The Good Listener by Neil Belton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £7.99 in UK)

At the end of the second World War, Helen Bamber, a 20-year-old doctor's secretary in London, went to work with survivors of the Nazi death camp at Belsen. While other relief workers made food, clothing and medicines a priority, she realised her fellow Jews had an overwhelming need to talk about their experiences. Neil Belton uses Bamber's life as a focal point on man's inhumanity to man in the second half of the 20th century, and gives us a compelling meditation on the exercise of power through pain. Since setting up the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in 1985, Bamber has borne witness to the worst savagery human beings can inflict on others. This is a remarkable writing debut for Belton, which won him this year's Irish Times Literature Prize: Nonfiction.