Spring preview 2012: international books

In the January/February issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the spring season’s new books.

FICTION

Two prolific American literary novelists are set to publish new titles this spring. Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison is back with her 10th novel, Home (Knopf Canada, $25.95 cl., May). Exploring themes of masculinity and belonging, the short novel follows a self-loathing Korean War veteran as he surmounts defeat and finds a place to call home. • Also in May, part-time Toronto resident John Irving returns with his 13th novel, In One Person (Knopf Canada, $34.95 cl.), a tragicomedy narrated by a bisexual protagonist who reflects on life as a boy, a young man, and an adult.

Jack Kerouac’s first novel, The Sea Is My Brother (Da Capo Press/Raincoast, $26.50 cl., March), was written in the 1940s but never published. One of several Kerouac manuscripts that has recently resurfaced, the story follows the divergent fortunes of two sailors and explores an important theme in Kerouac’s later work: rebellion. • A book of little-known stories written by Anton Chekhov at the end of his career is forthcoming from Biblioasis. About Love ($12.95 pa., May), the Russian writer’s only linked collection, is translated by David Helwig and contains illustrations by Seth.

One of the most buzzed about debut novels of the season is Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles (Bond Street Books/Random House, $29.95 cl., June), a unique coming-of-age story about a young girl who wakes up one morning to discover that the rotation of the earth has begun to slow, upending life as she knows it.

Jodi Picoult’s new novel, Lone Wolf (Atria/Simon & Schuster, $32 cl., Feb.), tells the story of two siblings who disagree over the treatment of their comatose father. • Best known for his 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, British author Mark Haddon returns with The Red House (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., June). The book is narrated by eight characters, all related, who spend a week together in a countryside vacation home.

From the best-selling (co-)author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes another new take on an old story. Seth Grahame-Smith’s Unholy Night (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, $27.99 cl., April) reimagines the personalities of the three kings of the nativity, injecting the well-known Bible tale with thievery, escape, and intrigue. • The author of 12 previous novels, Christopher Moore continues in the surreal, satirical style of Lamb and Fool in his latest book, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art (William Morrow/HarperCollins, $34.99 cl., March), which follows friends of Vincent van Gogh as they vow to uncover the truth behind the painter’s death. • Neurosurgeon and medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, whose non-fiction books Chasing Life and Cheating Death were New York Times bestsellers, makes his first foray into fiction with Monday Mornings (Grand Central/Hachette, $27.99 cl., March). In the vein of TV medical dramas, the novel follows the daily lives of five surgeons.

From Argentinean writer Liliana Heker comes The End of the Story (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., April), a novel about Argentina’s Dirty War translated by Andrea Labinger. Set in 1976, the book follows a group of women living against a backdrop of state-sponsored violence. • Waiting for the Monsoon (House of Anansi Press, $24.95 pa., Feb.), by Threes Anna and translated from the Dutch by Barbara Fasting, is about a British woman’s relationship with the Indian tailor to whom she rents a room in her crumbling mansion.

Australian author Elliot Perlman’s third novel, The Street Sweeper (Bond Street Books/Random House, $32.95 cl., Jan.), explores the unlikely intersection of two characters’ lives: a history professor whose career and relationship are unravelling, and a black man from the Bronx who struggles to reintegrate after serving a prison term for a crime he didn’t commit.

MYSTERY, CRIME, AND FANTASY

Stephen King’s latest novel, The Wind Through the Keyhole (Scribner/S&S, $29.99 cl.), is set to publish in April. The eighth book in the Dark Tower series – chronologically set between volumes four and five – tells the story of gunslinger Roland Deschain’s first quest. • Camilla Läckberg is a household name in her native Sweden. In The Drowning (HarperCollins, $19.99 pa., April), translated by Tiina Nunnally, a man is found murdered and frozen beneath the ice. After discovering a similar incident, police realize the killings are connected and look into each victim’s past for clues. • Best-selling psychological suspense writer Brian Freeman returns with Spilled Blood (Sterling/Canadian Manda Group, $29.95 cl., May), the story of two Minnesota towns locked in a violent feud over the carcinogenic waste one town’s research corporation is releasing into the other community.

U.K. writer Benjamin Wood, who completed a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, is set to publish his debut mystery novel. In The Bellwether Revivals (McClelland & Stewart, $29.99 cl., March), bodies turn up near an elegant Cambridge house, and the young narrator and his lover become entangled in the search for the villain. • The 500 (Little, Brown/Hachette, $28.99 cl., June), a first novel from Matthew Quirk that is in development as a feature film, follows a young lawyer at a powerful Washington, D.C., consulting firm as he is pursued by two of the world’s most dangerous men. • A New York family is involved in a financial scandal in lawyer Cristina Alger’s debut thriller, The Darlings (Penguin, $28.50 cl., Feb.).

In Sara Paretsky’s latest crime thriller, Breakdown (G.P. Putnam and Sons/Penguin, $28.50 cl., Jan.), girls from some of Chicago’s most powerful families stumble upon a corpse in an abandoned cemetery. Detective V.I. Warshawski investigates childhood secrets to get to the bottom of the killing. • In Cloudland (St. Martin’s/Raincoast, $28.99 cl., March), the latest crime novel from Joseph Olshan, a newspaper reporter gets involved with the search for a serial killer after discovering a murder victim’s body. Meanwhile, a failed love affair surfaces and acquaintances emerge as suspects.

BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR

Sally Bedell Smith’s biography, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Random House, $34 cl., Jan.), chronicles the public persona and private life of the reigning English monarch, offering a close-up view of her routines and relationships. • In Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World (HarperCollins, $24.99 cl., Jan.), biographer Simon Callow explores the Victorian novelist’s status as an early celebrity and his little-known love of the stage.

Iconic American singer-songwriter Carole King is set to publish a memoir, A Natural Woman (Grand Central/Hachette, $29.99 cl., April). Chronicling King’s early years, her musical career, and her present-day activism, the book features behind-the-scenes concert photographs.

Revolution 2.0 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Thomas Allen & Son, $29.95 cl., Jan.) is former Google executive Wael Ghonim’s first-hand account of his capture and interrogation in Cairo during the Arab Spring protests. The memoir also looks at how social media helped foment revolution. • Norwegian writer Halfdan W. Freihow reflects on his attempts to help his son, who has autism, make sense of the world in Somewhere Over the Sea (Anansi, $14.95 pa., June), translated by Robert Ferguson with a foreword by The Boy in the Moon author Ian Brown.

What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? (Artisan/Thomas Allen, $23.95 cl., April) follows four twentysomethings during their journey to complete a 100-item bucket list. Five years into their quest, Ben Nemtin, Dave Lingwood, Duncan Penn, and Jonnie Penn share what they’ve accomplished.

POETRY

Political activist, writer, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has become a symbol of the struggle for human rights in China. His collection June Fourth Elegies (Graywolf/D&M Publishers, $27.50 cl., April), translated by Jeffrey Yang, honours the memory of fellow protesters in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

GRAPHICA

Following his internationally acclaimed debut, The Wrong Place, Belgian graphic novelist Brecht Evens is back with The Making Of (Drawn & Quarterly, $27.95 pa., May). Using watercolour images and deadpan humour, the book details the misadventures of an honoured guest at a country art festival. • Tom Gauld reimagines a familiar Bible story in Goliath (D&Q, $19.95 cl., Feb.). Focusing on the reluctant fighter, the graphic novel pairs minimalist drawings and witty prose. • In My Friend Dahmer (Abrams/Manda, $27.95 cl., March), cartoonist John “Derf” Backderf creates a haunting, intimate portrait of Jeffrey Dahmer, a high school friend who later became the notorious American serial killer.

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS

New York Times Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor invites readers on a tour of the White House in The Obamas (Little, Brown/Hachette, $32.99 cl., Jan.), a detailed look at the family’s attempts to lead a normal life while juggling public roles and responsibilities. • The decade-long search for Osama bin Laden is the subject of CNN national security analyst and Holy War, Inc. author Peter L. Bergen’s new book, Manhunt (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., May). • In Newstainment: Why the News Is Bad for You (Picador/Raincoast, $18.50 pa., June), Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll argue that brief, up-to-the-moment bulletins are revolutionizing news media but failing political discourse.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid confronts crucial questions about U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (Viking, $28.50 cl., March). A follow-up to the acclaimed Descent into Chaos, Rashid’s latest explores solutions for achieving stability in the war-torn region. • In Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/D&M Publishers, $31 cl., April), U.K. human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri takes an historical approach to explaining the evolution and implications of Islamic law.

An economics historian, British MP, and son of African immigrants, Kwasi Kwarteng explores the global reverberations of colonial history in Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World (Public Affairs/Raincoast, $34.50 cl., Feb.).

HISTORY

Long before the earthquake that ravaged Haiti in 2010, the country had a history of poverty and corruption. In Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (Henry Holt and Company/Raincoast, $29 cl., Jan.), Laurent Dubois traces the Caribbean nation’s troubles back to the 1804 slave revolt and sheds light on the country’s overlooked successes. • Jenny Balfour-Paul probes the roots of the world’s oldest dye in Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans (Firefly Books, $39.95 pa., Jan.). Covering the history, science, and cultural significance of indigo dye, the full-colour book also explores its use in sustainable development initiatives.

LIFESTYLE, SCIENCE, AND SELF-HELP

Following his quests to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover (The Know-It-All) and live according to a literal interpretation of the Bible (The Year of Living Biblically), A.J. Jacobs is back with another experiment. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection (S&S, $29.99 cl., April) follows his efforts to become the healthiest man in the world. • Tae kwon do master Jim Langlas discusses seven principles of the martial art that also build character in Heart of a Warrior: 7 Ancient Secrets to a Great Life (Free Spirit/Georgetown, $17.50 pa., April). • For fans of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret comes another guide to living a fulfilling life. The Tools (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl., June), by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, identifies and offers solutions to four common barriers that hold people back.

FOOD AND DRINK

First Lady Michelle Obama argues for the need to improve access to healthy, affordable food in her first book, American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools, and Communities (Crown/Random House, $34 cl., April.). • Food writer (and son of Baskin-Robbins founder) John Robbins goes undercover in No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution (Conari Press/Georgetown, $18.95 pa., March) to investigate the feedlots and slaughterhouses that satisfy modern appetites. • In The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier (Morrow/HarperCollins, $38.99 cl., March), best-selling author, blogger, and ranch wife Ree Drummond shares easy country cooking recipes.

The fine print: Q&Q’s spring preview covers books published between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2012. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have been listed in previous previews do not appear here.

Daily book biz round-up, March 16

Another day, another news round-up:

• British Airways doesn’t care about book people
• A sneak preview of the new titles publishers are taking to the London Book Fair
• Colin Thatcher ordered to hand over book profits
• Pride and Prejudice and Overkill: the new book trailer
• British publisher Arden manages to wring one more play out of William Shakespeare
• Your daily Martin Amis WTF: “I wish my sister had converted to Islam”
• John Grisham joins the e-book revolution
• Demand for iPad tapers off after boffo first-day sales

Sebastian Faulks is sorry about that whole “Koran the rantings of a schizophrenic” thing

Earlier this week, The Sunday Times ran a lengthy interview with novelist Sebastian Faulks in which he had this to say about the Koran:

“It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It’s very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.

“There is also the barrenness of the message. I mean, there are some bits about diet, you know, the equivalent of the Old Testament, which is also crazy. If you look again at those books of the law, Leviticus or Deuteronomy, there’s a lot about who you are allowed to sleep with, and if a man had lost his testicles he wouldn’t enter into the presence of God, that is just terrible. But the great thing about the Old Testament is that it does have these incredible stories. Of the 100 greatest stories ever told, 99 are probably in the Old Testament and the other is in Homer.

“With the Koran there are no stories. And it has no ethical dimension like the New Testament, no new plan for life. It says ‘the Jews and the Christians were along the right tracks, but actually, they were wrong and I’m right, and if you don’t believe me, tough — you’ll burn for ever.’ That’s basically the message of the book.”

For some odd reason, people felt this might be a tad controversial, so Faulks has now written a slightly more conciliatory essay in The Telegraph:

While we Judaeo-Christians can take a lot of verbal rough-and-tumble about our human-written scriptures, I know that to Muslims the Koran is different; it is by definition beyond criticism. And if anything I said or was quoted as saying (not always the same thing) offended any Muslim sensibility, I do apologise – and without reservation.

It was never my intention to offend my Muslim friends or readers, and if you read my novel I think you will see how I have shown the positive effects of the Koran on a kind and typical Muslim family.

Awww…

Meanwhile, Riazat Butt, the Guardian‘s religious affairs correspondent, writes that Faulks had it wrong to begin with:

The Qur’an is neither a bedside read nor a Booker entry – I won’t be packing it in my hand luggage before I go to Tunisia this weekend. It is, for Muslims, a blueprint for everyday life, with guidance on subjects such as divorce, the day of judgment and everything in between. So if it reads like a rulebook, that’s because it is.

The Qur’an was not written in English, nor is it normally read in English, so of course the scriptures lose something in translation. Should Faulks want to fully appreciate and experience the Qur’an, he should brush up on his classical Arabic. Most, but not all, of the Qur’an’s stories are based on tales from the Old Testament, so if he thinks the Qur’an is a bit rubbish at capturing the imagination, then it follows the Bible is a bit of a let-down too.

Bookmarks (Middle East edition)

• In the face of all-too-obvious problems, small publishing houses and modern printing facilities are popping up throughout the Arab world (Bookseller.com)
• Dubai adds a literary festival to its cultural boom (Kipp Report)
• Iraq’s National Library soldiers on after being looted by vandals and neglected by the occupying powers (The Nation)
• An interview with Bahaa Taher, winner of this year’s inaugural International Prize for Arabic fiction (The Guardian)
• Two independent U.K. publishers join forces to create a list devoted to translations of new Arabic fiction (Bookseller.com)
• And finally, an overview of the progress made by all this progress (The Independent)
• Bonus gossip! Tabloid star Salman Rushdie has a new girlfriend, got writer’s block after divorcing Padma Lakshmi, is appearing as a gynecologist in a film, and was lying when he said he loved Islam.

Happy New Year from Quillblog

Regular blogging will resume on Monday, but until then, here’s some book-related links to tide you over:

• Benazir Bhutto’s books big in Islamabad; her final book being rushed into print (The Hindu)
• Young adults may be the biggest library users… (Associated Press)
• … but they’re not there for the books (Slashdot)
• Texas library hires a collection agency for overdue fines (Star-Telegram)
• Canadian readers fall behind the U.S., according to poll (Canada.com)
• Iranian youth use literary forum to express political frustration (Los Angeles Times)
• Kahlil Gibran-mania continues (New Yorker)
• U.K. teacher turns crops into books for Ugandan children (icCoventry)
• Action Camus: literary masterpieces as comic books (R. Sikoryak)

Canuck books in Beirut

National Book Critics Circle member Rayyan Al-Shawaf, a Beirut-based writer and freelance reviewer, has posted an extensive survey of the Lebanese book scene on the NBCC blog. Al-Shawaf discusses the lengthy traditions of tolerance and diversity in the country and its capital, which he says are known as “the Arab world’s publishing hub for quality books of all kinds,” and the names of a few Canadian writers crop up.

Books by Lebanon-born novelist Rawi Hage (De Niro’s Game) and Iraqi-raised man of letters Naim Kattan (Farewell, Babylon), both of whom are now based in Montreal, are cited as examples of, respectively, thriving contemporary Lebanese writing and Jewish literature that is widely published and available in Beirut.

The often-controversial Irshad Manji also earns a mention:

A lively debate on the role and relevance of Islam in modern societies has long been underway in the Arab literary world; the same can be said of more detailed issues concerning Islamic law. Fascinatingly, however, Beirut is a place where one can also find works by Western writers of Muslim origin who have decided to plunge into the debate. These include a number of polemical books familiar to Western readers.

Occasionally, these books are translated into Arabic, as with Irshad Manji’s The Trouble with Islam Today, which appeared under the more circumspect title Muslimoun wa Ahrar (loosely translated as “Muslims and Freethinkers”), courtesy of Cologne-based publishing house Al-Kamel Verlag; as an added cautionary measure, no translator is credited. More common is for the work to be sold in English – thereby lessening the potential for controversy.

In memory of Mahfouz

Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate whose books include Palace Walk, among many others, has died at the age of 94. Probably the best one-stop resource for information and reaction is at the litblog The Elegant Variation, which has compiled a long list of links. Among them is a 1992 Paris Review interview that touches on the Salman Rushdie fatwah. “I found the insults in it unacceptable,” says Mahfouz of The Satanic Verses. “Rushdie insults even the women of the Prophet! Now, I can argue with ideas, but what should I do with insults? Insults are the business of the court. At the same time, I consider Khomeini’s position equally dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment — that is not the Islamic way.”

Related links:
Click here for the Elegant Variation roundup
Click here for the Paris Review interview

Iran cancels charm offensive, plans cultural purification instead

You’d think Iran would be tired by now of being compared with Nazi Germany by every pundit or public official with a grudge, a poor grasp of history, and a hidden agenda.

It’s not like modern Iran’s ever been an oasis of free thought and democracy, but sometimes it seems as though they’ve got their hands on a copy of “Dangerous Tyrannical States for Dummies” and are working their way through it, chapter by chapter.

The latest troubles come from the country’s Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister, Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi. Sporting the same “eight-day beard topped with a bad toupee” look favoured by his boss, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and sharing some of that man’s own charmingly gregarious take on the modern world, Saffar-Harandi has vowed to cleanse Iran of the creeping, un-Islamic decadence brought by a proliferation of news agencies, films, books, and blogs. “Unfortunately, we witness inappropriate and wicked manifestations in society today,” said Saffar-Harandi in a state radio address quoted by Yahoo! News. “But now, you have my word that we will purify the cultural atmosphere.”

Plans for a series of mass rallies to kick off this new cultural purification campaign have been postponed until Saffar-Harandi can figure out just how one goes about burning a blog.

Related links:
Read the story on Yahoo! News

Hard sell

The Book Standard website has an interview with Duke University Islamic-studies professor Bruce Lawrence, whose book Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (Verso) hit U.S. book shelves yesterday. Lawrence says that he was initially reluctant to take on the project because he “didn’t want my epitaph to read, ‘Here lies the person who introduced Osama bin Laden to English-speaking readers.’”

However, he quickly became engrossed in the 42 translated proclamations, which, he believes, reveal that bin Laden’s real weapon of mass destruction is his poetry: “I wasn’t quite prepared for him to be literarily engaging…. Of course, he’s an engineer and a terrorist and a polemicist, but he’s also a poet. And that, along with his ascetic demeanor — the guy who dresses humbly, lives in a cave, doesn’t have meals in five-star restaurants — gives him a great emotional appeal he wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Lest readers lose perspective, Lawrence notes that the speeches also show what he’s being trying to tell his students all along — that bin Laden’s a “lousy social theorist.”

Related links:
Click here for the Book Standard item on the Bin Laden book

Domestic drama

Comments made in the introduction to a literary anthology just released in England have caused an uproar amongst the country’s literary community. In their introduction to The New Writing 13, editors Toby Litt and Ali Smith claimed that most of the submissions they received from women authors were “disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking — as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell.” This contention has been vociferously opposed by a number of authors and publishing people, including Alexandra Pringle, editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury, who wondered what women authors the two editors have been reading: “This year some of the novels we are publishing at Bloomsbury from women authors include Helen Oyeyemi’s debut novel about a girl who is half Nigerian, half English, who has a dead twin and a gothic imaginary friend; Helen Cross’s second novel narrated by a young man about the nature of celebrity; Kamila Shamsie’s fourth novel about politics and power, families and loss in Pakistan; Leila Aboulela’s second novel about a woman’s journey towards Islam and Joanna Briscoe’s third novel about a couple whose relationship is torn apart by the presence of a quietly sinister young woman in their lives…. I wonder whether perhaps Toby Litt and Ali Smith couldn’t manage to get out of their own kitchens for long enough to find such exciting and unusual writers as I have listed above, from just one of many publishing houses in Britain?” The Guardian has published a number of similar responses on its website, as well as an excerpt from the contentious introduction.

Related links:
Read the Guardian article on The New Writing 13 anthology
Read some of the responses to the Guardian article
Read an excerpt from Toby Litt and Ali Smith’s anthology introduction