Cold comfort

Forget sunny escapism: savour the frostier months with books that embrace the cold, the wild and the introspective.

1 THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, Ursula K Le Guin

An ice-bound planet that barely knows any summer and has a people with no gender. Winter, the world that Ursula K Le Guin conjured in this book in 1969, is a place that holds many subtle lessons for the alien investigator, and for the contemporary reader.

2 THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE, James Rebanks

Lambing, hefting, shearing. The life of the shepherd follows a pattern laid down millennia ago, yet every day brings fresh challenges and every year encroaches further on this way of living. Even at his most frostbitten, James Rebanks makes for an enthralling companion.

3 DUNBAR, Edward St Aubyn

Captivated by Benedict Cumberbatch’s new screen translation of the Patrick Melrose novels, you find that you can’t get enough of Edward St Aubyn, one of England’s premier prose stylists. Now’s the time for a dip into his latest, a retelling of King Lear, bracing as a dive into a frozen lake.

4 INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, Halldór Laxness

It wasn’t just Independent People that Icelandic author Halldór Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize for in 1955, but it might as well have been. It’s at once unforgiving and profoundly compassionate, set in a landscape beyond that is as brutal as it is dreamy. Rug up, bunker down and ask yourself: “To stand alone, is not that the perfection of life, its aim?”

5 ISLAND, Alistair MacLeod

The stark Cape Breton coast of Nova Scotia is Alistair MacLeod’s turf, and dignity in the face of isolation and loss are among his themes. These stories form a bittersweet elegy to traditions of Scotland and Ireland washed up on the other side of the world.

6 HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE, Dōgen/ Kōshō Uchiyama Rōshi

“Do you wash the sand and pick out the rice, or wash the rice and pick out the sand?” The original Instructions for the Zen

Cook is on one level a practical manual for monks cooking for a monastery. But, this being a Zen Buddhist text, you could also read more into it. In this edition, Kōshō Uchiyama Rōshi’s commentary, written in the 20th century, illuminates the spiritual aspect of the teachings of 13th-century Zen master Dōgen for the modern-day reader. “When you look at the rice, see the sand at the same time; when you look at the sand, see also the rice.” Let’s get metaphysical.