Our top book picks this week: A human account of Syria’s war told from perspective of seven ordinary people and more

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Seven Days in Syria by Janine di Giovanni

A human account of Syria’s war, told from the perspective of seven ordinary people. It explores how they try to retain some sense of humanity amid a country in flames. Di Giovanni is a distinguished war reporter, who also wrote a searing account of the Yugoslavian conflict. (Bloomsbury, July 2)

A Beautiful Question by Frank Wilczek

From Pythagoras to Plato to Einstein, the human quest to find beauty in the world connects all scientific work. That is according to Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize winner in physics. Here he looks at how the world itself is a work of art and how beauty is central to logic. (Allen Lane, July 2)

The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire by Susan Pedersen

The League of Nations is usually viewed as a failure, an international institution ill-equipped to deal with the turmoil following the first World War. But this revisionist work looks at how “internationalism” got some things right. (OUP, July 9)

Sounder by William H Armstrong

This tells the story of a boy and his dog, Sounder, and his sharecropper family in the 19th century American Deep South. When the boy’s father is jailed for stealing food, he must try to improve the family’s dire financial situation, while also striving for an education. New version of the 1969 children’s classic. (Puffin, July 2)

The House in Smyrna by Tatiana Salem Levy

A woman in Rio de Janeiro who is suffering from a mysterious illness takes a house key from her grandfather. It will open a house in the Turkish city of Smyrna, where there is a painful legacy. A sweeping account of migration, exile and displacement from one of Granta’s “best young Brazilian novelists”. (Scribe UK, July 2)

The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait

Mary is a dowdy governess who feels jealous that young Alice Liddell has become a muse to Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and sets out to discredit the author. An unsettling reimagining of the origins of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The author is the great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell. (Corvus, July 2)