2022: The Year in Books

It is the end of 2022. Here, as always, is a brief summary of the books I read this year, organised (inadequately) by geography and genre, and even more inadequately, by a rough rating system. This year was marked by a foray into contemporary Japanese literature (as I was traveling to that country) – in particular, Japanese crime fiction, which has a rather distinct and compelling identity of its own. There was also a fairly heavy dose of science fiction, which – as you’ll see – was a bit patchy. Read on!

A. Fiction: Africa

1. Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, The House of Rust (****): A little difficult to classify, but this Kenyan tale about a girl, her father, a talking cat, and assorted sea demons is perhaps closest to magical realism. Lyrical and atmospheric prose, and an unforgettable protagonist. This one won the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin prize later in the year.
2. Okwiri Oduor, Things They Lost (****): Also from Kenya, Things They Lost is a story at the interstices of the human and spirit worlds, and centred around the relationship between a daughter and her mother. It’s loose, non-linear structure is a bit similar to House of Rust, and there are deeper similarities as well, in style and form.
3. Ayodele Olofintuade, Swallow (****): One of my stand-out reads of the year. Swallow is a queer historical fiction/fantasy novel, set in early-19th century Nigeria. It follows the intertwined stories of two women – Efunsetan Aniwura and Efunporonye – who are due to be married to each other, before an act of violence by Efunsetan’s brother (at the instigation of his Christian missionary teacher) disrupts the marriage, and sends them on separate paths: Efunsetan to the city of Abeokuta, where she must make her own place amongst feuding warlords, and Efunporonye to a loveless marriage which she must nonetheless negotiate to wield power of her own. In the backdrop is the steadily rising power of the British Empire, an early prelude to years of colonial domination. By the way, this one’s published locally – by the Nigerian publisher, Masobe Books.
4. NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory (****): The story of post-colonial Zimbabwe, except that it’s all animals instead of human beings. Parts of it felt a little on the nose – the names of historical massacres, for example, were unchanged – but it was the distancing device of using animals as protagonists that allowed Bulawayo to be so direct, without losing the narrative spirit.

B. Fiction: Japan

1. Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X (*****): My introduction to contemporary Japanese fiction was through Keigo Higashino’s crime novel, which was mesmerising (one of those rare books that I read literally in a single sitting, from 8PM to 3AM). Unlike other crime novels, in The Devotion of Suspect X, the reader is privy to the murder, how it happens, and who commits it – and it’s what comes after (including the psychology of the various individuals involved) that makes it so thrilling. The only slight complaint is that the last two pages of the book are a bit of a let-down, the final ending a little un-earned.
2. Keigo Higashino, The Silent Parade (****): My second Higashino – you can tell how much I enjoyed the first! Didn’t quite hit the same heights (to be fair, it would be difficult to!), but still so very gripping – Higashino does psychology so very well.
3. Yoko Tawada, The Emissary (***): A whimsical, post-apocalyptic climate fiction novel where childhood and old age are reversed; fascinating in parts, but didn’t quite hang together for me.
4. Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (***): Brilliant set of premises, innovative shifts in point of view, and then let down by the actual stories being so milquetoast. Almost makes you feel like grabbing the author and shaking them for wasting such good ideas.
5. Seishi Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders (*****): More Japense crime fiction – this time, a classic locked-room murder mystery. One of the most stunning reveals I’ve ever read.
6. Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves (****): Same author. This one was more of a thriller than a murder mystery. Beautifully plotted and paced, but there’s a whiff of misogyny running through it that’s a little hard to overlook
7. Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo (****): A soft and moving – but slightly inconsistent – slice-of-life story about loneliness, late-stage love, and belonging.
8. Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love (***): Mishima’s portrayal of a one-sided love that cannot even make itself unintelligible because of differences in social class is sharp, and with many memorable lines and acute observations about both human beings and social relations – but is let down by an unsatisfactory, and *very* un-earned ending.

C. Fiction: South Asia

1. Annie Zaidi, City of Incident (****): A very enjoyable set of twelve interconnected vignettes, set along the railway line in an unnamed city, but which is quite evidently Bombay. I reviewed it for The Hindu.
2. Intizar Hussain, Day and Dastaan (***): I don’t know if it was the translation, or something else, but I just couldn’t get going with this one – although I did find passages in Dastaan quite beautiful.
3. Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (*****): Arguably my best read of the year. A story old from the perspective of a murdered Sri Lankan photographer of the Civil War, who is stumbling through an afterlife-y limbo, trying to find out who is responsible for his murder. Through his eyes, as through a mirror darkly, we see the violence, the brutality, and the absurdity of the War. Reminiscent in parts of Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound, but very much its own novel: its style – humorous, irreverent, light as breath on glass – makes its subject even more searing and haunting than it already is.

D. Theatre

1. Amy Herzog, After the Revolution (****): I saw a theatrical performance of this play in Hamburg, and then read the play itself. Great on family relations; not so great on its occasional caricatures of the left.

E. Genre: Fantasy

1. Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun (****): One of the most talked-about fantasy novels of 2021, it swept quite a few awards this year. An enjoyable historical fantasy loosely modelled on 13th century Imperial Chinese and Mongol history.
2. Marlon James, Moon Witch, Spider King (****): This series is writing fantasy against the grain, in a very unique way; the flip side is that it demands a lot from the reader. I wrote a fairly detailed review in Strange Horizons.
3. Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards! (****): Coming rather late in life to Pratchett – this is only my third – but better late than never! It was interesting to see Vimes and Vetinari as near first-drafts of their later fully developed selves, in this novel.

F. Genre: Science fiction

1. Saad Hossain, Cyber Mage (****): Final Fantasy, climate change, djinns, a near-future Dhaka, topped off with a generous helping of Snark – Hossain is as uniquely entertaining as ever. Reviewed here.
2. Tade Thompson, Far From the Light of Heaven (****): A locked-room murder mystery in space from a very accomplished writer; definitely had its moments, but not all of it came together for me.
3. Adam Roberts, The This (****): Near-future SF dealing with the intersection of social media and the hive mind, from a reliably, well, reliable writer.
4. SJ Morden, The Flight of the Aphrodite (****): One of the few hard-SF novels I read this year; the book was a good one, but I suspect I no longer enjoy that sub-genre so much.
5. Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars (N/A): A rare DNF (at p. 90). i could not get into this one at all, because everything about it – from the politics to the aesthetic to the geography to the pop culture references – is so heavily *American*, and the narrative tension and dramatic moments are so embedded in that American-ness, that there just did not seem a way in for a reader who isn’t equally steeped in that context.
6. Alastair Reynolds, Inhibitor Phase (*****): Oh my gosh, Alastair Reynolds. Superb SF. Filled with wonder, awe, and existential political stakes. Everything you want from the genre.
7. Alastair Reynolds, Eversion (****): This was different Reynolds – more time-loops, less space opera, but still great. Review forthcoming in Interzone.
8. Jo Harkin, Tell Me An Ending (*****): This only came across my radar because of the Run Along the Shelves Blog, and I’m glad I did – Tell Me An Ending is amongst the best SF novels I read in 2022. It is among the most subtle and sensitive exploration of memory – and the connection between memory and identity – that you will find in the genre.
9. Agnes Gomillon, The Record Keeper (****): The first in a series, The Record Keeper is a post-apocalyptic ambiguous dystopia, in the mould of Octavia Butler. It has many of the familiar themes of the sub-genre (rigid post-apocalypse hierarchies, scrambled memories, violent suppression of dissent, rebellion); it is not, however, a derivative work, and is well worth a read.
10. Agnes Gomillon, Seed of Cain (****): The second book in the series, carries forward the story well. Review forthcoming in Interzone.
11. Vauhini Vara, The Immortal King Rao (***): Not marketed as SF, but undoubtedly SF. Brings together a generational family saga, an immigrant and coming-of-age novel, a meditation on the promise and peril of technology, a critique of corporate power, and an ambiguous speculative dystopia. The novel follows the intertwined biographies of King Rao—a Dalit child born in the village of Kothapalli, who rises to become the leader of the world’s most powerful technology company, before an equally precipitous fall—and his daughter, Athena, who remembers her own life while being held in a prison cell on charges of murder. Reviewed here.
12. Anil Menon, The Inconceivable Idea of the Sun (***): A set of interconnected near-future SF vignettes set in India. Defies gender classification – there is even a narrative non-fiction piece tucked among the stories – but definitely spec-fic. The eponymous story is particularly good. Reviewed here.
13. Mercurio D Rivera, Wergen: The Alien Love War (****): Read this as part of my Arthur C. Clarke shortlist review; a fresh take on some well-worn first contact tropes, with a few very sharp observations about love.
14. Harry Josephine Giles, Deep Wheel Orcadia (*****): THE most unique piece of SF I read this year – an SF space opera told in verse, and in fact, told in the Orkney language, with an English “translation” accompanying it: the result is something very special, which I discuss in the Clarke review.
15. Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (***): One problem with a literary fiction writer writing genre is that unless you’ve read extensively in genre, you end up rehashing ideas and tropes that are two decades old. Ishiguro is, of course, a brilliant writer, but this book is an excellent example of just this phenomenon. Also Clarke Award reading.
16. Courttia Newland, A River Called Time (***): Clarke Award reading. Just not for me.
17. Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Elder Race (****): A science-fantasy novella by one of my favourite writers working in the field today: Adrian Tchaikovsky. It takes the classic SF theme of a more technologically-advanced civilisation grappling with the question of when – or when not – to “intervene” in the affairs of another (think Prime Directive, the Strugatsky Brothers’ Hard To Be A God, some parts of the Culture) – and gives it a new, fresh avatar. The Elder Race stands out because of Tchaikovsky’s deft and sympathetic handling of one of the protagonists’ interior landscape: Nyr Illim Tevitch is an anthropologist stuck on the planet that he is supposed to be studying, (involuntarily) cut off from communicating with his own society, treated as a wizard by the people he is among, and asked by a rebellious princess to help slay a “demon.” Unsurprisingly, he grapples continuously with depression, loneliness, self-doubt, and often paralysing indecision about what is the right thing to do. This focus on interiority, along with an inversion of many classic fantasy tropes (princess, demon, wizard) makes this a classic Tchaikovsky read: compelling and memorable.
18. Joanna Russ, The Female Man (****): Given that parts of this book feel radical even now, I cannot even begin to imagine how radical it must have been for its time (the 1970s). Lots of exploration about the gender binary and gender fluidity, at least a part of which (for obvious reasons) has aged badly, but overall, the immense ambition of this novel is breathtaking, and there are paragraphs that are like cut glass.
19. Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark (***): Another set of interconnected vignettes (there were a lot of these this year!) dealing with the aftermath of the climate crisis. This was the opening text for the recently-begun Delhi Science Fiction Reading Circle.
20. Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed (*****): What can I possibly say about this that hasn’t already been said before?

G. Non-Fiction: Memoir/Biography

1. Flora Veit-Wilde, They Called You Dambudzo (****): A really unique memoir about a really unique writer who died far too young, written by his former lover. The insights that this book has into the character of Dambudzo Marechera are breathtaking – and having read this, you understand his writing so much better. Reviewed here.
2. Thomas Grant, The Mandela Brief; Sidney Kentridge and the Trials of Apartheid (****): A moving – and at times, heart-stopping – book about the life and times of Sidney Kentridge, defence counsel for years to the apartheid regime’s most determined opponents (including Nelson Mandela). Reviewed here.
3. Pheroze Nowrojee, A Kenyan Journey (*****): A generational memoir about the story of an Indian immigrant family in Kenya, and 20th century Kenyan history through the eyes of Indian immigrants. Deals with difficult and complex questions about home and exile, immigration and love for a country. This was beautifully written, and the ending brought tears to my eyes. There’s a long review on my Goodreads page.
4. Hiwot Teffera, Tower in the Sky (*****): A beautiful, moving, and ultimately tragic memoir about the Ethiopian revolutionary students’ moment in the 1970s. Reviewed here.
5. Narayani Basu, Allegiance (****): A fascinating book about three forgotten men in the history of India’ freedom struggle: the protagonists of the INA.
6. Robert A. Caro, Working (*****): Absolutely riveting memoir from one of the great biographical writers, with insights into his own method. There was one particular reconstruction of Lyndon Johnson’s childhood home that is one of the most unforgettable narrative non-fiction pieces of writing that I’ve come across.
7. Cade Metz, Genius Makers (****): An immensely readable account of the 20th-century history of Artificial Intelligence, told from the perspectives of some of the major protagonists.

H. Non-fiction: City Writing

1. Kirsty Bell, Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin (****): A unique social history of Berlin, best read while you’re walking down the Landwehr Canal towards Anhalterbahnof. Bell weaves together a personal memoir of loss and a broken marriage, the history of her own century-and-a-half old house on the banks of the Landwehr Canal, and the modern history of Berlin itself, into a seamless narrative. Reviewed here.
2. John Dougill: Kyoto: A Literary and Cultural History (*****): This is an example of the very best the genre of travel writing has to offer: written with love, humility, and also with great attention to the craft of language. The structure of this book introduces you to the many different facets of Kyoto (city of tea, city of noh, city of geishas etc), and the way Dougill breaks up information, it never gets overwhelming. This book enriched my brief stay in Kyoto immeasurably.

I. Non-fiction: The natural world

1. James Bridle, Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence (****): This book has polarised opinion a bit, but I found it a wonderfully gripping foray into various kinds of intelligence – from mycelia to octopi – that compels you to re-orient your own mental landscape and conceptual categories.

Anarchism

1. Errico Malatesta, Anarchy (*****): Anarchists aren’t supposed to have canons, but this OG exposition of the anarchist philosophy surely has to rank as a must-read if you’re looking to understand what anarchism is all about.
2. Defiance: Anarchist Statements Before Judge and Jury (****): What it says on the tin. From Kropotkin and the Paris Commune to the modern Greek anarchists, and everything in between.
3. Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (****): Occasionally opaque and hard to follow, but so many fascinating insights both about the Paris Commune and about Rimbaud: ruminations on time, language, metaphor, the history and evolution of vagabondage laws, and so much more. Worth the occasional periods of incomprehension (especially if you don’t know French, and therefore miss some of the finer linguistic analysis).

2020 In Books

This year saw a significant shift in my reading, triggered by the fact that I published my debut science fiction novel, The Wall, and spent most of the year working on its sequel. Being a genre writer shapes your reading preferences in a very specific way: you begin to actively look out for, and read, novels that share the stylistic or narrative commitments of your own, and you also find yourself reading more broadly in the genre, to gain a sense of what it looks like. So, in 2020, a large part of my reading was science fiction and fantasy, and I feel it ended up becoming a little too skewed. That’s something I’ll try to correct in 2021. Because of writing commitments, I also read less than in previous years, and hardly blogged all year. With the sequel – and the duology – set to be completed in ten days, that’s another thing to correct in the coming year.

Here, as always, the books I read this year, with the usual flawed rating system. I’ve talked about my SFF reading separately as well, in my Slack newsletter. You can find links to all the books on my Goodreads Page.

Africa

1. Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King (****): A memorable and haunting re-telling of the WW2-era Ethiopian war of independence from colonial Italian rule, from the perspective of its women participants.
2. Jennifer Makumbi, The First Woman (*****): A beautiful and searing coming-of-age story set in 1970s Uganda, following its protagonist, Kirabo, as she makes her way through childhood, school, and then college, in a changing and often hostile world. One of the stand-out reads of the year.

The Middle East

1. Isabella Hammad, The Parisian (****): Hammad’s novel takes us to pre-nakba Nablus, and is a very vivid story about Palestine in the 1920s – an era that has been relatively unwritten about.
2. Ibtisam Azem, The Book of Disappearance (****): Azem’s novel – in which all the Palestinians presently living in Israel and Palestine literally vanish overnight – could also be called speculative fiction, but I’m including it here to avoid front-loading that category even more.
3. Adel Kamel, The Magnificent Conman of Cairo (***): The title is a good guide to the novel. This is a classic of Egyptian literature. It didn’t always land for me, but there were moments of darkly comic brilliant, and you can see why it was as influential as it was.

Europe

1. Victor Serge, Conquered City (***): I love Victor Serge to bits, but this one – about a Soviet city torn apart very soon after the revolution – just didn’t do it for me. I felt bogged down at various points, and the momentary flashes of brilliance didn’t make up for that.
2. China Mieville, October (****): Mieville’s fictional reconstruction of the Russian Revolution is nothing short of spectacular – this is thrilling narrative prose, brilliant characterisation, and a deeply moving ending.

India

1. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, My Father’s Garden (****): A deeply enjoyable and humorous set of three inter-connected short stories, set in small-town India, with its protagonists coming to terms with the world, and with their own sexuality.

Non-Fiction/History

1. Pyotr Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution (*****) : The legendary anarchist’s look back at the French Revolution, a hundred years on, is a ride and a half. His acerbic, drily witty style is an absolute delight to read, and his central thesis – that the revolution’s radicalism was repeatedly betrayed by an ascendant middle class – holds up well.
2. Eric Hazan, A People’s History of the French Revolution (****) : I am a long-time fan of Hazan – his political-geography Paris books were my guides when I was in the city – and this is a characteristically excellent account, albeit far too easy on Robespierre.
3. Kavita Punjabi, Unclaimed Harvest: An Oral History of the Tebhaga Women’s Movement (*****): A brilliant feminist oral history – in the mold of Alessandro Portelli – of the forgotten Tebhaga movement, where – at the cusp of independence – farmers in Bengal demanded two-thirds of the produce. Another stand-out of the year.

Poetry

1. Nazik al-Mala’ika, Revolt Against the Sun (trans. Emily Drumsta) (*****): I’ve loved Nazik al-Mala’ika ever since I read the poem Love Song for Words, and here, finally, is a collection of her translated poems. Emily Drumsta’s Introduction is a jewel – she contextualises al-Mala’ika’s life, her poetic and political preoccupations, and the larger context of a woman writing poetry in Iraq in the mid-20th century. The Introduction also does to a tee what all great Introductions do: it makes you understand and love the poems even more.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

1. Guy Gavriel Kay, A Brightness Long Ago (***): In my early 20s, I probably knew entire dialogues from GGK novels by heart. It’s probably a sign of how much taste can change that his latest – which, in theory, I should have loved, as it took us back to the same setting as the brilliant Tigana – did very little for me. Nothing wrong with the novel – it’s vintage GGK – but I guess I’ve just moved on.
2. Nancy Kress, Sea Change (***): An interesting cli-fi novel(la), focused on the agribusiness and food security aspect of it; the heavily US-centric nature of it was probably why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I otherwise would.
3. Ursula Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest (*****): Yes, I finally read this. What else is there to say?
4. Fonda Lee, Jade City (****): The first book in the Green Bone saga, centred around the clash between rival clans for control over jade, and its political economy. Jade City has received rave reviews across the board, and it is a very solid work of fantasy – world-building, pacing, characters, action sequences – all of it is delivered with great competence.
5. Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant (*****): I waited far too long to read this book, and when I did, it went straight to the top of my all-time list. I’ve raved about this everywhere, but one final time: epic fantasy focused on the political economy of colonialism and empire, and featuring the best darn slow-burn romance you will ever read.
6. Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant (*****): The sequel. See above.
7. Seth Dickinson, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (****): Book 3 kinda slipped in parts, but the ending was solid enough to get things back on track and set up a spectacular finale.
8. Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (*****): Another extraordinary novel, the kind that comes along rarely (and I read Baru and Gideon back to back). “Lesbian necromancers in space” is how it’s billed, but of course it is a lot more than that – I think it’s the sheer, unabashed wickedness of the writing that really gets you.
9. Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth (***): I’ll be absolutely honest and admit that I did not understand what was happening in the sequel.
10. Samit Basu, Chosen Spirits (****): A best-of-all-possible dystopias with a sliver of hope, set in a near-future Delhi (always a draw!).
11. Berit Ellingsen, A Tale of Truths (****): A fun fantasy novella that involves the discovery of the heliocentric model of the galaxy!
12. Ken Liu, The Hidden Girl and other Stories (****): A collection of excellent short stories from Ken Liu that shows why he continues to be one of the most highly-regarded voices of the genre right now.
13. Yoon Ha Lee, Phoenix Extravagant (****): I am a huge fan of Lee’s Hexarchate SF series. Phoenix Extravagant is an altogether softer novel, and its fantasy, loosely modeled on the Korean/Japanese war. I especially loved how art – and artists – were at the centre of this novel, something you don’t always see in fantasy.
14. Yoss, Red Dust (****): Yoss is back! The Cuban biochemist punk rocker SFF writer – and an eternal favourite – has another crazy romp through the galaxy, and you can bet that biological absurdities abound in this book whose main character is called… Raymond Chandler.
15. Kate Elliott, Unconquerable Sun (****): Gender-swapped Alexander the Great in space, a compulsive read (finished it in two 3AM sittings), and excellent military SF all around.
16. Annalee Newitz, The Future of Another Timeline (****): A really unique time-travel novel where the central premise involves rescuing women’s right to abortion.
17. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow (****): Dark-ish fantasy set in 1920s Mexico, and involving a lot of god-like stuff. The prose style – a kind of Gothic with a LatAm touch – was especially compelling.
18. Iain M. Banks (***): The opening novel of the Culture series is probably also my least favourite. Incredibly tedious in parts, brilliant in parts.
19. Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Analogue/Virtual (****): A set of inter-connected vigenettes set in a dystopic near-future Bangalore divided into its two halves, the virtual and the analogue.
20. R.B. Lemberg, The Four Profound Weaves (****): A delightful little novella with an atmospheric prose style, featuring trans elders and weaving.
21. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (****): A book that’s polarised opinion. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. The middle part was outstanding. The beginning and end were a little… unintelligible.
22. Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Doors of Eden (*****): Possibly the best genre novel I read all year. The novel is lyrical, haunting, and has an arc that literally spans the universe. Read this.
23. Rebecca Roanhorse, Black Sun (****): A solid and enjoyable fantasy novel set in pre-Columbian America.
24. Essa Hansen, Nophek Gloss (*****): A pretty scintillating hard-SF debut, set in a deliciously imagined multiverse, and featuring a truly memorable protagonist.
25. Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons (****): The third Culture novel. It starts to get better.
26. Zelda Knight & Ekpeki Donald, The Dominion Anthology: Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora (****): A solid collection. Some familiar names, some new ones, and some of the stories – like Eugen Bacon’s – will stay with you for a long time.
27. Andres Eschbach, The Hair-Carpet Weavers (****): My last read of 2020. I have many mixed and complicated feelings about this novel, a German SF classic. You’ll hear about them in the newsletter!

Have a happy 2021, filled with books!

2019 in Books

This year’s reading was dominated by speculative fiction (even more so than usual). The reason for this is that after many years of being a reader – and a fan – 2019 was the year I tried to become a writer. Throughout the year, I worked on a science fiction novel that, which was finally completed at around ten minutes to midnight on December 31, and sent to my publisher. So I made a conscious choice throughout the year to immerse myself in SFF, to blend the worlds of writing and reading (if that makes any sense!).

The list follows, in its usual format, and with the usual caveats.

A. Science Fiction and Fantasy [SFF]

1. Achala Upendran, The Sultanpur Chronicles (***): One among a raft of interesting recent editions to SFF in a partially-recognisable Indian fantasy world, with Indian characters.
2. Ivor Hartmann (ed.), AfroSF V. 3.0 (*****): The third instalment in the AfroSF series of short stories lives up to the reputation of the series – some brilliant new short work here.
3. Tasha Suri, Empire of Sand (****): I enjoyed this book as a work of fantasy, and for its nuanced treatment of themes like consent, which are rarely examined in the genre. I’m more circumspect about its marketing as “Mughal fantasy”, as the links appear to be somewhat … tenuous.
4. Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (****): James’ foray into SFF upsets all kinds of classic tropes and conventions of the genre; an extremely difficult book, and one that has polarised opinion, but it worked for me (reviewed here).
5. Tarun Saint (ed.), The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (***): Some hits, some misses (reviewed here).
6. Tade Thompson, The Rosewater Insurrection (****): Thompson’s swashbuckling trilogy set around an alien power touching down in modern-day Lagos, continues to entertain with this second instalment (reviewed here).
7. N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season (***).
8. N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate (****).
9. N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky (***): Better late than never, I guess, coming to this storied trilogy? Perhaps inevitable after all that hype, but though I enjoyed this, it didn’t exactly change my life. Somewhat strangely, I liked the second novel the best.
10. Anne Leckie, Ancillary Justice (****): Another iconic novel that I came to late. Like everyone says, this one really bends your mind and forces you to examine a host of internalised assumptions with which you approach the world. And oh, there is a sentient spaceship!
11. Sue Burke, Semiosis (***): A worthy addition to the whole plants/humans sub-genre of SFF.
12. Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312 (***): My first Robinson; it was, as you would imagine, quite an experience. I enjoyed it, of course, but also felt that at times the combination of history, politics, space travel, and economics made it a little too dense. But it did set me looking up what the Mondragon Cooperative was all about, so that’s a bonus!
13. Lavie Tidhar, Unholy Land (****): Tidhar never disappoints. This novel, set in an alternate history where the Jewish people were given a slice of Uganda to build their country (an actual proposal at a time) turns into an alternate history of Israel/Palestine – by turns gripping, humorous, and terribly sad.
14. Ada Palmer, Seven Surrenders (***): I did not enjoy the second instalment of the Terra Ignita series. I felt, on more than one occasion, that I was being talked down to as a reader, and the obsession with the classical Western philosophical/historical canon – in an ostensibly global novel – became extremely jarring after a point.
15. Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation (***): Yet another late arrival to a modern-day classic! An enjoyable read, although it did not stay with me for too long.
16. Yoon Ha-Lee, Raven Strategem (*****).
17. Yoon Ha-Lee, Revanant Gun (*****): Following on from Ninefox Gambit, the second and third novels of the Machineries of Empire series make it by far the best SFF series I read this year, and amongst the best I’ve ever read. I couldn’t recommend this highly enough: its universe – that is based on the idea of “consensus reality”, and resistance to it – manages to combine technical virtuosity with epic scale and sweep. Your heart soars when you read this series – like the best of fantasy.
18. Ken Liu (ed.), Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (****): This edited collection shows you exactly why, by common consensus, China is the place where the most exciting modern SF is coming from. The stories here are diverse and varies, but maintain an amazingly high degree of technical skill – and political awareness woven into the narrative. My favourite was probably ‘Folding Beijing’, a story that continues to haunt me.
19. Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (****): Liu himself, of course, is a darn good writer (his short story was the basis for Arrival), and this collection shows you why. What stands out is his versatility – from murder mysteries to haunting space opera – it’s all here.
20. Terry Pratchett, Night Watch (****): Yes yes, I know. I should have read this years ago. Well, better late than never.
21. Yoon Ha Lee, Hexarchate Stories (****): If you are a sucker for the Machineries of Empire series, this set of short stories – that gives you the backstories of important characters and a novella-sequel at the end – is like essential drug supply. Otherwise, it will make no sense.
22. Amal el-Mohtar and Max Goodwin, This Is How You Lose The Time War (*****): God. This time-travel-love-story just has some of the most straight-up stunning prose that I’ve read all year. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read a better love story in a long while – the way it expands the world into a universe, while making it all intelligible. I’ve lost count of the sheer number of passages I marked out in delight. Read this book.
23. Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire (****): Martine’s debut novel – as you would expect – is a rich and complex blend of political and social Sci-fi, set in a space-empire. Shades of Asimov here, as it features a protagonist coming in from the margins, but Martine is of course very much her own writer.
24. S.B. Divya, Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse (***): From a contaminated Bangalore to deep space to a Hunger Games-style battle for survival in a near-future USA, Divya’s little vignettes stand out for their elegance and craft.
25. Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (***): To be honest, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale felt quite a let-down.
26. Imraan Coovadia, A Spy in Time (***): A fascinating contemporary addition to the time-travel genre, moving between Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, and the end of days; and telling us – in the gentlest way possible – that time travel is (also) about race (reviewed here).
27. Chen Qiufan, Waste Tide (***): Back to China: this novel is set in an island off the continent, which has become the worldwide hub for the processing of digital waste. A science fiction novel about the violence of global supply chains and of local resistance (reviewed here).
28. Suyi Davies, David Mogo, Godhunter (****): A really fun novel set in contemporary Lagos, with rival gods in the Yoruba pantheon being pressed into service in an apocalyptic war (reviewed here).
29. Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust (****): Barring one very problematic narrative theme, and the occasional deus ex machina, The Book of Dust revived the old magic of the His Dark Materials series that La Belle Sauvage had (for me) entirely failed at. Just for a ride down memory lane, and the termporary recreation of that incredible magic – HDM shaped my childhood perhaps more than any other book – this was worth it.
30. Ted Chiang, Exhalation (****): A set of long-short stories from Ted Chiang, often revolving around time paradoxes. Technically brilliant, and very good storytelling as well.
31. Tade Thompson, The Rosewater Redemption (***): For me, the closing instalment in the series didn’t quite hit the heights of books 1 and 2.

B. African Writing 

1. Marye Conde, Segu (****): The classic novel of First Contact, about last days of the Bambara Empire (that spanned present-day Mali), and of a West African society disintegrating under the twin forces of Islam and colonialism. A beautiful read (reviewed here).
2. Leonora Miano, Season of the Shadow (****): Another haunting first-contact story and the prelude to the Middle Passage, set in present day Cameroon, but this time the tyrants and the destruction comes not from beyond the sea, but from within. Some of the scenes in this (brief) novel are still in my mind (reviewed here).
3. Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift (****): A grand, sweeping history of modern-day Zair; by times exhilarating, by times tragic, and with the strangest twist of SFF at the very end.
4. Maaza Mengiste, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (****): Another beautiful novel, this time set in the Ethiopian Revolution of the 1970s, with some of the most powerfully drawn characters I’ve come across this year.
5. Joginder Paul, Land Lust (****): Well, Joginder Paul is Indian, but the book is set in Kenya, and was written based on his experiences living in Kenya, so I’m placing it here. A set of delightful – and delightfully sad – short stories about the intertwined lives of Indians and Kenyans in a newly-independent country.
6. Zeyn Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars (****): With maps (!) as the common underlying theme, this novel beautifully weaves together escape from modern-day Syria with an older story of migration and adventure; heartbreaking, but also uplifting.
7. Chigozie Obiama, An Orchestra of Minorities (***): One of those strongly hyped-up novels that just didn’t do it for me; I felt the weight put on the narrative device (no spoilers) was a weight it could not bear.
8. Abdourahman A. Waberi, Passage of Tears (***): A surrealistic drama/murder mystery set in Djibouti. Enjoyable in parts, confusing in others.
9. Ibrahim Abdel Megouid, Clouds over Alexandria (*****): Picked this up after seeing it mentioned in the ArabLit Quarterly. This is an absolutely stunning novel. It is set in 1970s Egypt – at a time of student unrests and revolutionary protests against Anwar Sadat – and captures the hope, the madness, the despair – and ultimately, the tragedy – of the time, and of its student protagonists, in a truly unforgettable and heartbreaking way.
10. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Dust (****): The last book I read in 2019 was amongst the most intense. Dust is set in contemporary Kenya, begins with an assassination, and then takes us on a journey through Kenya’s past, starting with the Mau Mau rebellion and the birth of the country. Owuor weaves together the personal and the political in a beautiful and haunting manner.

C. Polish Writing

1. Narcyza Zmichowska, The Heathen (***): Part of my reading on my trip to Poland; one of the first feminist Polish – and indeed, European – novels, written in the mid-19th century, and interesting just for that reason.
2. Antoni Libera, Madame (*****): A tears-running-down-your-eyes hilarious Polish novel of an eighteen-year old schoolboy who falls in love with his thirty-two year old Piano teacher, just when communism is extending its suffocating grip over Warsaw in the 1950s. What a read.
3. Ryszard Kapusciski, Nobody Leaves: Impressions of Poland (***): Sketches from the legendary journalist. I tried to get into the feel of things by reading this on long train rides in Poland, but to be honest, it didn’t quite work for me.
4. Olga Tocarczuk, Flights (***): Tocarczuk, of course, won the Nobel Prize this year. I enjoyed parts of this book and its aphoristic character, which – I feel – is ideally read in bursts.
5. Jacek Dahnel, Lala (***): By times funny, by times sad coming-of-age story in contemporary Poland (all books reviewed here).

D. German Writing

1. Alfred Doblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (***): Part of my Germany-travel reading (of course). This is, of course, the classic novel of Berlin on the eve of fascism, a city drawing its last breath before the fall. Fascinating – and more than a little disturbing.
2. Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Novels (***): See above. The two novels here provide another glimpse of Weimar Berlin, and that great efflorescence of art and culture before the onset of Nazism.
3. Klaus Mann, Mephisto (****): The iconic novel of compromise and betrayal in Nazi Germany. Mann’s Hendrik Hofgen – who begins as a leftist and ends as a Nazi collaborator in order to secure power and riches – is a brilliant, haunting character – above all, because he is so human, and makes us feel – disturbingly – that we might well make the same choices in the same situation. And the most disturbing part: to the end, Hofgen is able to justify it all to himself, reason it out by saying “better me than an actual Nazi in my position”, and “I’m working within the system to help.” Where else have we heard such justifications?
4. Jenny Erpenbeck, The End of Days (****): Reminiscent in many ways of Victor Serge (see below), this novel is almost a snapshot of the tragedy of 20th-century Europe – moving from anti-Jewish pogroms to Red Vienna to besieged Moscow, and finally, post-World War II Germany; taking us through anti-semitism, Nazism, and Stalinism. The narrative device (again, no spoilers) is particularly fascinating in what it does with time and the past; the prose is magnificent (all books reviewed here).

E. Other European Writing

1. Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years (****): One of the stand-out novels of the year, for me. Serge writes of two ex-communists on the run, chased across Europe – and then Mexico – by Stalinist agents; but in doing so, he writes a dirge to the ideals of the Russian Revolution, and their decay in the Soviet Union. The prose is hypnotic (reviewed here).

E. Miscellaneous

1. Hamid Ismailov, The Devil’s Dance (*****): Another stand-out novel. One of the first Uzbek novels to be translated into English – and banned in its home country – The Devil’s Dance tells the story of the doomed generation of Uzbek writers and intellectuals that were killed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s – alongside another story, set in the Khanates a hundred years ago, at a time of great social and cultural upheaval (reviewed here).
2. Abdulla Quodiry, Days Gone By (****): Ismailov’s novel made me go look for his progatonist, the real life Abdulla Quodiry, and read his novel. Days Gone By was so popular in Uzbekistan in the 1920s when it was published, that parents named their children after Quodiry’s protagonists. You can see why – the story mixes adventure, love, and the national history of Uzbekistan in a skilful and gripping narrative.

2018 in Books

A heavy work schedule has prevented me from reading as much as I’d have liked to this year, along with restricting reading to academic texts. That has not been helped by starting a few books and leaving them midway (they have not been listed here). I’m hoping to make amends in 2019. In the meantime, here is the annual list, in the usual format, and with the usual caveats. The one exception to the general reading disappointment of 2018 was perhaps speculative fiction, where I got to read a wide variety of work from different parts of the globe – from Jordan, to Nigeria, to Bangladesh.

Indian Writing

1. Arundhathi Subramaniam, When God is a Traveler (Poetry) (****): I bought this on a recommendation, and it didn’t disappoint. Taut verse, striking imagery, and a contained emotion that never spills over. I’ve not found much of contemporary Indian-English poetry to my taste, but this was a notable exception.
2. U.R. Anantamurthy, Bara (****): Short – but excellent – novel set in a drought-hit village, featuring calculating politicians and a do-gooder IAS officer from the city. It was written during the Emergency, so that adds a bit of extra spice to proceedings.
3. Volga, The Liberation of Sita (***): Here’s the Ramayana told from the perspective of Sita. I have a soft spot for just these kinds of retellings, and this is among the better ones. Volga’s own brilliant life history provides an even more intriguing framework to the story.
4. Benyamin, Jasmine Days (****): Benyamin’s first novel, Goat Days, was a brilliant – if harrowing – read, and this one keeps up the standard. Jasmine Days is set in a fictional Arab dictatorship, during the peak of the Arab Spring, and told from the perspective of a migrant worker (a radio jockey) from Kerala. It is, like Goat Days, a harsh and unsparing novel, and all the better for that.
5. Amitabha Bagchi, Half the Night is Gone (** and a 1/2): I loved the premise of this book – set in a mansion in Delhi in the 1940s – and I loved some of the writing, but in the end, I was left disappointed; it seemed to promise much, but fall tantalisingly short.

Hispanic/Latin American Writing

1. Antonio Munoz Molina, Like a Fading Shadow (***): You’d think that a novel that follows the parallel plot-lines of Martin Luther King’s murderer fleeing through Europe, and the author traveling in Lisbon to visit a past self, would make for a spectacularly good novel; this one felt a little bit of a let-down, though. Meandering and fragmented to a point where it was difficult to make sense of. That said, some absolutely superb passages, and probably worth reading just for that. I’d extract them, but they cover many pages.
2. Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Secret History of Costaguana (****): He comes from Colombia, and he writes back against Gabriel Garcia Marquez – you couldn’t have written the script! This book is (part-)historical fiction about the independence and creation of Panama, and is written almost as a rebuke to One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is also an excellent read. (Reviewed on the blog).

Arab Writing

1. Adonis, Concerto al-Quds (****): Adonis’ latest book of poetry has, as always, passages of absolute beauty, and passages that go a few miles over your head.
2. Rabih Alameddin, An Unnecessary Woman (***): You’d think that trying to write from the perspective of an ageing woman walling herself away with books would be a tough sell, but Alameddin pulls it off quite well.
3. Beirut39 (** and a 1/2): A collection of thirty-nine pieces of short fiction or poetry from upcoming writers from the Arab world. This underwhelmed me a little – I felt that either the translations didn’t do the originals justice, or the pieces picked didn’t do the writers justice.
4. Elias Khoury, My Name is Adam (***): Ever since I read Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury has been my favourite novelist, and I wait for new work by him as one would for an event that comes around once every few years. My Name is Adam is set in 1948, at the time of the Nakba, and covers the fall of the city of Lod, and the experiences of its Palestinian citizens in refugee camps. It doesn’t quite hit the heights of Gate of the Sun (honestly, what could?) or even The Broken Mirrors, but it does have moments of vintage Khoury, and of course, the theme is vitally important, especially in the present day.

African Writing

1. Africa39 (****): Found this at Blossom, Bangalore, of all places, and this is an excellent collection. Some of the excerpts – Rusty Bell and Season of Crimson Blossoms – were enough to make me buy and read the whole works. Really, really high – and consistent – quality.
2. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Season of Crimson Blossoms (****): A powerful and remarkable novel, exploring sexual taboos and sexual awakening in a strife-torn Nigerian town. Remarkable, particularly, in how it manages to be unsparing, and yet withhold judgment, at the same time.
3. Soni Lab’ou Tansi, Life and a Half (***): A dark and bleak work, part of the dictator novel genre, and written as a response to political repression in Congo. The violence is often stomach-curling, but there are moments of dark humour that remind one of Ngugi’s The Wizard of the Crow. Lab’ou Tansi’s own life as a ground-breaking Congolese novelist, once again, constitutes a layered backdrop to this.
4. Nthikeng Mohlele, Rusty Bell (***): And a totally different theme and tone – a raucous – and sometimes, meta – coming-of-age story set in contemporary South Africa, with some absolutely incandescent passages of writing.

European Writing

1. Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language (****): Another recommendation, and this was a delightful read. Involving a trans-continental conspiracy-cum-murder mystery featuring all the big-name post-structuralist philosophers of the post-1970s, and cameo appearances from the likes of Mitterand. Brilliantly witty, and even better if the in-jokes are broadly familiar.
2. Paul Blackburn (ed.), Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry (***): A great collection, although, of course, the troubadour poets are not always easy to enjoy, because of the gulf of centuries. That said, as always, some of the verse resonates beautifully. For example: “Our love is like top/branches that creak/on the hawthorn at night/stiff from ice/ or shaking from rain. And tomorrow, the sun/spreads its living warmth through the branches and through the green leaves on the trees.”

The United Kingdom

1. Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (** and a 1/2): This will probably sound blasphemous, but I’m not a fan. This, to me, was too obviously written for a Western audience, and appealing to a very specific moment of time, with an attendant set of concerns and insecurities, prevailing in some of the Western countries.

Speculative Fiction

1. Saad Hossain, Djinn City (*** and a 1/2): Bangladeshi SF! This was a really nice, fun novel alternating between Dhaka and the Djinn world, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reviewed it for Scroll.
2. Fadi Zaghmout, Heaven on Earth (*** and a 1/2): From Dhaka to Amman! This Jordanian SF novel about the discovery of an anti-ageing drug – and the moral dilemmas that it throws up – was an equally fine read. Reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
3. Odafe Otagun, Taduno’s Song (****): A haunting and beautiful novel, based on the life of Fela Kuti, about a man whose music terrifies the dictator.
4. Leigh Mathews, Colony (*** and a 1/2): A solid piece of Martian SF meets Solaris. Reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
5. Juliet Kemp, A Glimmer of Silver (*** and a 1/2): Another heavily-Solaris themed SF novel, this one set on a Planet that’s entirely Ocean. A little strange and a little sad. Reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
6. Tade Thompson, Rosewater (****): Uff! Such a well-paced, thrilling, and hands-in-the-ground novel, dealing with the after-effects of First Contact, and set in Nigeria. The premise is brilliant, and I’m looking forward to the continuation of the series.
7. Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad (*** and a 1/2): The retelling of the Frankenstein story in occupied, war-ravaged Baghdad. Black humour, so much tragedy, and a great read.
8. Shadreck Chikoti, Azotus the Kingdom (***): An SF novel set in a future, privatised African country, with some resemblances to Brave New World. A little raw, but a tremendously bold premise, which alone makes it worth the read.
9. L. Timmel Duchamp, Chercher La Femme (***): Gender-bending novel (another one reminiscent of Solaris) about a planet where men enter and refuse to leave – but women do not.
10. Annalee Newitz, Autonomous (***): My close-out SF novel of the year was this excellent, Cory Doctorow-esque tale of a corporation-dominated world, intellectual property Robin Hood-style piracy, and AI. Worth it just for the excellent world-building.

Non-Fiction

1. Jens Hanssen & Max Weiss (eds.), Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (*****): My book of the year. I learnt so very much from these brilliant essays – ranging from Iraqi Jews writing in Arabic in Israel, labour movements in Egypt, feminist struggles in Lebanon, and so on. There’s so much that we simply don’t know or aren’t exposed to, about how, even in the most wretched of circumstances, there will always be people thinking about, writing, and struggling for freedom and equality. A standing warning against dismissing regions or peoples as inherently authoritarian or unsuitable for democracy.
2. Dan Waddell, Field of Shadows: The English Cricket Tour of Nazi Germany, 1937 (*** and a 1/2): This was a gift. I’m not a cricket fan, but this was a very enjoyable read about a rag-tag German cricket team that hosted the English, in the shadow of World War II. Some very moving moments.
3. Charlie English, The Book Smugglers of Timbucktoo (*** and a 1/2): A fascinating read about an organised and systematic attempt to save Timbucktoo’s manuscripts from Boko Haram – with some doubts in the validity of the story!
4. Eric Hazan, A Walk through Paris (*****): Another of my favourite books of the year. Hazan’s a brilliant historian and political geographer, and his book is a walk through the radical history of Paris. It begins in Ivry-Sur-Seine, with a look at a socialist housing commune, takes you right through Paris, and ends at a left-wing Saint-Denis bookshop. I spent three days in Paris, walking with this book in my hand, getting drenched in summer rain and going into bookshops without knowing a word of the language – all of which made it extra-special.
5. Elaine Mokhtefi, Algiers: Third World Capital (****): A fascinating story about post-colonial Algiers, home to the Black Panthers, and to revolutionary movements throughout the world. Mokhtefi was at the events that she chronicles, and they bring alive an era of great excitement and hope. This doesn’t get five-stars simply because of some annoying apologia from time to time. Probably best read as a companion memoir alongside Henri Alleg’s Algerian Memoirs. (Reviewed on the blog).

2017 in Books

It is perhaps rare that you discover a new favourite poet and favourite prose writer in the same year. In 2017, I discovered Zbigniew Herbert and Binyavanga Wainaina. The contained charge of the former and the exuberant word-craft of the latter would have been enough to make this year memorable. In addition, though, I discovered outstanding Filipino writing while traveling to the country, came across more remarkable African writing (this reading year, perhaps, was defined by African writing) and – because of my continuing role with The Strange Horizons magazine – read much more speculative fiction than I would otherwise have inclined to make time for.

Among many discoveries, one stood out: this year, I read some writers who performed some truly dazzling pyrotechnics with language: they made language something physical, something that leapt and danced and sang and consumed you. One was Filipino. Another was Zimbabwean. A third was Indian. And the most brilliant of all was a Kenyan.

Here, as always, is my year-end list, and a rough rating (out of five). The usual riders apply (also note: categories overlap. For example, I read three books of SF by Indian writers, whom I have placed in the SF category instead of the Indian Fiction category).

Indian Fiction

1. Benyamin, Goat Days (****): This novel – about the travails of a Malayali immigrant to an unnamed Gulf country who ends up herding goats after a case of mistaken identity – became a cult classic in Kerala, and its uncompromising, almost savage, realism tells you why.

African Fiction

1.  Ngugi wa’ Thiong’o, The River Between (****): Last year, I read and loved The Wizard of the Crow. This year I read and loved The River Between. Similar to Things Fall Apart in its treatment of colonialism and its shattering impact on indigenous practices, I actually found it to be a deeper and more moving treatment of the issues (reviewed here).
2. Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (***): The timeless classic that I finally got around to reading this year. Short, not always comprehensible (to me), but I could vaguely see what he was trying to do, and an enjoyable read nonetheless.
3. Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger (*****): One of the stand-out books of the year for me. I came across Marechera while editing a series of interviews of young African SF writers. His prose leaps and burns like tongues of flame. “My dreams still clung defiantly to the steel wire of old memories which I no longer had the power to arrange clearly in my mind.” (Reviewed here.)
4. Jennifer Makumbi, Kintu (****): This novel is huge in Uganda, and on reading it, it’s easy to see why. Epic in sweep and scope, with the ambition of One Hundred Years of Solitude as well as its magical-realist elements (Yes, I know, cliched comparison), and the literary quality to pull it off. Highly recommended.
5. Patrice Naganag, Mount Pleasant (***): In terms of the quality of prose, perhaps not quite up there with the novels mentioned above, but nonetheless, a very interesting novel set in colonial Cameroon, on the cusp of far-reaching changes, with multiple narrators and some very moving moments.
6. Naivo, Beyond the Rice Fields (****): Published this year, the first novel from Madagascar to be translated into English. Like The River Between and Things Fall Apart, it too deals with colonialism and its impact on the structure of indigenous society, and heightens the moral conflict by focusing on practices that seem intuitively abhorrent to our sensibilities. Much recommended. (Reviewed here)  

African Non-Fiction

1. Binyavanga Wainaina, One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (*****): No description would do this justice. This memoir about growing up in post-colonial Kenya was, quite simply, the best book I read this year, and one of the best I’ve ever read. Read it. (Reviewed here)
2. Obi Nwakanma, Christopher Okigbo 1930-67: Thirsting for Sunlight (****): A moving and brilliant biography of the great Nigerian poet, Christopher Okigbo, who was tragically killed while still in his 30s, fighting in the Biafran War. One fascinating thing I learnt from this novel was how some of the great figures of 20th century Nigerian writing – Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Okigbo – among many others – were contemporaries at University College, Ibadan, and remained lifelong friends.

The Philippines

1. Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tángere (***): The Filipino national novel, whose publication had its author executed and also partly triggered the Filipino revolution against Spain. Not a bad riposte to those who say, with Auden, that “poetry achieves nothing.”
2. F. Sionil Jose, Dusk (Rosales Saga, #1) (***): Takes up the Filipino story at the point at which Rizal leaves off, dealing with the advent of American colonialism, and the doomed struggle of the Filipinos against the American invasion, told through the eyes of a Filipino family.
3. Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado (***): This one’s set in contemporary Philippines and the United States, although its title – Ilustrado – is a nod to the group of early Filipino intellectuals such as Rizal, who attempted to create a national consciousness. A bitter-sweet story, well-told, with an absolutely gut-wrenching twist at the very end.
4. Nick Joaquin, The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic (*****): The stand-out book among the four Filipino works that I read. Joaquin does magnificent things with language, and most of his short story are crafted like fine crystal. As the Preface puts it: “His command of voice, language, and form is absolute. Some of his sentences are like labyrinths that if you pulled a string through, you get this architectonic surety, a marvel… almost maddeningly Manileno, subversively religious, pitch-perfectly bourgeois, preternaturally feminist, historically voracious, Joaquin’s work has a fatality – it simply is.” Strongly recommended. (All four books reviewed here.)

Middle-East and North Africa

1. Omar Robert Hamilton, The City Always Wins (****): A thinly-fictionalised account of the Egyptian revolution from an actual participant. Very gripping, and an interesting choice of form – first-person narrative interspersed with staccato news bulletins, almost like gunshots.
2. Habib Sarori, Suslov’s Daughter (***): An interesting Lebanese novel that deals with the faultline between the political left and political Islam in the Middle-East.
3. Ghada Samman, Farewell, Damascus (***): An unabashedly feminist novel set in the Damascus of the 1960s, with marriage, divorce, and the freedom of women at its heart.

Latin America: Fiction

1. Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner (****): By times hilarious, and by times very dark, this Portuguese novel set in colonial Brazil has some elements of the Spanish Latin American works that I’m more familiar with, but at the same time, is different in unexpected ways. Recommended.

Latin America: Essays

1. The Paris Review, Latin American Writers at Work (****): A collection of Paris Review interviews featuring Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Luisa Valenzuela and others. As you’d expect, a very powerful and intense read. What struck me was how closely many of these readers were involved with political movements on the left.

Europe: Fiction

1. Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (The Neapolitan Novels #3) (****): After reading the first two novels of the Neapolitan quartet, I took a year-long time-out to recover. Then I came back and read Books 3 and 4 in two nights. Elena Ferrante, what I can I say?
2. Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child(The Neapolitan Novels, #4) (****): See above.
3. Dubravka Ugresic, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (*****): With a title like that, how can you be a disappointed? A beautifully broken, almost-aphoristic novel about the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, and the agony of exile. An added bonus are references to Brodsky and Shklovsky, among others. “Here, in Gustav-Meyer Allee, on Saturdays and Sundays, the country that is no more, Bosnia, draws its map once again in the air, with its towns, villages, rivers, and mountains. The map glimmers briefly and then disappears like a soap bubble.” (Reviewed here)
4. Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment (****): My last book of the year. It didn’t hit me as powerfully as the Neapolitan Quartet, but as ever, there were moments of incoherently painful resonance.

Poetry

1. Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems, 1956-1998 (*****): I discovered Prague with Zbigniew Herbert, walking around its streets with a copy of the book tucked under my arm, reading it on the sidewalks, in Milan Kundera’s old cafe, by the riverside, and on Petrin Hill. I cannot recall the last time I had a reading experience so distilled and so intense. (Reviewed here)
2. Mahmoud Darwish, I Don’t Want This Poem to End: Early and Late Poems (*****): Nothing needs to be said.
3. Ghada Samman, Arab Women in Love & War: Fleeting Eternities (****): Ghada Samman is one of the most interesting intellectual personalities to come out of the mid and late-20th century middle-east, and this book of poems reflects that.

 

Miscellaneous

1. Alexandra Berlina (editor), Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader (*****): I love everything about Victor Shklovsky – his writing, his literary theory, his intense, passionate life. This Reader, which brings together a chronological collection of his writing, was a brilliant find. The book was full of gems, two of which imprinted themselves in my mind: “Bits of landscape melted into – burned themselves into – Mayakovsky’s poems.  The poet was quiet, sad, ironic, calm. He was sure – he knew – that the revolution would happen soon. He looked at the things around him the way one does then the thing is about to disappear”; and, “all I had instead of a sculptor’s talent was quiet rage and three minutes of inspiration.” (Reviewed here)
2. Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (***): A solid and accessible introduction to a philosophical school that has always fascinated me – the Frankfurt critical theorists. Ranges from Walter Benjamin to Jurgen Habermas, and places them in the context of the anti-semitism of the 20th century, the Second World War, and the post-war liberal order.
3. Said Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayid Mahammad ‘Abdille Hasan (****): I came across this book from a very weird source – by learning that Sofia Samatar’s father was a respected academic, and had worked on oral poetry. It was a great find – a very interesting account of the role of poetry in building Somali nationalism, almost like a non-fiction version of an Ismail Kadare novel.

Speculative Fiction

1. Ian McDonald, River of Gods (***): I reviewed this for The Mithila Review. An imaginative near-future novel set in a Balkanised India rent apart by religious conflict and water-wars, but with some flaws when it comes to convincing world-building.
2. L. Timmel Duchamp, The Waterdancer’s World (***): A solid effort by the veteran writer, tackling themes such as pregnancy and childbirth, which are often neglected by contemporary SF. (Reviewed here).
3. Prayaag Akbar, Leila: A Novel (****): Brilliant, haunting, terrifying novel about an India that is looming over the horizon … or is already here. Echoes of Atwood, but really, a stand-alone work (Reviewed here)
4. Basma Abdel-Aziz, The Queue (****): Another one on the Egyptian revolution – this one a dark, pessimistic tale about a “Gate” that comes to life and rules a nameless city, forcing people to form a never-ending queue about it. Instantly recognisable. (Reviewed here)
5. Yoon Ha-Lee, Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire #1) (***): A far-future galaxy held together by consensus-reality. Characterised by some truly stunning imagery, and world-building complex enough to want to make me wait for a sequel.
6. Emma Newman, After Atlas (****): A chilling – and brilliant – near-future SF story involving the complete loss of personal privacy.
7. Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit(Wayfarers, #2) (***): A sensitive exploration of that perennial SF theme – the human/AI relationship.
8. Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (****): A powerful, visceral novel abut escape from slave-state America; imagines the existence of an actual “underground railroad” (which was a 19th-century metaphor for escape routes).
9. Tricia Sullivan, Occupy Me (***): More interesting (this time near-future) stuff involving humans and AI, this with a sweep that suddenly exploded into galactic proportions.
10. Lavie Tidhar, Central Station (****): One of my favourite SF works from this year – a set of short stories set around Central Station, a space-port located above historical Tel Aviv, and involving some very beautiful and moving reflection on what it means to be human.
11. Deepak Unnikrishnan, Temporary People (****): This is like an SF version of Benyamin’s Goat Days. A book about the experiences of Malayali immigrants to the gulf, but through the darkly playful lens of magical realism. What really stands out is how Unnikrishnan treats language – malleable, ductile, and with infectious exuberance. Recommended. (Reviewed here)
12. Tashan Mehta, The Liar’s Weave (****): A rollicking SF novel set in 1920s Bombay, featuring astrologers and forest-worlds, with some excellent imagery. (Reviewed here)

 

2016 in Books

I cannot remember another year where I read so many books that made me sit back, close my eyes, and say to myself, “I haven’t read something like that in quite a while!”

African Fiction

1. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Wizard of the Crow (*****): A brilliant, satirical novel, set in a nameless African country, soon after its independence. A dose of the Latin American magical realists, but in its own unique way, and savagely funny. One of my books of the year. “Queues were a Marxist invention, according to the Ruler, having nothing to do with African culture, which is characterized by the spirit of spontaneity. Mass disorganization – pushing and shoving – was to be the order of the day…”
2. Kossi Efoui, The Shadow of Things to Come (****): Like Thiong’o, set in a post-Independence African dictatorship, but much more pared-back, spare, almost coldly abstract. A great read, especially the bits about language and nationhood.
3. Ahmadou Korouma, Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote (****): This was written before the two novels above, and you can see how they take some of its main themes, and build upon them. The story is told by an African griot. “Koyaga, you have many faults, grave faults. You were, you are as tyrannous as a savage beast, as untruthful as an echo, as brutal as a lightning strike, as murderous as a lycaon, as emasculating as a castrator, as populist as a griot, as corrupt as a louse, as libidinous as a pair of ducks. You are… You are… You have many other faults which if one were to try to expound them all, catalogue each one at a stroke, it would surely tear one’s mouth at the corners. So specifies the responder, redoubling his jeers, which draw a good-natured smile from him they appear to insult.”

South African Fiction (a separate category, since I was specifically seeking out South African novels)

1. Zakes Mda, Ways of Dying (****): A powerful novel about South Africa’s first “professional mourner”, during the extreme violence of the transition.
2. Zakes Mda, The Heart of Redness (****): Moves between the Xhosa cattle killing of the 1850s and post-colonial South Africa, where a village struggles to resist “development”. A savage and satirical take on the “new South Africa”, and the similarities with colonialism.
3. Lewis Nkosi, Underground People (****): A political thriller set in the context of the armed resistance to the apartheid regime that exploded into violence a little before Transition – but also a deeply personal work.
4. Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit (*****): One of my books of the year. An astonishing portrayal of the disintegration of a family in the years after the transition. Issues of race, colonialism, sex, personal relationships, and above all, the constant human need of myth-making and construction of meaning, are handled with deep and profound empathy.

Arab Fiction

1. Elias Khoury, The Broken Mirrors: Sinalcol (****): Khoury’s latest novel doesn’t quite scale the heights of Gate of the Sun (honestly, what could?), but it is still a fantastic work, and has all the elements of classic Khoury: yearning, failed love, failed revolution, the weight of history, and such beautiful language. “Written with needles on the eyeballs of insight.”

Asian Fiction

1. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathiser (*****): An absolutely brilliant novel about the Vietnam War, written by a Vietnamese-American. Nguyen’s way with words, and with sentences, is unalloyed genius at work. One of my books of the year. I reviewed it for The Wire.
2. Yasushi Inoue, The Hunting Gun (****): A marvellously contained novella that explores human feelings in a uniquely perceptive manner.

European Fiction

1. Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda (***): This book was a birthday gift in 2012, but a complicated relationship with the person who gifted it meant that I only got around to reading it in 2016. Certainly worth the wait: this fantastical story set at the time of the Inquisition and presaging the invention of the aeroplane, was notable for a heavy dose of magical realism, and a scattered and fragmented form that still somehow held.
2. Colm Toibin, The Master (*****): Toibin’s wonderful reconstruction of the life of Henry James, and his sensitive treatment of the failure of relationships, of intellectual isolation, and of the futility of things enduring… one of my favourite books of the year, perhaps one of my favourite books ever. “Only sentences are beautiful.“
3. Flann O’Brien, At Swim Two Birds (**): A dense, modernist style that completely passed me by (unfortunately).
4. Jose Eduardo Agualusa (***): A surrealistic story about the Angolan revolution, told from the perspective of a woman who barricades herself in her house for three decades, starting the day prior to Independence. I’m not sure what I made of this novel at all!
5. Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (***): Nothing like a Francophile Englishman writing about Flaubert!
6. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (*****): I have nothing to add to what has already been said about Ferrante. As someone once said of Wodehouse, she “exhausts superlatives.”
7. Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name (*****): See above, but even better.
8. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (****): Finally got around to reading this classic.
9. Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (***): From a writer I love and admire, this was… disappointing.
10. Diane Meur, The House of Shadows (***): Poland during the tumultuous mid-19th century. The catch is that the narrator of the novel is a house – an old country mansion, that sees change, transformation, and all the accompanying joys and sorrows.

Latin American Fiction

1. Eduardo Galeano, Days and Nights of Love and War (*****): Beautiful. And with an equally beautiful introduction by Sandra Cisneros. “I select some lines that describe how lovely sudden anger can be.”
2. Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of the World (**): Came highly recommended, but I found it disappointing. Must be a subjective thing.

Indian Fiction

1. Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps (***): I picked this up at the Book Fair. An enjoyable (and a different kind of) novel about one man’s quest among the Naga forests.

Speculative Fiction

1. Jo Walton, The Philosopher Kings (***): Book 2 of Walton’s Thessaly series, about the quest to set up and administer Plato’s Republic (and the ways in which it goes wrong, and right). This one didn’t quite reach the brilliance of Book 1, in my view. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
2. Patrick Flanery, I Am No One (***): A story of surveillance and loss of identity in the 21st-century world, that flickered promisingly, but didn’t quite succeed (in my view).
3. Nick Wood, Azanian Bridges (****): A thrilling – and deeply political – novel about an alternate South Africa in which apartheid never ended. A twist of the knife at the end. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
4. Dietmar Dath, The Abolition of Species (***): An absolutely wild futuristic SF novel that I picked up at Seagull Bookshop in Calcutta. Brilliantly clever and inventive, talking about themes that you’d think need a new language and vocabulary of their own – but at times, almost consumed by its own cleverness!
5. Nalo Hopkinson (ed.), So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (***): A solid collection of short stories, aimed at decentering the SF canon.
6. Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber (***): An inter-planetary SF novel marked by dialogue in Caribbean American-English, and a very different way of storytelling. Very enjoyable.
7. Patricia A. McKillip, Kingfisher (****): An almost-Brechtian SF novel by a writer who is normally known for her lush high fantasy. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
8. Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (***): Finally got around to reading this chillingly dystopic story about a dying Earth.
9. Adam Roberts, The Thing Itself (***): There should be a new genre called “Philoso-SF”, for books like this. Roberts’ novel is based on Kant’s argument about the nature of reality.
10. Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem (****): The best of SF in this book: hard science combining with all the doubt and questioning about our place in the universe.
11. Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning (****): A sprawling and complex SF novel in a future utopia; maybe a trifle too complex at times!
12. Jo Walton, Necessity (***): The final instalment of the Thessaly series, with Plato’s Republic now on another planet, and featuring time travel.
13. Anil Menon, Half of What I Say (***): An interesting, genre-bending novel about a new-futuristic India with a tyrannical, all-powerful and militarised anti-corruption government unit. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
14. Yoss, Super Extra Grande (****): This Cuban SF writer was one of my finds of the year, courtesy Strange Horizons. This book is a rollicking space opera, with seven space-faring species, a lot of inter-species sex, “Spanglish” dialect, and a smash-and-grab in the tradition of the best space opera. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons.
15. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Doomed City (****): The Soviet SF masters’ darkest, most enigmatic work about an imaginary city in which the Sun is switched on and off, and there is a “purpose” that nobody knows. They did not dare to publish it when it was first written (1973); it was published in 1989, and the translation came out this year.
16. Yoss, A Planet for Rent (*****): See above, but even better. A Planet for Rent is a set of short stories in which earth has been colonised by superior spacefaring species, and turned into a holiday destination. The stories here are savagely funny and darkly beatiful.
17. Hassan Blasim (ed.), Iraq +100 (****): A set of short stories imagining Iraq a hundred years after the American invasion (2103). Moves between genres and themes.

Historical Fiction

1. Robert Harris, The Cicero Trilogy (Imperium, Lustrum, Dictator) (****): Robert Harris is a wonderfully atmospheric writer, and these three books about the life, rise, fall, and death of Cicero are evocative and deeply moving. Cicero’s epigram – “nothing dries more quickly than a tear” has stayed with me ever since I read the books almost a year ago.

Theatre

1. John Paul Sartre, No Exit and Other Plays (****): I can’t follow Sartre’s philosophical writings, but I enjoyed his short stories in Intimacy, and I loved No Exit for its remarkably acute, almost forensic, excavations of the human character. Whether it was the eponymous play (three characters together in a room after death, and the famous phrase “Hell is other people“), a retelling of the Oresteia, or a wonderful drama about a Communist Party assassin whose interior landscape and moral assessment about his own actions is subservient to the Party’s ever-changing versions of history, these plays were gripping, evocative, and haunting.
2. Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (*****): Every once a while, I come back to read this play, to be shaken inside out and to feel tears. Frayn’s play is set in heaven, where Niels Bohr, Bohr’s wife Margrethe and Werner Heisenberg meet again, and relive Heisenberg’s trip from Nazi Germany to meet Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941, at the height of World War II, and talk about… what? The play is a speculation about what happened at the meeting, but is so much more than that: about science, about friendship, and about humanity.
3. Brian Friel, Plays: Volume 1 (*****): Brian Friel’s plays struck me like lightning bolts. I had never heard of him until a friend recommended his work; his plays are a masterful blend of the public and the private, the political and the personal, and they put you through an emotional wringer. Translations, in particular  – a play set during the time when the colonial English were bent upon renaming Gaelic names in Ireland, and dealing with love across linguistic and political boundaries – was haunting. There’s something about the Irish…  “Maire: Master, what does the English word ‘always’ mean?’ Hugh: Semper – per omnia saecula. The Greeks called it ‘aei’. It’s not a word I’d start with. It’s a silly word, girl.”
4. Brian Friel, Plays: Volume 2 (****): See above.
5. Athol Fugard, Plays: Volume 1 (****): The famous South African playwright, whose works are set in the Karoo region of the Eastern Cape, blends the personal and the political in distinctive and empathetic ways. His characters are diverse and all memorable.

Essays/Other Non-fiction

1. Seamus Heaney, The Redress of Poetry (****): So much wisdom, such depth and breadth of knowledge, such an acute sensitivity, and such self-awareness. This book of essays on various poets is a joy to read. “The dream of a world culture, after all, is a dream of a world where no language will be relegated, a world where the ancient rural province of Boeotia (which Les Murray has made an image for all the outback and dialect cultures of history) will be on an equal footing with the city-state of Athens; where not just Homer but Hesiod will have his due honour.”
2. Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Cafe (***): A very well-written, enjoyablem and accessible introduction to existentialism, albeit with some irritating interpositions of the author’s political biases.
3. Edmund White, The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris (***): An off-track travel-guide to Paris liberally sprinkled with doses of history and politics.
4. Sue Roe, In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art (***): A companion to The Private Lives of the Impressionists, this is an accessible and enjoyable introduction to that era in Montmartre when Picasso, Matisse and the rest lived in close proximity and created a whole new set of art forms. Guilty of a few omissions that might reflect a little less flatteringly on its protagonists.
5. Edmund White, Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris (**): Entertaining at times, but a little too much name-dropping for the uninitiated.
6. Dominique Eddie, The Crime of Gean Jenet (****): A very perceptive account of Genet.
7. Tom Paulin, The Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State (*****): A brilliant collection of essays taking various poets and discussing their work in the context of language and nationhood. Features mostly English and Irish poets, but there are also excursions (Zbigniew Herbert). His evisceration of Geoffrey Hill was particularly enjoyable.
8. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Secure the Base (****): A fascinating set of reflections on colonialism, nationalism and language. These essays are made particularly interesting by the fact that Thiong’o consciously gave up writing in European languages in the 70s, and then wrote only in his native tongue, based on his view that language had to be liberated from colonialism as well.
9. Bashir Abu-Manneh, The History of the Palestinian Novel: 1948 to Present (*****): a very accessible introduction to Palestinian novelistic literature after the nakba, that places it in the context of Pan-Arab politics (featuring Kanafani, Habibi etc.). Some truly eye-opening facts and analysis about the relationship between literature, politics, and revolution – highly recommended.

History

1. Eric Hazan, The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps (*****): Eric Hazan’s historical reconstruction of one of the most enigmatic cities of the world is a joy to read; much of it is a work of political geography – taking us through each street, each neighbourhood, and telling us about its place in the economic, social, political and cultural history of the city. There are also brilliant sections on the history of revolutions in Paris (Victor Hugo does not come well out of this), and the invention of photography.
2. Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (***): A fairly comprehensive – and basic – introductory text.

Memoirs/Biographies/Autobiographies

1. Henri Alleg, Algerian Memoirs (*****): Picked up at The Seagull, a beautiful little bookshop in Calcutta, Algerian Memoirs is a wonderful account of the life of Henri Alleg, an important figure in Algeria’s liberation struggle against colonial rule. Alleg, originally a Frenchman, came to Algeria as a young man, and was a co-founder of its most important pro-liberation newspaper. Alleg was imprisoned and tortured by the colonial regime, and his account of his torture – La Question – was an important book and marked a turning point in the struggle. Algerian Memoirs is a great story of a tumultuous time, told with a clear eye and no sentimentality.
2. Leopold Infield, Whom the Gods Love: The Story of Evariste Galois (*****): This is a beautiful biography of Evariste Galois, the great mid-nineteenth century French mathematician and political revolutionary, who was killed in a duel at the age of 21. Through the extraordinary and tumultuous life of Galois (expelled from school for pro-revolutionary sentiments and imprisoned twice), it also paints a gripping story of France in the throes of violence and revolution.
3. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (***): Hemingway’s spare – yet moving – account of writers and artists in Paris in the 1920s. His description of Shakespeare and Co – the bookshop – stood out.
4. Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land Between (*****): A beautiful and haunting book about a son’s search for his father, who was vanished by the Gaddafi regime. I reviewed it for The Wire.
5. Dikgang Moseneke, My Own Liberator (*****): From Robben Island to Deputy Chief Justice of the South African Constitutional Court, via a successful law practice, surviving assassination attempts, and overseeing the first democratic election in South Africa. This is an extraordinary story of an extraordinary life.

Poetry

1. Tom Paulin, Love’s Bonfire (***): An interesting – if somewhat uneven – collection.
2. Alastair Reed, Weathering (****): Small, contained, and wonderfully shaped poems. A poem about his dying father was among the best (My Father, Dying)
3. Zbigniew Herbert, Collected Poems (*****): I discovered – and fell in love with – Zbigniew Herbert, and his contained poetry that disavows romanticism and grand narratives, but takes no refuge in cynicism. Elegy of Fortinbras is my personal favourite. “What I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy.“

2015: The Year in Books

It’s been another year of fascinating literary discoveries. I’ve been able to re-engage with my first love, fantasy and science fiction (seeking out a mix of the canonical and the contemporary). I’ve tried to read more non-fiction (essays) than usual. In some ways, this has been compelled: taking up a day job that requires long periods of non-stop work, interspersed with sudden and unexpected breaks, has necessarily shaped the kind of reading I’ve been able to do – one that is amenable to jerky stop-start bursts. This was certainly why I was unable to finish Cities of Salt, the kind of novel that requires painstaking continuity – and also perhaps why I’ve been able to review less than I’d have liked, since it’s been so difficult to find those uninterrupted three hours that one needs to think through, structure, and write a review. One of the resolutions for 2016 must be to find those pockets of time!

Picks of the year :Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound, Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, and Jo Walton’s The Just City.

Here goes – impressionistic grades out of five, and one-sentence summaries, as ever:

European Fiction:

1. Sandor Marai, Embers (****): An explosive novel about memory and desire, in the background of pre-War and inter-War Europe stifled by social conventions. Reminiscent of Ismail Kadare, in its atmospherics.
2. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (****): Classic Kundera, savage, uncompromising, darkly funny.
3. Ismail Kadare, The Fall of the Stone City (***): Vintage Kadare, with a few twists. Not as convincing as the rest of his work.
4. Colm Toibin, The South (****): Gossamer-silky story of love, solitude, and loss, moving between Barcelona and Ireland (two places I’ve never been to, but dream of all the time)
5. Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles (***): Surreal group of short stories (the precursor of magic realism, it is said), with some painfully sharp imagery.
6. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (****): Finally got around to reading this classic, and absolutely loved this. Perhaps one of the first instances of meta-fiction; and definitely, a keen and acute sense of gender politics.
7. Ismail Kadare, Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (***): Another Kadare novel about honour, death and the Kanun in mountainous Albania. Not quite as powerful as Broken April.

Asian Fiction:

1. Eka Kurniawan, Beauty is a Wound (*****): One of my picks of the year. A sprawling novel about 20th Century Indonesian history, sprinkled with a dose of magic realism and a topping of dark humour. Reminiscent of Llosa at his best.

2. Orhan Pamuk, A Strangeness in My Mind (**): Sruggled with this for 150 pages, and then dropped it. Heretical thought: maybe Pamuk has run out of things to say.

Latin American Fiction:

1. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (****): Llosa’s sheer versatility never ceases to amaze. This novel is pure jouissance, with a single-minded focus on the erotic that reminded me of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, but much more, er, palatable.

2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Of Love and Other Demons (****): I’m not a great fan of Marquez, but this was my favourite out of the ones that I’ve read. Taut and tightly-paced, with some truly memorable characters.

North Africa/Middle East/Arab Fiction

1. Ahdaf Souief, The Map of Love (***): A riveting politico-love story set during the heady days of 19th century Egyptian anti-colonialism; tended to get a little too descriptive towards the end, and could have been shorter.

2. Latifa Zayyat, The Open Door (*****): Set in the Egypt leading up to Nasser’s revolt, often called the first Arab feminist novel; depicts events that were contemporaneous with the setting of Mehfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, but from a very different lens. One of my stand-out reads of the year.

3. Kamel Daoud, The Merseult Investigation (****): A brilliant story, told from the perspective of the brother of the unnamed Arab shot dead in Camus’ Stranger. In the tradition of post-colonial reclamation of memory and humanity, such as Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest. Read this through the lens of Edward Said.

4. Abdul Rahman Munif, Cities of Salt (***): The canonical novel about the tragedy that befalls an Arab oasis-village after oil is discovered beneath their land. I must confess, I had to abandon this novel half-way. It is clearly a vital and essential work, but the dense description, after a point, made it very difficult to sustain, especially with my stop-start reading schedules.

African Fiction:

     1. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (***): Finally got around to reading this canonical work, for a book club. Did not resonate with me as much as Anthills of the Savannah, or his book of essays, but I can sense how it was pathbreaking for its time and place.

2. Nuruddin Farah, Crossbones (***): A harrowing novel about journalism in war-torn Somalia. Tended to get a little too descriptive at times, but an essential read.

Indian Fiction:

1. Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman (***): I bought this out of a sense of political solidarity, as much as anything else. It felt like a great book bogged down by (what I thought was) an uninspired translation.
2. Aditya Sudarshan, The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi (***): An eerie politici-fantastical thriller, with some acute observations about urban Indian society, but an unsatisfactory ending.

Fantasy and Science-Fiction

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Time Wanderers (*****): The Soviet duo have probably written some of the greatest science-fiction in the history of the genre, but continue to be relatively unknown. The Time Wanderers is less popular even within their oeuvre, but I found it absolutely brilliant (especially the premise, and the ending).

2. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard To Be A God (****): Translated for the first time directly from Russian, I reviewed this for Strange Horizons (here). The premise is utterly brilliant, the execution not always so. Still very much word a read. The Paris Review also carried an article on this earlier this year (here).

3. Robert Jackson Bennett, The City of Stairs (****): Good, old-fashioned, thrill-a-minute, stay-up-till-4AM-reading epic fantasy involving Gods, heroes, and a city of stairs.

4. Anthony Trevelyan, The Weightless World (***): An interesting debut SF novel set in Maharashtra (!). I reviewed it for Strange Horizons (here)

5. Karel Capek, RUR and War With the Newts (****): The author who coined the word “robot”. This classic of SF comes with a sharp, brilliant introduction by Adam Roberts.

6. M. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart (**): I utterly loved Viriconium. I was expecting more of the same from this one, but it failed to convince. Seemed to be trying too hard, at times.

7. Samuel R. Delaney, Babel-17 (*****): The canonical SF novel from the 60s is worth its fame. Brilliant exploration of the link between language and the construction of reality, set in the background of thrill-a-minute space opera.

8. N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (***): Had heard a lot about it, so approached it with very high expectations – which, perhaps inevitably, it did not live up to. Still, an enjoyable epic-fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, and some vivid imagery.

9. Salman Rushdie, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (**): Takes itself too seriously, is too self-conscious about its politics, and didn’t really work (for me).

10. China Mieville, Three Moments of an Explosion (**): Definitely heretical, but I think China Mieville should stick to novels (which he’s brilliant at).

11. Margaret Atwood, The Heart Goes Last (***): A reliably consistent SF novel from Atwood. I reviewed it for Strange Horizons here.

12. Monica Byrne, The Girl in the Road (***): I have very conflicted feelings about this SF novel, set in India and Africa fifty years hence, in a world in which India and China are competing in a new “scramble for Africa”. One of the protagonists is an Indian woman – rather rare in SFF! I participated in a Strange Horizons Book Club discussion about the novel here.

13. Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria (***): Lovely, dense, old-school fantasy writing, with intricate world building, layered histories and myth, and conflicted characters. Almost too dense at times, if that makes sense.

14. Jo Walton, The Just City (*****): Beautiful SF novel about Athena’s attempts to recreate Plato’s Republic on an island out of space and time. The kind of novel that is stark in its simplicity, but haunts you for long after.

Miscellaneous Non-Fiction

1. Colm Toibin, Love in a Dark Time: and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature (****): Toibin’s portrait of eight writers, whose identities were at least partially shaped by their sexuality, is a beautiful read, albeit a little inconsistent.

2. V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness (N/A): Orientalist, racist, and unreadable.

3. Greg Grandin, Empire of Necessity (*****): Technically, this is an academic work of history, but is written so lucidly and simply, that it reads like a story. The account of a slave rebellion on board a ship of the West coast of South America is a powerful and moving tale. A must-read.

4. Italo Calvino, The Road to San Giovanni and Other Essays (****): Six essays that typify Calvino’s ethereal, feather-light touch.

5.  Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (*****): Read this twice – once in March, and then a second time while wandering in Mexico City and Chiapas. Paz’s epistle to Mexico is a thing of beauty.

6. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (***): Fell in love with this the first time I read it, three years ago. Now, in light of all the reading I’ve done in the intervening years, no longer sounds quite as impressive. In particular, the construction of a “Europe” seems essentialist and ahistorical, and the omission of Empire in the historical account of the development of the novel, particularly glaring.

7. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (***): Beautiful, apart from the extended theological musings.

8. Colm Toibin, On Elizabeth Bishop (*****): I’ve always enjoyed Bishop. Toibin makes her look like an unvarnished genius. Beautiful set of reflections by one of the finest writers alive today, on a very talented poet.

9. The Edward Said Reader (*****): Collection of essential Edward Said writings across his life and career. One of the seven or eight books always by my bedside table.

Bring on 2016!

 

2012 Wrap-up

I’m flying back home for New Year with the family, and will have only dubious access to the internet until January 8. So, slightly early, here is my 2012 reading list. I’m going to do two – rather foolish – things with it. First, try to sum up (mad pursuit!) what I consider to be the essence of the book in a sentence. And secondly, rate it on a very simplistic rating scale. I don’t think I’ve read any bad book this year, so the rating system is: * for a good, solid, decent read; ** for something very good; *** for excellent; ***** for brilliance in writing, plot, characterisation or even in episodes (insert appropriate markers for poetry); and ***** for, well, life-changing. I know this simplifies to the point of distortion, but for want of anything better…

A. Literary fiction

1. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables: Annoyed by the constant preachy moralizing, enthralled by the richness of description (Waterloo, sewers, slang), and utterly enraptured by the scope, colour and movement of the 1831 Revolution. ***

2. Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere: A savage – yet brilliant – indictment of youth, lyricism and revolution, and their inevitable, tragic entanglement. ****

3. A.S. Byatt, Possession: Tedious and over-described at points, gripping at times, and fairly compelling both in its parallel descriptions of two love stories spanning two centuries and two very different societies, as well as its account of the literary academic life. **

4. J.L. Borges, Ficciones: Takes our conceptions of time, space and existence, and twists them around until they become unrecognizable, until dreams mingle with reality and we can’t tell the two apart, until our heads are absolutely exploding. *****

5. Oscar Wilde, The Collected Short Stories: Light, darkness and dappled shadows characterise these short stories, ostensibly for children, but clearly of much greater depth – and also, incidentally, possessing in one of them the most brilliant subversion of the soul-body relationship that I’ve come across. ***

6. Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel: Borges, in his preface, calls this the perfect novel, and you can understand why – “brilliant” simply doesn’t do justice to the force and power of this short novel to radically destabilise our firmest convictions about the human condition. *****

B. Speculative Fiction

1. Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song for Arbonne (re-read): Epic fantasy in the time of the troubadours, and quests, wars, love and poetry, all in language that wouldn’t look out of place in Tolkien. ***

2. Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana (re-read): Epic fantasy set in a world resembling the Italian city-states of medieval times, with a dash of sorcery, and a wonderful theme of memory, loss and the power of naming. ****

3. China Mieville, Railsea: Classic Mieville – a brilliant premise, outstanding writing, and an ending that goes out like a damp squib. **

4. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris: I always knew this was part of the SF canon, and now I know why – a profound treatment of the eternal themes of love, memory and humanity, all of which intertwine beautifully within a hard, scientific setting – I cannot recommend this highly enough. ****

C. Poetry

1. Lermontov, Collected Poetry: Brooding, melancholy, ironic and deeply compelling. ***

2. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal: —- *****

3. Borges, Collected Poetry: A wealth of references, most of which I’m sure I missed, weaving in his pet ideas about time and space into verse, and filled with delightful imagery. ****

4. Milton, Paradise Lost (re-read): Things unattempted yet – or since – in prose or rhyme. *****

5. Virgil, Aeneid (re-read): Epic, lyrical, stirring, passionate – of course, but so much more – musings on the ever-unattainable ideal in the beautiful image of an always-reaceding shoreline, meditations on Empire, a “private voice” that subverts the dominant paean to Rome even as it is being established, constant defamiliarisation of comfortable bracketed categories of good and evil, civilised and barbarian, us and the other. *****

D. Drama

1. Ibsen, Love’s Comedy: Flawed, of course, but brilliantly compelling while reading, and stays with you for a long time afterwards – another destabilizing analysis of the ideas of love, permanence, decay and time. **

2. George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma: One of the few works I’ve come across where a modern writer manages to insert a classical moral dilemma in the style of Greek tragedy without sacrificing plot, pacing, dramatic intensity or anything else, for that matter. **

3. Chekhov, Uncle Vanya: Admittedly, extremely powerful, but I was left numbed, depressed and with the unshakeable – although temporary – conviction that there was nothing in this world but sheer hopelessness. **

4. Goethe, Faust: Musings on the clash between radically opposed world-views of romanticism and the enlightenment, the fragility and incompleteness of all human endeavor, the agony of that realisation, and what a man can do – or wish for – to overcome that agony. ****

E. History

1. John MacLeod, Highlanders: A History of the Gaels: I bought this book at Culloden Museum, while traveling in my beloved Scottish highlands, and found it to be a solid and informative – if unspectacular – account of the history of that tragic region. *

2. James Hunter, Glencoe and the Indians: Beautifully weaved together the stories of the Highlanders and the Native Americans as victims of Empire (as well as mercantile capitalism), with deeply moving accounts of Glencoe, of Wounded Knee, of the Trail of Tears, of the Ghost Dance (and so many more), that all seemed to fit together in one litany of the crimes of colonialism. ***

F. Essays

1. Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An erudite analysis of the European novel, the art and nature of translation, and in particular, Kafka. ***

2. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novels: Focuses almost entirely on the history and evolution of the European novel, in the broader context of European culture (music and art) as well – lyrically written and painstakingly analysed, an exhilarating read. ****

3. Oscar Wilde, The Complete Essays: His thesis on the meaning, nature and purpose of art – the erudition and detail is astounding, and his ideas deeply challenging and subversive – a must-read, especially the four essays on art. *****

4. I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism: Probably extremely outdated now, but I did find some good ideas in there. *

5. Hazlitt, Essays on Shakespeare: The interesting thing about these essays is that rather than subjecting the plays to an overarching analysis of theme, plot, characterisation, language etc. – Hazlitt instead picks out one or two themes from each play that he finds specifically interesting, or worthy of analysis, and the result is extremely thought-provoking. ***

6. Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Western Drama: The fact that this was written in the 18th century and reflects the deep-sated prejudices of the time hardly takes away from the fact that it is a brilliant, detailed and erudite birds-eye view (if that isn’t an oxymoron) of the development of the European drama from Aeschylus down to the time of Schlegel, with stopovers in France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. ***

7. Borges, Collected Essays: See description of Ficciones, and add to that some very thought-provoking analyses of Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge and The Arabian Nights, to take just a few examples. *****

8. Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism: I cannot now imagine reading and appreciating Baudelaire, or the broader context in which he wrote, without having read Walter Benjamin’s stunning analysis of 19th century France and the themes of Baudelaire’s poetry. (Thanks, Aparna, for the heads-up)

G. Miscellaneous

1. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy: Intoxicating and heady, but ultimately, once the (Dionysian) madness wears off, fails to persuade. **

2. Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents: Disturbing and rings disturbingly true. ***

3. Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and their Friends: The Inklings at Oxford, of the creation of Narnia and Middle-Earth, of drinks at The Eagle and Child and strolls along Addison’s Walk – what more could a Tolkien-and-Oxford-lover want? ***

**

I also have the beginnings of a proposed 2013 reading list.

1. Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda

2. Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance (I saw the review over on ANZ LitBlogs, and knew immediately that I have to read this one).

3. Proust, Swann’s Way (but only after June, and the ending of the academic year!)

Any suggestions of any kind would be appreciated. I know the 2012 list doesn’t really give you anything to go by, since it is utterly random, but I’m game for trying anything, time permitting.

Have yourselves a great last few days of 2012, and a lovely 2013, everyone.