The latest paperback releases
Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada
Penguin, £9.99
When the taciturn Otto Quangel hears that his only son died fighting for the Fatherland, he and his broken-hearted wife respond with a daring, ultimately heroic, postcard campaign voicing the disgust shared by many ordinary Germans for the Nazi regime. With echoes of the great Joseph Roth, this brutal, exciting and dramatic thriller, from the author of Little Man – What Now?(1932), was originally published in 1947, the year Fallada, born Rudolf Ditzen, died, aged 54, of a morphine overdose. Many of the unforgettable characters are tenants in a Berlin boarding house tense with political divisions. Fallada, who took his pen name from a beheaded horse in a Brothers Grimm fairytale who persists in telling the truth, was a wayward individual; he was also an original. Alone in Berlinis a masterful polemic, unfolding through several viewpoints. The subversive postcards, left at various public places, sustain the Quangels, while outraging the Gestapo. It's a big book and a truly great one.
Eileen Battersby
Red Dog, Red Dog
Patrick Lane
Windmill Books, £7.99
Canadian poet Patrick Lane’s debut novel is a dark, Dostoevskian saga focused on Tom Stark, a passive and forgotten son, and Eddy, his older, wilder, drug-addled brother. It begins in the 1950s and moves back in time to the Depression era. Lane’s crafted, poetic language does nothing to lighten the horrific family tragedies of this death-centric story; the narrative is so heavy that at times the language, though thoughtful and strong, becomes a burden. The book begins with six-month-old Alice – Tom and Eddy’s sister – narrating from the grave as her father buries her. With an abusive father and an agoraphobic mother, the brothers try to parse out a life for themselves that won’t, likewise, end tragically. It’s no surprise that the Stark family are unable to shake their bleak history and that the redheaded brothers are bound to a woeful future. A good read, but not for the fainthearted.
Emily Firetog
Rhyming Life and Death
Amos Oz, trans. Nicholas de Lange
Vintage, £6.99
Rhyming Life and Deathis Amos Oz's playful attempt at creating a story almost entirely out of character sketches. Over the course of a single evening, the book's narrator, known to readers only as the Author, imagines the complex inner lives of the various people he encounters. Inventing characters that are at turns grotesque and endearing, the Author (and perhaps Oz himself) reflects upon the mysteries of life and death and the lonesome artistry required to render them for his audience. Oz's experiment results in a warm demonstration of interconnectedness in a city of isolated souls. This short work will appeal to those who are interested in the craft of writing but may be irksome to pleasure readers for its intentional failure to be moved along by traditional storytelling devices. The character glossary that serves as the conclusion will seem a perfect finishing touch for those who enjoy the experiment, irritating overkill for those who don't.
Megan L McCarty
Nice To See It, To See It, Nice: The 1970s in Front of the Telly
Brian Viner
Pocket Books, £7.99
Weeks before his father's death, Brian Viner remembers his dad laughing so hard at an episode of Fawlty Towersthat tears rolled down his cheeks and he nearly fell off his chair. Years later, Viner recounted this memory to Fawlty Towersstar John Cleese and reduced the great comedian to tears. TV-themed nostalgia abounds in Nice to See It, To See It, Nice, as Viner links key moments in his own childhood to the 1970s programmes he was obsessed with. Back when three channels dominated the UK airwaves, he found his schoolboy credibility depended on emulating the hard-nosed cops in The Sweeneyand discussing who the "fittest" dancers were on Top of the Pops.Humorously, he even greeted his first colour TV like the birth of a new sibling. Flaunting an encyclopaedic knowledge of TV trivia, Viner has written a consistently entertaining memoir, whether one remembers the 1970s or not.
Kevin Cronin
From Fatwa to Jihad – The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy
Kenan Malik
Atlantic Books, £9.99
The idea that a small crowd burning a book in Bradford could fuel the rise of global terror may seem a stretch but this book builds a bridge of solid argument between the two. The Rushdie Affair has had profound effects on free speech and our understanding of faith, race and religion. From Fatwa to Jihadis a withering critique of the multicultural policies adopted in the UK and illustrates a society which somewhere between Fatwa and Jihad lost its sense of moral certainty. Malik blows apart facile analyses of racial and religious politics in Britain and offers an insight into what drove young British Muslims to blow themselves up in London. He explains how a young generation of Muslims found themselves lost between cultures and shuns the view of a worldwide Jihadist movement with one face. People can only understand where they are going if they know where they came from. Malik's important contribution to the current discourse is informative, fresh and very readable.
Rory Tevlin
