Irish Times writers review the latest paperbacks.
Climbing the Mango Trees. Madhur Jaffrey, Ebury Press, £7.99
If painters can create visual work inspired by their childhoods, and musicians pieces that act as melodic memoirs, can a cook whip up an edible, olfactory chronicle of the past? Cookery writer and actor Madhur Jaffrey has come very close in Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India. With each page, Jaffrey adds further ingredients to the vibrant account of her childhood, every milestone punctuated by her sensory appreciation of the preparation, display and final greedy consumption of Indian meals - exotic to us, comfort food to her. She illustrates her narrative of familial relationships, schooling, politics and growing up with the richness of spice, the sticky juice of ripe mangoes, fragrant breads and roasting meat. An appendix divulges 32 family recipes. You'll be tempted to lick your fingers both before and after turning the pages. - Christine Madden.
The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk, Faber & Faber, 7.99
You may have encountered Orhan Pamuk though his stylish IMPAC Prize-winning tale of Persian miniaturists, My Name Is Red. You may have come across his provocative new novel, Snow, or his elegiac memoir, Istanbul: Memories of a City. But if you haven't read The Black Book, you haven't read Pamuk: simple as that. Since it appeared in English in 1995 this dazzling exploration of identity and consciousness has been hailed as Pamuk's masterpiece as well as the book that formed his writing style, formally and thematically. Until now it has also, however, been badly served by a clunky, dated translation. Maureen Freely's new version gives the text a lithe energy without dissolving its wonderful weirdness: a fable wrapped in a puzzle disguised as a crime novel, it's a magical, menacing, mind-blowing read. - Arminta Wallace
Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg. Hugh Barnes, Profile Books, £8.99
Abram Gannibal, the black, African great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, was taken as a slave from Africa to Constantinople and brought to the court of Peter the Great on Christmas Day, 1704. The Tsar adopted him as a son and named him Pyotr Petrovich Petrov. Hugh Barnes has written an imaginative and entertaining biography of the man who became Europe's first black intellectual and, according to Pushkin, "lived out his life like a French philosophe". Invention and imagination were necessary here for few contemporary sources were available. Even the sole Portrait of Gannibal turned out, when cleaned, to be that of a white man. Barnes paints a more genuine and entertaining portrait but occasionally loses control, especially when describing Gannibal's first meeting with Peter. He deeply offends Orthodox Russians by describing their liturgy as "the hocus pocus of the mass" and their sublime church music as "the ululation of priests." - Séamus Martin
What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty Edited by John Brockman, Pocket Books, £7.99
In science, questions are often as important as answers. Creative hunches can set in train studies that revolutionise our understanding of the universe. This book asks leading thinkers to share their intuitions about pet subjects on the fringes of human knowledge. The contributor list is a role-call of deep-thinkers, each one providing bite-sized musings - some more chewable than others - on what they believe to be true but cannot yet definitively prove. Themes include life beyond Earth, global warming, evolution, language, computers, the nature of reality and perception and how we store memories. Consciousness is a much-picked bone and intellectual heavyweights slug it out over when and in what species it arises. - Claire O'Connell
Miss Angel: The Art and World of Angelica Kauffman. Angelica Goodden, Pimlico, £12.99
Eighteenth-Century Europe was captivated by Angelica Kauffman. Portrait painter to the royal houses of England, Russia, Naples and Hanover, and close friend of Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, and Goethe, she was fêted as much for her exotic lifestyle as for her artistic talent. Ireland, too, was captivated by her - the "Earl-Bishop" of Derry, Lord Augustus Hervey, became her patron, and she adjudged Dublin "the most pleasant capital of the three kingdoms". Goodden's biography is the first on the Austro-Swiss artist in 80 years, and aims to introduce a new generation to Kauffman. Then, as now, opinion was divided as to her ability as a painter, but Goodden addresses the question with a lightness of touch, revels in the vivid details of Kauffman's life and portrays an artist whose ultimate creation was her own celebrity. - Freya McClements
The Wit in the Dungeon. Anthony Holden, Little, Brown, £12.99
This is a comprehensive and readable biography of the poet, playwright, novelist, editor and essayist Leigh Hunt. In the century and a half since his death, his name has sunk out of sight, crowded out by those of his more lasting contemporaries. His life spanned the Romantic and Victorian periods in literature. He was close friend and publisher of Keats and Shelley, and companion of Lamb, Hazlitt and Byron; of the next generation, he befriended and championed Tennyson, Browning and Dickens. Dogged by debt, he was heartlessly satirised as Harold Skimpole by Dickens in Bleak House. His brave editorship of the Examiner remains a landmark in British journalism. He denounced the slave trade, advocated parliamentary reform and championed the civil rights of Irish Catholics. He is deservedly rescued from obscurity in this fine work. - Brian Maye