A LONG WAY FROM HOME

Peter Carey (Faber & Faber, £8.99)

In rural 1950s Australia, Irene Bobs and her husband Titch take part in the Redex Trial, a gruelling 17-day race which tests drivers and their vehicles to the limit. They’re joined as navigator by their neighbour, Willie Bachhuber, separated from his wife and growing rather fond of Irene, and together they immerse themselves in the imposing Australian landscape. Carey harks back to his childhood here, of growing up in Bacchus Marsh, where the characters live, and avidly following the Redex Trials. But this novel also marks the first time he has confronted the issue of Australia’s indigenous people, indirectly at first but explicitly in the final third. After the Trial, they spin off in different directions, Willie staying in the outback teaching Aboriginal children and finding that his beloved maps aren’t up to the task of making sense of their Australia. The breakneck pace slows and the mood turns more sombre, but there’s a vitality to this novel that is vintage Carey.

OREO

Fran Ross (Picador Classic, £9.99)

Oreos were hard to find in Britain until 2008, but the addictive biscuit had been one of America’s favourites for decades. The name had also entered the USA’s lexicon of pejoratives, referring to someone who was black on the outside but white inside. Almost completely ignored on its original publication in 1974, Fran Ross’s feminist satire has acquired the status of a neglected classic, telling the story of Oreo, a girl born to a black mother who sets out to find her white Jewish father when she turns 14. A picaresque trek across New York City, Oreo sings with linguistic inventiveness, subverting and sidestepping the tropes that would have been expected of an African-American novel of the 1970s. It’s also hilarious, Ross (who went on to write for Richard Pryor) seemingly loath to let a paragraph slip by without inserting a joke into it. Oreo marks the emergence of an original and singular voice who, sadly, never wrote another book.

GIVE PEOPLE MONEY

Annie Lowrey (W.H. Allen, £12.99)

In recent years, the argument in favour of a Universal Basic Income has been steadily making its way from the margins to the mainstream. It seems self-evident to many people that such a system would be too counter-intuitive, too radical, too immoral even, to gain ground in the current political climate. But evidence is emerging that UBI should at least be given serious consideration. In this book, Annie Lowrey, a contributing editor to Atlantic magazine, argues that there are ways UBI could be a practical solution to the challenges faced by the labour market in an increasingly automated future. Alongside interviews with economists and entrepreneurs, she examines pioneering projects in Iran, India and Kenya and hears that, far from disincentivising people from working, UBI can stimulate economies. Rather than advocating a blanket policy of UBI across the population regardless of wealth, she presents a persuasive argument that there are circumstances in which it can be an appropriate tool to combat poverty.