Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire Iain Sinclair Penguin, £10.99:With the vast Olympic project already making incursions from the east, bringing with it the threat of yet another dodgy new dawn, "psychogeographer" Iain Sinclair gets his retaliation in first with this tribute to the London borough where he has lived for more than 40 years.
Known for its cultural experiments and radical politics, its gangsters and corruption, its CCTV-monitored anarchy, the contradictory Hackney so valued by Sinclair is partly the result of an infrastructural insularity which has made it hard to get to, hard to leave. In his formidably energetic and free-flowing style, the Trinity-educated Welshman walks the walks and talks the talk of his adopted manor in the company of such fugitive luminaries as Kray henchman Tony Lambrianou and former Baader-Meinhof member Astrid Proll, but it is clear that his strongest sympathies lie with the obscure army of local activists, artists, obsessives and proselytisers whose particular line in creative chaos resists assimilation into the metropolitan mainstream.
Giles Newington
Brooklyn Colm Tóibín Penguin, £7.99
At the centre of this 2009 Costa Fiction Award-winning novel is Eilis Lacey, who leaves the grimly buttoned-up Ireland of the 1950s when her sister gets her a job in New York. Contrary to all expectations – especially the reader's; how many "happy ever after" stories about emigration have we read? – Eilis doesn't blossom in Brooklyn. The accuracy of Toibin's period detail is almost palpable, and I found his portrait of Eilis's heroic sister Rose heartbreaking. The trouble is that Brooklyndoesn't "do" heartbreak. The tone of the narrative is stoic to the point of relentlessness, reducing everything – even a vivid Italian immigrant family – to a monotone catalogue of bleak-and-white. Beneath the apparent neutrality, of course, is a sly, shrewd, often cruel observer. As a literary achievement Brooklyn is undeniably impressive. But God, it's depressing.
Arminta Wallace
The House of Wisdom Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury, £8.99
Lyons has written a lucid account of the philosophical and scientific contribution made by Arab learning. He describes the brutal ignorance of the crusaders toward the more advanced Arab world of medieval times. Adelard of Bath, the book's hero, lived in the first half of the 12th century, travelled to the near east and translated seminal works from Arabic, notably Euclid's Elements, neglected in Christendom and the legendary star tables, the zij al-Sindhind. Lyons sees Adelard as a precursor of Galileo in his insistence that the existence of God must not prevent man from exploring the laws of nature. The book's constant theme is the push provided by Arab learning toward science and away from the narrow theology of the Christian middle ages, for example the Arabic scholar and interpreter of Aristotle, Averroes, whose rationalist philosophy anticipated Descartes by five centuries.
Tom Moriarty
The Armies Evelio Rosero Maclehose Press, £7.99
In a Colombian hillside village, an aging professor is losing his memory – but as the sound of gunfire begins to echo through the mountains, the losses for him and his community are only beginning. The region is well used to the horrors of warfare, but now, amidst the smells of coffee and ripe oranges, something like an apocalypse is taking place. As Professor Pasos retreats into the dream-world of his past, the present, too, takes on a nightmarish unreality. Looking for his missing wife, Pasos takes us relentlessly through the streets of his decimated world. Caught in a senseless, ghastly crossfire between guerrillas, paramilitaries, and government forces, we are swept into the realm of dehumanised absurdity. Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, The Armiesis impressionistic yet powerfully lucid; a beautifully translated work that leaves you with the feeling of a deep and disquieting dream.
Claire Anderson-Wheeler
The Locust and the Bird Hanan al-Shaykh Bloomsbury, £8.99
Kamila, a vibrant, pretty 11-year-old child growing up in an extended patriarchal family in 1930s Beirut, becomes unwittingly betrothed to Abu-Hussein, her pious, widowed brother-in-law. As enforced marriage and teenage motherhood loom, she falls in love with Muhammad. The young couple conducts an illicit affair that safeguards the young girl against the privations of a life spent tending to an indifferent husband, raising her sister’s children and giving birth to her own two daughters. After eight years, Kamila finds the strength to divorce Abu-Hussein and marry Muhammad. The penalty exacted for such shameful defiance is social ostracism and the forced abandonment of her tiny daughters. One of those daughters, acclaimed journalist and novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, overcomes protracted estrangement to form a strong attachment to her mother in later life. Two years after Kamila’s death, al-Shaykh becomes a tender conduit through which her illiterate mother posthumously narrates her extraordinary life story with characteristic wit.
Eleanor Fitzsimons
