Hurrah! My favourite books of the year, complete with pretentious one line explanations. I am sorry that IB Singer did not live long enough to win this prestigious award. 1. The Family Moskat (Isaac Bashevis Singer): For being an epic and intimate depiction of pre-war Warsaw Jewry, and for one of the most devastating final lines in twentieth century literature. 2. A Time of Gifts/Between the Woods and the Water/The Broken Road (Patrick Leigh Fermor): For the audacity of Paddy’s walk, for the splendour of Paddy’s prose, and for Paddy’s remarkable recall (thinking about him losing his notes twice still makes me want to vomit). 3. In the Light of What We Know (Zia Haider Rahman): For being the best British novel since Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, and for being a novel about the present moment which doesn’t descend into liberal banalities. 4. Wave (Sonali Deraniyagala): For proving the redemptive power of writing, and for commemorating an unimaginable loss. 5. Sworn Virgin (Elivra Dones): For being an unputdownable account of one of Europe’s strangest communities. 6. One Soldier’s War (Arkady Babchenko): For telling the gory truth about Russia’s wars in Chechnya without anti-war clichés. 7. The Meadow (Adrian Levy/Cathy Scott-Clark): For being a thrilling and detailed account of a mysterious kidnapping and murder in one of the most beautiful places on earth. 8. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (Peter Hessler): For demonstrating that there is such a thing as narrative non-fiction, and that it can reach the heights of great literature. 9. The Days of Abandonment (Elena Ferrante): For Ferrante’s perfect, electrifying prose and commitment to her craft, without concern for personal exposure. 10. The Road to Ein Harod (Amos Kenan): For its simultaneously hilarious and terrifying vision of a post-civil war Israel. 11. Arctic Summer (Damon Galgut): For Galgut’s moving dissection of the inspiration behind Forster’s masterpiece. 12. A Man in Love (Karl Ove Knausgaard): For the relentlessness and addictiveness of Knausgaard’s project, and the brilliant digressions. 13. The Iron Bridge (Anton Piatigorsky): For taking what seems like a writing school exercise (“imagine the early life of twentieth century dictators”) and transforming it into a series of short historical gems. 14. 1948 (Yoram Kaniuk): For describing a War of Independence far more brutal and morally compromised than the official histories, but no less heroic as a result. 15. Amongst Women (John McGahern): For the bleak but lyrical way it brings 1950s Ireland to life. 16. Shadow of the Silk Road/Behind the Wall (Colin Thubron): For the precision of Thubron’s descriptions, and the uniquely gloomy nature of his wonder at the world. 17. The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China (David Eimer): For shining a light on important parts of the world which don’t get the attention they deserve. 18. The Lowland (Jhumpa Lahiri): For its gripping narrative and practiced prose. 19. A History of Future Cities (Daniel Brook): For its fascinating and original thesis, and enlightening anecdotes. 20. In Times of Fading Light (Eugen Roge): For its non-linear approach, especially during the first half of the novel, and for the great title. 21. The World of Yesterday (Stefan Zweig): For being Zweig’s last testament, a love letter to a destroyed world. 22. Aloft (Willian Langewiesche): For its forensic explanation of plane crashes, which, taken together, make Langewiesche a master of his craft. 23. Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts): For being the most wildly absurd and entertaining novel I read all year. 24. The Sorrow of War (Bao Ninh): For giving voice to a side of the Vietnam War not often heard in the West. 25. The Dark Road (Ma Jian): For its darkly fantastical rendering of the impact of the one-child policy on ordinary people: 26. Red Sorghum (Mo Yan): For doing to early twentieth century China what Cormac McCarthy did for early twentieth century Texas. 27. Palestine Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (Raja Shehadeh): For articulating how the Palestinians love the land, too. 28. The General of the Dead Army (Ismail Kadare): For being the type of darkly comic fable which Kadare pulls off with ease. 29. The River’s Tale: A Year on the Mekong (Edward Gargan): For getting me in the mood for Southeast Asia. 30. Brother Daniel, Interpreter (Ludmila Ulitskaya): For being an ambitious attempt at conveying the life of one of the twentieth century’s most idiosyncratic characters.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:53:17 +0000
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