This week's new publications reviewed
Rudolf Nureyev: The Life Julie Kavanagh, Penguin, £9.99
This tour-de-force is the definitive biography of ballet's first pop icon. The product of 10 years' research, Nureyev: The Life is a compellingly readable account of a life lived with breathtaking intensity. Kavanagh presents an honest yet sympathetic portrayal of Nureyev the man, who emerges as a magnetic but deeply flawed figure. But her portrait also transcends the human, rightfully establishing this "sacred monster" as one of the 20th century's truly great artists. His talent makes him worthy of a study such as Kavanagh's, and she allows this talent to take centre stage throughout her multi-faceted exploration of ballet, fame, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and the psychology of an artist. - Eimear Nolan
The Diana Chronicles, Tina Brown, Arrow Books, £8.99
For almost two decades the coverage of Diana, Princess of Wales was so relentless, and so relentlessly tiresome, that it seemed best ignored. The same was true of the outlandish explanations for her miserable death, in a tunnel in Paris in 1997, put forward by a legion of conspiracy theorists. Tina Brown charts Diana's life from her often unhappy childhood through her surprising selection as bride for the Prince of Wales to the turmoil of the subsequent 16 years. The former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, who treats neither husband nor manipulative wife with undue sympathy, has put together a wickedly compulsive page-turner - at times hard-nosed reportage, at others Jilly Cooper-style bonkbuster - that makes you wish you had followed the palace intrigues more closely the first time around. - Liam Stebbing
Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, Steven Bach, Abacus, £10.99
Pioneering film-maker, propagandist, darling of Hitler, and a dedicated and outrageous liar, Leni Riefenstahl came to prominence for her beautifully shot and edited films and remained notorious for her untenable denials concerning her place in the Third Reich. Her Führer commissioned her two most famous works: Triumph of the Will, the heroic record of one of the Nuremberg rallies; and Olympia, a documentary covering the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The films are regarded as masterpieces of technique. Riefenstahl herself is revealed to have possessed incredible energy and toughness and here she comes across as a determined, amoral and opportunistic fantasist who, ultimately, cared only for the beauty of her films. Bach's unravelling of her complex story is even-handed and vibrant and uncovers a very dishonest genius. - Colm Farren
Being Shelley, Ann Wroe, Vintage £9.99
This is not a conventional biography: Wroe eschews the traditional biographer's chronological sequence. Like a compiler of a vast jigsaw puzzle, she tears up and scatters the events, poems and notebook jottings of Shelley's short, intense life. Each page contains fragments, linked thematically to the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, seen by Wroe as central to Shelley's poetry. The reader, in turn, may be selective. We may focus on Shelley's own words. On the need for philanthropy, for example: "a man must put himself in the place of another". Two of the most glittering fragments are the images of a fearless 19-year-old Shelley preaching revolution in darkest Dublin in 1812 and of how he meticulously shaped the metre of To A Skylark directly from the bird's flight: "simple and light, springing and leaping".
- Tom Moriarty
Barefoot Runner: The Life of Marathon Champion, Abebe Bikila, Paul Rambali, Serpent's Tail £8.99
Another Olympics year, and publishers are dusting off their sports back catalogues. Barefoot Runner is the story of the first African to win an Olympic gold medal; most people will remember Abebe Bikila from the grainy black-and-white photos of the Ethiopian winning the marathon in the 1960 Rome games in his bare feet. Tragedy marked Bikila's life as much as his two Olympic marathon triumphs - he was paralysed in a car crash in 1969 and died at few years later, at the age of 41. You might think, therefore, the author couldn't go wrong. However he does. This is not a standard biography, but a fictionalised one, crammed full of internal thoughts and imagined conversations and the result is mawkish and implausible. - Paul Cullen
Addition, Toni Jordan, Sceptre. £7.99
Grace Vandenberg has a great fondness for Nikola Tesla, a long-dead inventor who has been unfairly sidelined despite his genius; she feels a connection to him. Grace is smart, funny and attractive. She is also unemployable, impossible to live with and single. You see, Grace likes to count things. In fact, she needs to count things; bristles on her toothbrush, or poppy seeds on the orange cake she eats every morning at the same cafe. It's no surprise that Grace doesn't have much of a life, that is until she encounters Seamus Joseph O'Reilly over a bunch of bananas. Then she decides she's tired of counting, of not allowing herself to be spontaneous, of not living life to the full. The problem is the cure might just be worse than Grace's OCD, but that's a chance she's willing to take. Toni Jordan's debut is mature, witty and entertaining and earns her a place in the growing ranks of Australian popular fiction writers. - Claire Looby