Laurus
Eugene Vodolazkin,
Oneworld, October 13
A young healer travels across plague-ridden Europe to help anyone who needs it. Along the way he’s held up by bandits, attacked in Yugoslavia and, when he eventually reaches Jerusalem, finds that the greatest challenge is yet to come. This book is the winner of two major literary prizes in Russia.
The Dictator’s Last Night
Yasmina Khadra,
Gallic Books,
October 19
It’s October 2011. Around him, the country is in flames, but Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi remains defiant. As rebels close in, he rages against the West, Arab nations and what he perceives as the ingratitude of the Libyan people. Gripping imagining of Gaddafi’s last stand.
Golden Age
Jane Smiley, Mantle, October 8
Richie Langdon is running for the US Congress. Guthrie has been deployed to fight in Iraq, while Felicity must defend the family’s Iowa farm from more than just climate change. This is the final instalment of the epic American trilogy, which examines the repercussions of time and personal trauma on the Langdon family. over 100 years.
Giacometti: Pure Presence
Paul Moorhouse
National Portrait Gallery,
October 19
Works by Alberto Giacometti fetch record prices at auctions. This book, to coincide with a major UK exhibition, examines the phases in the Swiss-Italian artist’s career, and his depiction of his main sitters.
In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists after Darwish
Najat Rahmann,
Syracuse University Press, September 15
Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2008, was viewed as the Palestinian national poet. This looks at how a new generation of artists, such as Suheir Hammad, Mona Hatoum and Sharif Waked owe him a debt.
Sinatra: The Chairman
James Kaplan,
Sphere, October 29
By the start of the 1950s, Frank Sinatra was considered washed up. But after winning an Oscar for From Here to Eternity in 1954, he managed to pull of one of the greatest comebacks in music history. Kaplan looks at his rebirth, and the frenzied creativity that followed.
