FOUR PICKS FOR FEBRUARY
Maybe Esther Katja Petrowskaja, Fourth Estate
Katja Petrowskaja’s extraordinary family history takes her on a quest across Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Germany and takes its title from the story of her great-grandmother. In 1941, Petrowskaja’s elderly relative, the “maybe Esther”, left her Kiev apartment on the order of occupying Nazi authorities and was gunned down in the street.
Her great-granddaughter’s memoir unfolds in artful and fascinating vignettes as she uncovers her Polish-Ukrainian family history that, through subsequent generations, plots the course of the 20th century: the Russian revolution; communism; world wars and the Holocaust. Her great-uncle shot a diplomat in Moscow in 1932 and was sentenced to death. Her Ukrainian grandfather disappeared during the Second World War, for 40 years. That seven generations of her family ran schools for deafmute children is a unifying theme. This personal and compelling history was a bestseller when it was published in German in 2013.
Rise Up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes Diane Atkinson, Bloomsbury
The women’s suffrage movement is familiar ground for the British historian Diane Atkinson, who marks the centenary of the passing of the Representation of the People Act into British law, which allowed men over21 and women over-30 to vote, with this history of female activism.
From actresses to scientists, teachers to doctors, clerks to sweated workers from all corners of the United Kingdom, Atkinson writes a fascinating biography of a movement that made its mark in a shockingly public way. Whether it was slashing priceless artworks or marching on the UK Parliament, a sea of women led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, made their demands known and suffered arrest, imprisonment and police brutality as a result.
This authoritative history of the diverse group of women who worked tirelessly for the right to vote is a rousing story for our #MeToo age.
A Black Fox Running Brian Carter, Bloomsbury
Nature writing has been resurgent in recent years and Brian Carter’s A Black Fox Running, which was originally published in 1981 but has just been re-released, celebrates the wild landscapes of Dartmoor in the south of England.
It pits a wily black fox, Wulfgar, against Scoble, a trapper, as the seasons turn to winter, but the author cum artist, poet and conservationist has even more to say in conjuring a wild and bleak natural world.
Critics have lauded Carter’s gift in this “lost classic” for his unsentimental portrayal of the changing landscape and the bleak realism of man’s battle to subdue the wild in nature. His descriptions of nature are celebrated for being both haunting and perfectly observed – reading this will transport you away from the city and into the wild.
In her introduction, prize-winning author and journalist Melissa Harrison describes Carter’s “breathtakingly beautiful novel” as “the book that made me a writer”.
Meatless Days Sara Suleri, Viking
Penguin asked leading British novelists Penelope Lively and Kamila Shamsie to each choose two forgotten female writers to be republished under its Penguin Women Writers banner.
Lively chose less wellknown works by established writers: Birds of America by Mary McCarthy, first published in 1971; and Edith Nesbit’s The Lark, the children’s writer’s least celebrated 1922 work. Much like her classic, The Railway Children, it focuses on a family facing changing fortunes. British-Pakistani author Shamsie’s picks are better well-known outside the English-speaking world: Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai’s short story and essay collection Lifting the Veil frames a women’s place in a patriarchal world and examines attitudes towards female sexuality. And last but not least, Meatless Days by Sara Suleri, published in 1989, is a memoir about a family tragedy and the birth of Pakistan.