Man versus machine; a portrait of Putin; the Arab Spring; fiction from Hilary Mantel, William Boyd, Michael Frayn
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).
The whole year at The Telegraph.
The whole year at The Telegraph.
