BOOKS

Must-reads

ENLIGHTENMENT NOW: THE CASE FOR REASON, SCIENCE, HUMANISM AND PROGRESS, BY STEVEN PINKER (ALLEN LANE)

Steven Pinker’s hefty treatise on why the 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment would be a good fit in our own turbulent times hasn’t been universally applauded. Detractors say his version of Enlightenment is a salve for the anxious. Fans claim his argument that the world is becoming rosier is rigorously expounded. Let’s see who wins.

MILKMAN, BY ANNA BURNS (FABER & FABER)

Anna Burns’ novel is narrated by an 18-year-old girl who’s never named, in a city that’s never identified but is undoubtedly the Belfast of the 1970s Troubles. She’s stalked, then pressured into a relationship with a much older paramilitary leader (the “milkman”) while rumour-mongering and the threat of extreme violence swirl about her. The heroine insulates herself with immersive reading, while outside the tribes fight, consumed by religious dogma.

WARLIGHT, BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE (CAPE)

Michael Ondaatje has built a career out of bathing his novels in shadow, often suggesting, rarely revealing directly, the causes and effects of his characters’ actions. Warlight recreates London in the 1940s, where a teenaged boy and his sister are entrusted to a selection of shady characters while their father joins the war effort in Singapore and their mother leaves on some secret business to who knows where.

THE HAUNTING OF TRAM CAR 015, BY P DJÈLÍ CLARK (TOR BOOKS)

If your tram starts behaving erratically, don’t worry, it’s probably just possessed. That’s what the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities concludes concerning car 015 in the Cairo of 1912. Thus begins this historicalfantasy-meets-steam punkmeet s-science-fiction thriller, set in a world in which HG Wells and Philip K Dick would both have felt at home.

HOME IS NOT HERE, BY WANG GUNGWU (NUS PRESS)

Former Hong Kong University vice-chancellor, Professor Wang Gungwu, was there even before the beginning — of Mao Zedong’s new country. A student in Nanjing in 1948, he was forced to leave the city as the Communists approached, a move that prefigured a peripatetic life of studying Chinese civilisation and emigration. Here he rolls his own story, up to his student days, into a pan-Asian history punctuated by war, the effects of multiculturalism and the pull of his Chinese provincial heritage.

AGENCY, BY WILLIAM GIBSON (PENGUIN)

In this vision of the world, Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote victory has been recognised and The Donald’s playtime never began. But fear not, this is dystopian fiction regardless. On a separate timeline, 80 percent of humankind has been despatched by catastrophes; meanwhile, a personal avatar originally developed for military use goes into test mode — and elsewhere, time travellers zip backwards to manipulate the 2016 election. Clear? Good.

THE NICKEL BOYS, BY COLSON WHITEHEAD (DOUBLEDAY BOOKS)

Colson Whitehead steamed into view in 2016 with his slavery-busting, Pulitzer Prize-winning tale The Underground Railroad. And for his next considerable trick he presents a novel of segregaton in 1960s Florida, where a “reform” school for black boys operates with impunity. Whitehead keeps the achievements of the civil-rights movement in focus and the ideals of Dr Martin Luther King at the forefront of debate.

FIRE AND FURY, BY MICHAEL WOLFF (HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY)

Calamitous it may be, but Donald Trump’s surreal term of office will at least provide fodder for literary endeavours such as this exposé by Michael Wolff. But in this account of political haplessness it’s not just the chief court jester rattling bells on a stick: it’s everyone from Kushner to Ivanka, to Bannon and all the other flunkeys, ensuring the pantomime remains a bitter laugh a minute.

THE NIGHT TIGER, BY YANGSZE CHOO (QUERCUS)

Malaysian-Chinese novelist Yangsze Choo earns her stripes with a sinuous mystery in which modern-day (the 1930s) reason jousts with ancient superstition, and independence with colonialism. Houseboy Ren has 49 days to find the longlost, severed finger of his recently deceased master, or his troubled soul will roam the Earth. Coincidentally, dancehall girl Ji Lin, with an unlikely hankering to be a doctor, is shocked to come across a sliced-off finger. Meanwhile, a tiger terrorises their Malaysian town … what can it all mean?