Highlights of the Season 10


Non-Fictio Highlights


Titles not to miss this season


In a packed publishing schedule ahead of the key Christmas sales period, these forthcoming books stand apart as my unmissable picks for the autumn. From Roman ruins-set murder mysteries through a dissection of the Israel-Gaza conflict; from an analysis of the Beatles’ creative dynamic to a leisurely look across the churches of the United Kingdom, there is something for everyone, says Caroline Sanderson


Biography & Memoirs


Raymond Antrobus The Quiet Ear Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 28 August, hb, £16.99, 9781399619660


“I live with the aid of deafness.” This marvellous first prose work by the distinguished and multi-award-winning poet is a revelatory exploration of deafness, told through his own experience of missing sounds including bird song, whistles, kettles and alarms, which led to a diagnosis of deafness at the age of six. While at heart a memoir, it also dissects assumptions, stereotypes and confusions perpetuated by those of us who are not hard of hearing, demonstrating that deaf identity, like so much else, exists on a broad spectrum.


Biography & Memoirs


Arundhati Roy Mother Mary Comes to Me Hamish Hamilton, 4 September, hb, £20, 9780241761717


“I have thought of my own life as a footnote to the things that really matter.” So writes Roy in the opening chapter of this enthralling memoir, which has all the sweep and verve of her fiction. At heart, it could be characterised as an account of how she became the person and the writer she is, but its magnetic poles belong to her extraordinary, singular mother, “Mrs Roy”, with whom she had a complex relationship, but who was also “my shelter and my storm”.


War & Military History


Biography & Memoirs


Jonathan Freedland The Traitors Circle John Murray, 11 September, hb, £22, 9781399813679


While at heart a memoir, it also dissects assumptions, stereotypes and confusions


08 The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction


The book’s magnetic poles belong to Roy’s extraordinary mother, with whom she had a complex relationship


I had a frisson of excitement on starting to read this new non-fiction from Freedland after his outstanding The Escape Artist, and my, it does not disappoint. A total thriller with a profound message about choosing to stand up to tyranny, it concerns a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Belying the prevailing idea that all Germans were in at least tacit support of the Nazi regime, Freedland tells the astonishing stories of some of the men and women who were not, and who actively defied and resisted it.


Jung Chang Fly, Wild Swans William Collins, 16 September, hb, £25, 9780008661069


Thirty-four years ago, I was among many readers captivated by Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, the debut memoir of a young writer named Jung Chang. Now here’s the enthralling sequel to that book, in which Chang returns to the story of her family and that of China, showing how the past continues to shape the future for both. It is above all a moving love letter to her heroic mother, now in her 90s, whom Chang is unlikely to be able to return to visit ever again.


MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI


PHILIPPA GEORGE


ZHANG XIAOHONG


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