A LADDER TO THE SKY
John Boyne (Black Swan, £8.99)
The latest novel from the author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has it all: forbidden love, literary exploitation, secrets, shame, jealousy and betrayal piled on betrayal. In 1988, Erich Ackermann, a German-born author who has lived in Britain since the War, takes on handsome young aspiring writer Maurice Swift as his protégé. Gay but celibate, he’s hopelessly smitten with Maurice, taking him around the world and giving him advice about writing that will later rebound on him with terrible consequences. As the ambitious Yorkshire lad Maurice exploits his appeal to older gay men to get a toe on the publishing ladder, only Gore Vidal, in an arch and astringent cameo, can see him for what he really is. The opening section would make a satisfying novella all by itself, but Boyne is in no mood to stop there, skewering the competitive and back-biting literary world in a dark and highly engaging satire with a breathtakingly audacious protagonist.
THE TEMPEST
Steve Sem-Sandberg (Faber, £12.99)
Following the death of his foster-father Johannes, Andreas Lehman returns to the Norwegian island of his childhood. While it’s only natural for memories to come flooding back at a time like this, the island, eerily cut off from the world, feels oppressed by the weight of the past, scarred by the German occupation during the war, just as Andreas has been scarred by his own history. He and his sister Minna were left in the care of the gruff, hard-drinking ex-seaman Johannes when their parents, an American diplomat and his wife, vanished without a trace. As he sorts out the old man’s belongings, Andreas learns more about the mystery of his parents, and of the island’s owner, Jan-Heinz Kaufmann, whose presence dominates it even in death. Translated elegantly from the Swedish by Anna Paterson, The Tempest is a dense and complex work of literary fiction with deliberate echoes of Shakespeare’s play, as though some Prospero were shaping it behind the scenes.
THE DEBATABLE LAND
Graham Robb (Picador, £9.99)
Measuring roughly 50 square miles, the Debatable Land lies on the western end of the border between Scotland and England. Renowned as a place of reivers and lawlessness, it was the last part of Britain to be brought under the control of the state, and in the 16th Century, by parliamentary decree, anyone was free to steal, kill and ravage there without legal consequences. Having found that the border ran through the garden of his new house, Graham Robb began to investigate its history and has produced an absorbing book about the area, encompassing its origins as a place where the territories of three Celtic tribes met, its long history as livestock-grazing land people were forbidden to settle or cultivate and the notorious era of the reiving clans. Slightly marred by political assertions less nuanced and insightful than his historical analysis, it’s still a captivating book which brings into focus one of the more mysterious and little-known parts of mainland Britain.
ALASTAIR MABBOTT
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