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Inside Reviews

Pick Of The Picture Books: The Middle East: the cradle of civilization revealed

Friday, 28 November 2008

The current London exhibitions devoted to the ancient life and modern legacy of Byzantium and Babylon have confirmed that the distant history of the Near and Middle East still counts as our spiritual backyard. In The Middle East: the cradle of civilization revealed (Thames & Hudson, £29.95), Stephen Bourke and his team of scholars present a gorgeous and learned overview of almost 4,000 years of history and culture in the region, from the proto-cities of Uruk and Ninevah to the Roman and Arab conquests.

The Rebels, By Sándor Márai

Friday, 28 November 2008

In a quiet town stripped of hope by the Great War, four adolescents form a gang. Their "secret and secure comradeship" against parents, teachers and burghers promises thrills - and risks. This latest rediscovery from the author of Embers shows the Hungarian master as a sinister spellbinder, conjuring an eve-of-apocalypse mood that fuses lyrical intensity – well caught by translator George Szirtes – with jolting glimpses of depravity. The doom, of course, belongs to the society beyond a town "accustomed to war" – but Márai's wider vision never detracts from the shock and suspense of his grim finale.

Remix,By Lawrence Lessig
Little Brother, By Cory Doctorow

Friday, 28 November 2008

Apparently, they're scratching their heads in the Transition Team: what exactly do we do with ten million e-mail registrants to barackobama.com? While the current talk is all about rights and privacy and the correct use of citizens' information, perhaps the question should be reversed. What will those ten million do with Barack Obama?

We Saw Spain Die, By Paul Preston

Friday, 28 November 2008

Much of what we think we know of the Spanish Civil War is framed less by political history than the literary diaries of foreigners who joined the international brigades, then wrote books about the events they witnessed or wished to record. Among the best-known are, of course, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos and Herbert Matthews from the US; George Orwell, Stephen Spender and WH Auden from the UK; Antoine de Saint-Exupery, André Malraux and Simone Weil from France. While they may have enlisted to serve the Republic, many in effect joined the ranks of some 1,000 newspaper correspondents – at least five of whom were killed. They held the tragically mistaken belief that if only Western democracies could awaken to the disaster in Spain, their governments would be prepared to fight to prevent it becoming their own.

The Hour I First Believed, By Wally Lamb

Friday, 28 November 2008

In his long-awaited third novel, best-selling American novelist Wally Lamb delivers a whopping doorstopper of a book. Those who love a good plot will not be disappointed. Lamb opens at Blackjack Pizza, where teacher Caelum Quirk is getting a takeaway, served by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold just days before they gun down 13 students and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado. That's just the beginning.

The Phantom Of Rue Royale, By Jean-François Parot, trans. Howard Curtis

Thursday, 27 November 2008

Commissioner Le Floch returns to solve a murder in 18th-century Paris

Coda, By Simon Gray

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

The moving and comic final memoir of a writer at the fag-end of his life

American Wife, By Curtis Sittenfeld

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

As Laura Bush leaves, this First Lady tells her conflicted tale

Eugene Onegin, By Alexander Pushkin, trans. Stanley Mitchell

Monday, 24 November 2008

Chapter and verse: Pushkin's epic loses little in a new translation

The Not Dead, By Simon Armitage (Rated 3/ 5 )

Sunday, 23 November 2008

Originally broadcast a year ago in a Channel 4 documentary of the same name, The Not Dead is a short collection of war poems written, not in battle, but as a response to the testimonies of ex-soldiers featured in the programme. As Simon Armitage points out in his eloquent, self-effacing introduction, time is no "great healer" for people scarred by war. One of the former soldiers in the documentary is still unable to talk without crying about a jungle ambush he took part in nearly 50 years previously in Malaya.

The Bottom Billion, By Paul Collier (Rated 3/ 5 )

Sunday, 23 November 2008

According to Paul Collier, a former director of development research at the World Bank, the world's poorest people – the bottom billion – are trapped. While most countries appear to be rising out of poverty there remains a group of nations for which change seems impossible. Concentrated in Africa and Central Asia, these nations have seen a decrease in living standards in recent years. The average life expectancy of those living in them is 50 years, rather than 67 as it is in other countries; 14 per cent of children die before their first birthday, as opposed to four per cent elsewhere.

Listen to my Voice, By Susanna Tamaro, trs John Cullen

Sunday, 23 November 2008

Baffling questions blight this fascinating novel

The Fire Gospel, By Michel Faber

Sunday, 23 November 2008

This gospel according to a forgotten disciple of Christ allows for satire of the broadest sort

Writing in the Dark, By David Grossman

Sunday, 23 November 2008

Literature is a weapon against the forces of destruction, argues one of Israel's finest novelists

Star Struck: Fame, my family and me, By Cosmo Landesman

Sunday, 23 November 2008

Growing up in the fame-seeking Landesman family was no picnic if you wanted to be normal

The Rebels, By Sándor Márai, trs George Szirtes (Rated 4/ 5 )

Sunday, 23 November 2008

The four young men at the centre of Sándor Márai's novel, an extraordinary, unnerving tragedy played out over two days in May 1918, believe they are as good as dead. About to graduate from school in their remote mountain town, a place "wrapped in silence as in cotton wool", where the war "filtered through to them down channels no wider than a hair's breath", they fear it won't be long before they are sent off to battle. Abel, the story's narrator, is a doctor's son and an aspiring writer; Tibor, whom Abel secretly lusts after, is the son of a colonel; Bela's father is a rich merchant, and Eno's father is a crazed cobbler returned from battle where he acted as the colonel's hangman.

Bang Crunch, By Neil Smith (Rated 4/ 5 )

Sunday, 23 November 2008

These are stories that misbehave. Wriggling little things that never do quite what you expect – and, however clever they appear to be, however weird but prescient the connections they seem to establish are, their greatest trick (they are so wilful it doesn't feel right to call them Neil Smith's) is to remain so full of feeling.

The China Lover, By Ian Buruma

Sunday, 23 November 2008

This epic tale gets bogged down in its plotting

The Lion and the Eagle, by Iain Manson

Sunday, 23 November 2008

Just after 7am on 17 April 1860 in a field outside Farnborough, Tom Sayers from Brighton and the New Yorker John Heenan shook hands, then stripped to the waist.

The Accordionist's Son, By Bernardo Atxaga, trans Margaret Jull Costa

Friday, 21 November 2008

Atxaga's magisterial novel explores the life of David Imaz, a Basque immigrant, now dying on a ranch in California. Growing up a generation after the Spanish Civil War, he divides his time between his uncle's farm and the village, where he practises the accordion on the insistence of his authoritarian father.

This Year It Will Be Different, By Maeve Binchy

Friday, 21 November 2008

If you have never sampled Binchy, this volume of short stories is a good introduction to the easy-going charms of Ireland's most practised storyteller. Set around the Christmas holidays, these neatly plotted tales of festive fall-out offer the private miseries of jilted brides, erring husbands and demanding children.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, By James Boswell

Friday, 21 November 2008

No, you won't read this majestic new edition of the grandaddy of all biographies by next week, or even next year. What you may well do, mightily assisted by editor David Womersley's notes, is cherish it for ever as a source for dips, browses and rambles around an inexhaustible life.

Churchill's Wizards, By Nicholas Rankin

Friday, 21 November 2008

Victory for the man – and the army – that never was

Book Of The Week: Outliers, By Malcolm Gladwell

Friday, 21 November 2008

In 1904, a German professor of economics went back to work after a long bout of depression. He began to publish a series of essays about the links between a community, its core beliefs, and material success. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism not only unleashed a century of debate and dispute. It more or less created the sociology of culture as a study of the interplay between individual actions and collective values – irrespective of whether his heirs agreed that (say) the Calvinist faith gave merchants an edge on the exchange. A man whose own inner torments had forced him to bail out from an ultra-competitive arena helped the 20th century to understand that high achievements often have roots that extend deeper and wider than personal drive and skill.

Getting off at Gateshead, By Jonathon Green

Friday, 21 November 2008

Hail to the professor of profanity

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FIVE BEST FILMS

Rachel Getting Married, 15
Filmed with a hand-held digital camera, this is a hyper-naturalistic exposé of the mores of Connecticut’s wealthy and dysfunctional, with Anne Hathaway particularly excellent as the neurotic, brittle and just-out-of-rehab young woman spoiling her sister’s wedding party. Nationwide

Milk, 15
Sean Penn gives a magnetic performance as Harvey Milk, the politician and gay-rights activist who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978. As well as a polished, conventionally well-made biopic, ‘Milk’ is an entertaining social-history lesson, re-creating the excitement and tumult of the times. Nationwide

The Wrestler, 15
Mickey Rourke, sporting an Eighties peroxide hairdo, skin the colour of chicken tikka and a hearing aid, gives a career-best performance as an ageing and battered American pro-wrestler whose glory years are long behind him in this sad, touching and truthful film. Nationwide

Notorious, U
Ingenious, perverse and deftly handled thriller, with Cary Grant recruiting Ingrid Bergman to seduce the leader of a German spy ring in Rio but then falling in love with her himself. Limited release

Slumdog Millionaire, 15
An antic, and romantic, fable about the joys and nightmares of childhood, about a boy’s search for love, and about a teeming, terrifying city on the rise. Dev Patel stars as Jamal, the 18-year-old recounting his life as a “slumdog” on the streets of Mumbai. Nationwide