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Books New Titles: Non-Fiction


Biography & memoir


Nick Dawson ( 5) Face to Face: Finding Justice for My Murdered Twin Brother Icon, 3rd, HB, £16.99, 9781837732425


5


When his identical twin brother Simon was kicked to death, all Dawson felt for his two young murderers was hatred, in a dark world where his mirror image had vanished. Then he came to realise that the only way to stop the torture was acceptance, and eventually met one of his brother’s killers. Now an advocate for restorative justice, who has told his story to many other criminals in UK prisons, Dawson powerfully charts his journey to recovery and understanding.


Poetry


Sasha Debevec- McKenney ( 7) Joy is My Middle Name Fitzcarraldo, 3rd, PB, £12.99, 9781804271872


7


Biography & memoir


Tim Franks ( 4) The Lines We Draw: The Journalist, the Jew and an Argument About Identity Bloomsbury Continuum, 3rd, HB, £20, 9781399423083


As a Jewish journalist, the former BBC Middle East correspondent has been accused of being both a self-hating Jew and an Islamophobe, despite drawing a clear line between his identity and his work. Prompted to probe his ancestral roots, Franks engagingly tracks his complex family history across locations including Constantinople, Curaçao and Lithuania in order to explore his Jewishness, how it informed his journalism and whether he needed to draw such a clear line after all.


“We’ve got a lot of shit to talk/about. I’m happy you’re here./I need you.” The wonderfully jaunty wit of this excellent first collection by a US poet at first belies how trenchant it is about life in a deeply flawed country. From a vision of Hell in Costco to a sestina where every end word is Lyndon Johnson and a brilliant, horizontally-orientated poem entitled I Don’t Have a Racist Bone in My Body, this is a terrific debut full of both relatable situations and relatable sentiment.


6 Biography & memoir


Shahnaz Ahsan ( 6) The Jackfruit Chronicles: Memories and Recipes from a British-Bangladeshi Kitchen HarperNorth, July, HB, £16.99, 9780008683795 “Getting hold of jackfruit is a fulltime hobby of most diaspora Bangladeshis.” From curry houses to wedding feasts and supper clubs, this delectable memoir delves into the flavours and history of Bengali food and gives a voice to the people who introduced this cuisine to the UK. Across three continents and several generations, it’s richly infused with the shared love language of food, and also contains a plethora of delicious-sounding recipes.


Food & drink


Slutty Cheff Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef Bloomsbury, 17th, HB, £16.99, 9781526682697


8 Food & drink


Chris Newens ( 8) Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals Profile, 3rd, HB, £18.99, 9781805224204


9 Current affairs, politics & activism


Tim Ough ( 9) The Anti-Catastrophe League: The Pioneers and Visionaries on a Quest to Save the World Mudlark, 17th, HB, £22, 9780008722340 “This book tells the story of a species that, already imperilled by the hazards of the natural world, has elected to hold a loaded gun to its head.” Informed by his time working in the field of existential risk, Ough profiles the people trying to dismantle that gun, including AI mind readers, the inventor of a lightbulb that kills germs in midair and those working to avert an asteroid strike. It’s frightening, but also riveting, and a teeny bit hopeful.


A discussion about the typical cuisine of the 20th arrondissement in a bistro one day sparks Newens, a long-time resident of Paris and 2024 winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers, to embark on an enjoyable and stomach rumble- inducing gastronomic odyssey around the 20 arrondissements of Paris. From Congolese catfish in the 18th to falafel in the 4th and the secrets of making the perfect croissant, he seeks out, samples, and then attempts to recreate the dishes he encounters.


“I’m in the kitchen. I’m scared.” As creator of the @sluttycheff Instagram, the author writes anonymously about food, sex and the crazy travails of a female chef in the male-dominated restaurant world. In her compelling cocktail of a first book – described with some justification as “an exquisite broth of raw Anthony Bourdain- style honesty with a pinch of the wit of Lena Dunham’s Girls” – she works 60-hour weeks in windowless kitchens, falls in love with other chefs, eats, drinks, smokes and f*cks.


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