There are many worthy of top ratings in a year that started with A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate, NI 460). She was later shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Jaspreet Singh’s novel Helium (Bloomsbury, NI 467) explores India’s recent past. With The Children of the Days Uruguayan maestro Eduardo Galeano is on top (and often humorous) form (Penguin, NI 462). Poetic Dany Leferrière gives us ‘the great Haitian novel’ in the The Enigma of the Return (Quercus NI 462). In Narcoland, intrepid Mexican journo Anabel Hernández takes on the drug gangs and their political backers. Readers of this magazine will be familiar with Louisa B Waugh, author of the big-hearted Meet me in Gaza (Westbourne Press, NI 464). While polymath Patrick Marnham tells the biography of nuclear power in his remarkable Snake Dance (Chatto and Windus, NI 467).
Two of the year’s best are about solidarity and young people’s refusal to accept social strictures. In the inspiring Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, NI 465), a Saudi girl is determined to ride a bike, while in the sensuous and reflective The Patience Stone (Atiq Rahimi, NI 468) a young Afghan woman, nursing her much older unconscious husband, lets him have a few home truths, and finds some consolations. In the astonishing The Gatekeepers (Droh Moreh, NI 462) Israel’s heads of security over the past 30 years damn its politicians for their failure seriously to pursue peace with the Palestinians. While The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer/Christine Cynn, NI 468) chillingly links Indonesian politicians with the witless killers of over a million ‘communists’. ML
