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Bastard Alias the Romantic
Yuri Herrera
‘Can you imagine what it would be like if instead of killing we cuddled?’
Before They Began to Shrink
Nic Dunlop
‘The numbers killed at Aughrim that day will never be known.’
Best Book of 1766: Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling
Dave Haysom
Dave Haysom on why Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling is the best book of 1766.
Best Book of 1868: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Laurie Sheck
‘The beauty of The Idiot lies in its opposition to closed systems.’
Best Book of 1900: The Autobiography of Dr William Henry Johnson
Jennifer Kabat
‘Johnson is now a ghost of history; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but I can’t let him disappear.’
Best Book of 1926: Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Sun Yisheng
His is a force more penetrative than all the bogus machismo of Hemingway.
Best Book of 1941: Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher
Harriet Moore
‘This book is about yearning for the Sunday nights of childhood, or dreams; it is a meditation on hunger in all its forms.’
Best Book of 1943: Love In A Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
‘Eileen Chang writes perfectly for the romantic in an unromantic and unrelenting world.’
Best book of 1947: L’Écume des Jours by Boris Vian
Xiaolu Guo
‘In those spring nights, I sat by barbecue stalls in the streets of Beijing, reading this novel under dim streetlights while eating lamb skewers.’
Best Book of 1950: A Natural History of Trees by Donald Culross Peattie
James Pogue
‘Now more than ever environmentalists need to remember what it’s like to write for that real world.’
Best book of 1964: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
Lisa McInerney
‘In days of such human cruelty and pettiness and stupidity, we need reminding that we are all capable of savage compassion as well as the contagion of hatred.’
