book bites

Dear Leader: North Korea’s senior propagandist exposes shocking truths behind the regime ★★★★★

Jang Jin-sung (Ebury, R285)

buff

BOOK

Jang Jin-sung opens the black box that is North Korean politics through accounts of his personal involvement with the Kim Jong-il regime. Working under the aptly named Propaganda and Agitation Department, he was tasked to invent South Korean literature that praised the Kim-ruled North. His own agitation leads him to an act which in the West would result in an overdue library fine, but in his native North Korea is punishable by death. It’s Winston Smith from Orwell’s 1984 reincarnated in East Asia. — Vuyo Mzini

@vuyomzini

The Wolf in Winter ★★★ ★★

John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton, R285)

thrill

BOOK

Connolly weaves such a web of romance and melancholy, horror and humour, it is difficult to categorise his books. Thrillers with occult overtones? Detective stories with a tragic hero? In this, his 12th outing, PI Charlie Parker discovers that Jude, a homeless man who has been murdered, intended to hire him to find his daughter. The grossout factor in Charlie’s dealings with Cambion the Leper, his relationship with the Collector, and the Cassandra-like appearances of his daughter’s ghost, may, however, have reached their sell-by date. — Aubrey Paton

The Fever ★★★★ ★

Megan Abbott (Picador, R250)

fiend

BOOK

Abbott writes chilling high-school noir that generates a deep fear of meeting a teen in a dark alley. This time the focus is on Deenie Nash, a teen living in Small Town, USA. She has issues: her mother left her to live in the big city. She also has besties: the ugly-duckling-turned-swan Lisa and the wiser-than-her-years Gabby. After Lisa has a seizure and more of Deenie’s pals become inexplicably ill, a wave of hysteria hits the town. Whatever the cause, it all boils down to the way society deals with young women and sex. — Jennifer Platt

@Jenniferdplatt