoning with the challenges to Europe, defines the dangers that will outlast, and may even be aggravated by, Emmanuel Macrons triumph. I am only half-way throughMasha GessensThe Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead), but it already seems indispensable. I was very struck byThe Story of a Brief Marriage (Granta), a novel byAnuk Arudpragasam. With its unflinchingly account of the suffering of war, it reminds you of Andre Malrauxs novel set in Chinas civil war in the 1930sLa condition humaine; but with its intense physicality it renders intimate what is often seen as the remote struggles for humanity of those caught up in large-scale violence. I also much admiredThe Promised Land: Poems from Itinerant Life (Penguin),Andr Naffis-Sahelys sharp meditations on our vast but remarkably homogeneous global landscape.
Sarah Perry It would be a pretty paltry sort of summer without a pile of crime novels, and the one Im most excited about isDark Water(Bloomsbury) byParker Bilal. These are wonderfully written, compelling thrillers that give an exhilarating depiction of contemporary Egypt. Private Investigator Makana is everything you could want in a detective hero: brilliant, bruised and melancholy and he lives on a dilapidated houseboat on the Nile. Short stories are perfect summer reading, especially when the heat makes one indolent, and nothing could be more fitting thanAttrib. and Other Stories (Influx) byEley Williams. She is a writer for whom one struggles to find comparison, because she has arrived in a class of her own: witty, melancholy, occasionally sensual, occasionally mordant, elegantly droll without the kind of hipster quirkiness that makes me want to hurl books at the wall. She has in common with George Saunders the ability to be both playful and profound, and we are lucky to have her. Ill be spending a little time in the Peak District, so I plan on doing some themed reading and taking with meAlan GarnersThe Weirdstone of Brisingamen(HarperCollins). I havent read this since the scene involving an escape down a rabbit-hole gave me a lifetime of mild claustrophobia, and ever since I have been haunted by faint memories of a tear-shaped stone on a bracelet, shapeshifting sorcerers, and ordinary children plunged into peril. Im hoping it will do what the very best childrens fiction has always done: offer promise of hope and heroism in a world which seems to offer none.
Philippe Sands History and memoir offer insights into other times and lives that make Britains current miserable travails marginally more tolerable.The Greatest Comeback (Biteback) byDavid Bolchover is astonishing, not least for its unlikely melding of football and mass murder, two of my daily passions; there is no escape from the continuing powerful embrace ofHisham MatarsThe
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Return(Penguin), recently awarded a Pulitzer prize even as President Trump would, no doubt, if he possibly could, ban the author from setting foot in the US; andHan KangsHuman Acts (Granta) offers a gripping Korean perspective on the human consequences of abuses of power. Three extraordinary stories.
Francis Spufford I just chanced onEleanor Cattonsfirst novelThe Rehearsal(Granta), the one she wrote before the Man Booker winnerThe Luminaries, and it looks very promisingly disconcerting: a book about the ironies of adulthoods appetite for youth and vice versa. Thats definitely going on the heap for summer, and so isChina MivillesOctober, both because friends I trust tell me it may complicate my present sense that the October Revolution was a straightforward catastrophe for 20th-century socialism, and because I really want to see what happens when a brilliant fantasist turns to narrative history. And Ill be working my way on backwards throughGeorge Saunders, having been hooked conclusively byLincoln in the Bardo(Bloomsbury), tonal whimsies and all. Im presently onTenth of December (Bloomsbury), but I expect to have reachedThe Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by the time we go on holiday.
Colm Tibn The Story of a Brief MarriagebyAnuk Arudpragasam is set at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. During the shelling and the mayhem, Dinesh is asked to marry a young woman. The story, written with slow tenderness and real emotional precision, is an intimate portrait of what happens over a day and a half, and the study of a sensibility under pressure. It is the best novel I have read in ages.Miosz: A BiographybyAndrzej Franaszek is a fascinating account of the life of the Polish poet Czesaw Miosz. The chapters about surviving as a poet in Warsaw during the second world war are especially interesting, as are the pages about the years in exile. InThe Rule of the Land(Faber),Garrett Carrwalks along the Irish border. This is great writing about landscape and history, essential also for anyone who needs to know about hard and soft borders after Brexit.
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