The Man Booker Short List

A superlative example of travel writing,  this book is divided into three parts: His journeys in Greece, Africa and India, each of which ends in disaster. Often compared to fellow South African, J.M. Coetzee, he has struck out in a new direction with a book that is what one might refer to as a ‘writer’s novel’. The prose, brimming with tension, moves back and forth in a mixture of first- and third-person accounts, often in successive sentences. His memoir is stirringly melancholic, rife with disappointment and pathos; it is nonetheless beautiful and kind.


The Finkler
by Howard Jacobson Question (Bloomsbury)

If you like tales infused with mordant wit, you’ll enjoy this book. If one could sum this novel up in one pithy line, it would be this: The story of a non-Jew obsessed with Jewishness. Julian Treslove is a mediocre man, consumed by the idea of encountering a tragic love; his existence seems pointless, empty. He is yet to meet the love of his life. But a bizarre racial attack, a case of mistaken ethnic identity, and he appears to have rediscovered the meaning of life. This is an extraordinary tale of friendship and of loss, and the wisdom that comes with maturity.

The Long Song
by Andrea Levy (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)

Levy’s first novel after nearly six years, the book’s protagonist is a young slave girl, July, who works on a sugar plantation in Jamaica during the last few years of slavery in the 19th century. But if vast historical events form the backdrop of this astonishing novel, they are not always a cause for concern for July. She tells her own story, her preoccupations of daily life with the slaves in the household and it is her spirit that marches along each page, full of humour, illuminating and heartbreaking and in the end, indomitable.

C
by Tom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

This compelling and remarkable novel seeks to explore the dark rhythms and hidden codes that govern life. The strange and marvellous tale of Serge Carrefax’s bizarre adventures at the turn of the 20th century will confound you, because it is a novel that has achieved a rare thing: It is experimental and yet readable. Richly intelligent and ambitious, it retains a sense of elegance when discussing themes of technology, communication and even consciousness. But at the heart of it, it is beautiful, accessible and a good tale.

Images: Peter Carey: Michael Crabtree / Reuters; Emma Donoghue: Colin McPherson / Corbis; Damon Galgut: Stephen Hird / Reuters; Howard Jacobson: Colin McPherson / Corbis; Andrea Levy: Colin McPherson / Corbis; Tom McCarthy: Colin McPherson / Corbis