*Professor Nilli Lavie, University College London **Nielsen Book Data
books HISTORICAL FICTION
THE DOVEKEEPERS BY ALICE HOFFMAN (Simon & Schuster, £16.99) The lives of four bold and remarkable women converge in the Judean fortress Masada as they escape the harrowing butchery of the invading Roman army in 70AD. Yael, Revka, Aziza and Shirah all become dovekeepers in the mountaintop stronghold. Each has a story to tell and secrets to keep – about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them and who they love. Their individual tales weave together seamlessly to portray a vivid fictional – and very female – account of a real historic event. Murder, fate, personal destiny and devotion all intertwine in this utterly absorbing tale. Filled with suspense, this is not a book to be rushed and like much of its subject matter, it possesses a magic that will leave you totally spellbound.
Try… A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, Citadel by Kate Mosse
AUTHOR Q&A
MICHELLE PAVER is an award- winning author of children’s fiction but her latest book is her first adult ghost story, set in the Arctic. Michelle left her legal career in 1998 to write full time
What inspired Dark Matter? A lifelong love of ghost stories and the Arctic, plus some alarming dreams. What’s your favourite word? Coruscate. Although I don’t think I’ve ever used it. What would be your perfect day? Reading in bed with mugs of tea, then a long walk in a forest with a borrowed dog. How did you get in to writing? I’d been writing for years, but being very unhappy in my job finally gave me the
BOOK NEWS:
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny – Joseph Heller’s classic satire Catch-22 is 50 years old this month and the anniversary is being marked with the publication of a hardback version, which includes an essay by Heller on writing the book and the movie adaptation that starred Alan Arkin. The black comedy centres around the life of bombardier John Yossarian who, when he tries to get out of perilous missions, finds he’s caught in the infamous Catch-22 – if he flies he’s crazy, but if he doesn’t want to fly he must be sane, and therefore has to… (Vintage Classics, £18.99)
published in the UK in 2010, 14 per cent more than the previous year**
WWW.CANDIS.CO.UK | OCTOBER 2011 125
shove I needed to chuck it all in and try to get published. What would surprise your readers about you? I’m a wimp about the cold, so whenever I go to the Arctic I wear three times as much as other people. What’s your first thought in the morning? As I’m currently moving house, it’s obsessive stuff like where to put the kitchen dresser. Do you ever get writer’s block? No, but I do have days when I stare out of
the window and get nothing written. What’s your most treasured possession? If the house caught fire, I’d save the floppy disks of the book I’m currently writing – to rewrite from scratch would be appalling. What’s your favourite book? The Lord of the Rings. If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? Seriously unhappy.
Dark Matter (Orion, £7.99) is out now.
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