1 The Same Sea by Amos Oz, translated by Nicholas de Lange (Chatto/February).
Having read Oz's earlier books with more duty than enjoyment, I have been a fan since the publication of his hilarious Fima (1991). Over the years, Oz has added humour, wisdom and grace to the courage and honesty which have marked his work. In this new novel, a widower and his family attempt to make sense of their lives.
2 Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (Faber/June).
Contemporary Indian fiction writers have, as a group, done more than any other nation to fill the void left by the great 19th-century Russian novels. Mistry's evocations of life in India are inspired domestic tragicomedies; this third novel is darker and more subdued, but again examines the life of a family as only Mistry can.
3 The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri (Bloomsbury/February).
This first novel has been compared with Flaubert and Flannery O'Connor. Heady praise, but Indian writers seldom disappoint.
4 Licks of Love - short stories and a sequel, Rabbit Remembered, by John Updike (Hamish Hamilton/March).
And still neither man or God seems able to halt the flow from the Updike pen. I'm not complaining, and continue to hope he will receive the Nobel Prize. The quality of his short fiction places him among the finest exponents of the art of story - his Rabbit sequence is probably greater than critics like to admit. Now Updike is offering a glimpse of Harry's widow and son in a sequel to the quartet that tells the story of post-war America.
5 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (Faber/January).
Australia's answer to Robin Hood, Ned Kelly, tells his history his way, or at least according to former Booker winner Peter Carey, whose originality and interest in stories and objects and, increasingly, history have always been brilliantly served by a prose style dominated by surreal images.
6 Empire Falls by Richard Russo, (Chatto/June).
For every reader who feels Russell Banks is not sufficiently celebrated among major US writers, there is probably twice that number convinced Richard Russo is even more neglected. Many of his champions are themselves major writers, such as Annie Proulx. It is true to say that all that needs to be done is for someone to describe him as having a lot in common with the acclaimed Anne Tyler and then everyone will be reading him. But someone has yet to make the point. Until then Russo, author of Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody's Fool and Straight Man, remains about twice as good as John Irving but far less widely known. All of his novels are long and this new one, based on a mill family in Maine, is no exception. The Whiting clan has, however, sold off the mill and the shirt factory which once sustained it and the town. The Whiting men have been bullied by their wives, the last of whom, now a widow, bullies everyone. In true Tyler style a loveable loser exists amid the chaos.
7 They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell (Harvill/January).
Harvill have single-handledly promoted the European career of Maxwell, one of America's finest, most subtle writers. Three members of one family create a portrait of a domestic world dominated by one central figure. This graceful early novel from the author who died last summer aged 92 will seduce those who have read him already - and entrance those who have yet to discover him.
8 Nowhere Else on Earth by Josephine Humphreys (Heinemann/February).
Set during the American Civil War, this is the story of a young girl, the first member of her family to learn to read, and what happens when her brothers become outlaws rather than join the Confederacy. On the face of it this could be a routine historical romance, but having read two of her previous novels, Rich in Love (1987) and The Fireman's Fair (1991), Humphreys seems to me to be another of those quiet, subtle and seductive American writers - could be worth watching.
9 The Alabama Claims by James Tertius deKay (Cape/May).
In July 1862, the Alabama, a newly-built ship ordered by the Confederate states, left Liverpool and joined other Southern ships raiding the mercantile marine of the Northern states. After the Civil War, the US claimed damages from the British Government for losses inflicted by the Alabama and other British-built ships. In 1871, Gladstone accepted a request from the US to refer the dispute to the arbitration of an international tribunal. The episode marked the last great military campaign of the Civil War and is a fascinating story of war reparations and US-British relations.
10 The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski (Penguin Press/April).
Described as a book, not about Africa but about some of the people who live there, little needs be said about this remarkable writer who has made the reportage genre his exclusive property.
11 Electric Light by Seamus Heaney (Faber/April). [
Are poets supposed to be so popular? Heaney is the most widely read living poet in the English- speaking world and probably everywhere else by now. Memory and childhood reflection are strong themes in this latest collection of elegy and scene painting, which has at its centre his experience of the great social revolution of 20th-century Ireland, rural electrification.
12 Tunes of Glory - The Rise and Fall of Malcolm Sargent by Richard Aldous (Hutchinson/June).
Sargent's career, with its flair for showmanship does seem to be the stuff of Hollywood myths, but the reality was a lot more complex. The working-class boy who emerged from a background of scant privilege to be knighted for his services to music irritated the musical establishment almost as much as he wooed ordinary music audiences. Aldous, who teaches history at UCD, has set out to place his subject against a backdrop of class, the English psyche and the reality of celebrity.
13 The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann (Granta/January).
Roth (18941939), a Viennese Jew and one of the neglected masters of 20th-century European fiction, is now being more widely recognised as an important chronicler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This new book contains superb reportage. Granta is also committed to publishing Roth's intriguing bitter-sweet novels in fine translations by poet Hofmann.
14 Vermeer's Camera - Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces by Philip Steadman (Oxford/February).
There are readers who claim detective thrillers represent the only type of fiction worth reading. Well, investigation appears to be taking over the non-fiction shelves as well. Everything, apparently, can be interrogated. The Dutch master whose legacy stands on the survival of only 40 paintings is an enigma. Whether or not his mystery is solved should not affect the pleasure of reading this book and looking at the pictures under scrutiny.
15 The Island of Lost Maps - A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey (Weidenfeld/January).
This account of the sordid but always exciting history of map theft - Columbus, Magellan and Drake were all assisted by stolen maps - shares that aura of obsession which dominated recent books about stolen tulip bulbs and orchids. It is also a history of map making and exploration as well as a lesson on the theme that the good guys as much as the baddies needed maps and acquired them whatever way they could.
16 Don Quixote, Ulysses, Lolita and Other Books Submitted for Review by Martin Amis (Cape/April).
The trouble with Amis the younger is that he is as good a literary journalist as he is a fiction writer. If you are seeking an English John Updike, alive and well and working, look no further.
17 Alfred Russel Wallace - A Life by Peter Raby (Chatto/May).
One of the neglected geniuses of science and ideas, Wallace has lived for too long in the shadow of his more privileged and famous contemporary - one Charles Darwin. Entirely self-educated, Wallace, who was born in Wales in 1823, arrived at the Amazon in his mid-20s and spent four years collecting for museums and wealthy patrons. Wallace remained active, unconventional and unassuming until his death in 1913 at age 90. This welcome biography will add to the story already uncovered by Tim Severin in his The Spice Islands Voyage (1997).
18 Breathing Under Waterby Marie Darrieussecq, translated by Linda Coverdale (Faber/May).
The third novel from this original, coolly off-beat French writer follows a young woman who walks out of her life, taking only her small daughter.
19 Dangerous Muse - A Life of Caro- line Blackwood by Nancy Schoenberger (Weidenfeld/April).
I like to think I have a fairly righteous attitude towards biography, particularly one that concerns highly volatile individuals, but it is difficult to resist a study of a woman with such a developed flair for risk-taking. Journalist and writer Blackwood chose three interesting characters with whom to share her complexities - artist Lucien Freud, composer Israel Citkowitz and poet Robert Lowell. Aside from her appearing to have been engaged in picking her own muses - each representing a specific area of the arts - you have to be drawn to the woman Lowell described as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers".
20 Finally, the new book I will most eagerly want to hold, read and reread, check references and cross-references, ponder over and discuss is TheComplete History of the Lord of the Rings (Harper Collins/April). This is a deluxe single volume, 700-page edition of the 12-volume The History of Middle Earth which was complied by Tolkien's son Christopher. There is a slight snag - it costs £99 in the UK!