Highlights of the Season
on s of the season
Caroline’s Highlights continue overleaf
Social & Local History
Lyse Doucet The Finest Hotel in Kabul Hutchinson Heinemann, 18 September, hb, £22, 9781529151022
When reporting from Afghanistan, BBC chief international correspondent Doucet has been staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul since 1988, getting to know many of its staff and their stories. Moving, often tragic but always inspiring in their inshallah tenacity, these are at the heart of this captivating, deeply humane book in which Doucet charts the recent history of Afghanistan through the lives of those staff members – from Hazrat, the octogenarian receptionist, and Abida, the first female chef to work in the hotel kitchen, to Sadeq, the 24-year- old on the front desk who personifies the ambitions of today’s young Afghans.
Poetry
Len Pennie poyums annaw Canongate Books, 25 September, hb, £14.99, 9781837263288
I’ve come late to the amazing Pennie, but as anyone who saw her Nibbies acceptance speech after winning the Discover Book of the Year Award knows, she is a resounding force for good. Fresh from that win, the performance poet and TikTok phenomenon, who writes in both Scots and English, follows her hit debut collection, poyums with a second blistering collection that confronts patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with tenderness, a jousting wit and not a little righteous fury.
Current Affairs
Julian Brave NoiseCat We Survived the Night Profile Books, 16 October, hb, £20, 9781788169370
As an infant, NoiseCat’s father was found abandoned in a dumpster. Against all odds, he survived and made it out of his impoverished reservation only to abandon his own son. That son embarks on a journey into his family’s past and his First Nation people’s present. This dazzling blend of memoir and reportage grapples with the erasure of North America’s First Peoples and the trauma that cascades through generations, and illuminates the Indigenous cultural, environmental and political movements that are reshaping the future. I’ve just started reading this and it is astonishing.
Biography & Memoir
Margaret Atwood Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
Chatto, 4 November, hb, £30, 9781784744496
“Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives and the one who writes.” Anyone who has ever been entranced by Atwood’s fiction and poetry will be beside themselves with anticipation to read this memoir, which takes us from her peripatetic childhood in Canada’s far north and the cruel school year that would lead to Cat’s Eye, through the writing of The Handmaid’s Tale (first published 40 years ago), to her status today as revered truth-teller and literary icon. Alongside encounters with poets, bears, Hollywood stars and more, we are promised unique insights into how her life has fed into her art.
Doucet charts the recent history of Afghanistan through the lives of a hotel’s staff members
Autumn/Winter 2025
Blistering collection confronts patriarchy, gender-based violence and injustice
Dazzling… grapples with the erasure of North America’s First Peoples and trauma that cascades through generations
Biography & Memoir
Anthony Hopkins We Did Ok, Kid Simon & Schuster, 4 November, hb, £25, 9781398547421
If I had to choose just one celebrity memoir this season, I think it would be this one by the Academy Award-winning actor. With candour and a voice that is both arresting and vulnerable, he delves into his illustrious 60-year film and theatre career, in a “raw and passionate” memoir. He also covers his difficult childhood, and takes a deeply honest look at the low points in his personal life, and the alcohol addiction that cost him his first marriage, his relationship with his only child, and nearly his life. Includes personal photographs throughout.
Sociology
Naomi Alderman Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today
Fig Tree, 13 November, hb, £16.99, 9780241777633
In a brilliant book developed from her BBC Radio 4 essay series, The Third Information Crisis, the Women’s Prize- winning writer turns her attention to a question that affects us all: how do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we’re living through? Drawing on the work of philosophers and historians, Alderman investigates what we might learn from information crises of the past to better understand and navigate this present, exploring how new technology might open up new ways of being, as she charts a way forward through the turbulent seas of information overload.
With candour and a voice that is both arresting and vulnerable, Hopkins delves into his illustrious 60-year acting career
How do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we’re living through?
09
JEAN MALEK
SHUTTERSTOCK
ANNABEL MOELLER
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