Across my Desk

Right to Fight, by Terry Bell (Self-published) A shortage of jobs is probably the greatest threat to stability in this country. Anyone seeking a picture of labour and the South African economy over the past 17 years should cast an eye over this book. It’s a selection of Terry Bell’s Inside Labour columns that have appeared every Friday in Business Report. Bell bows to no one’s sensitivities, which is why his column is, in the words of Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer “an essential Friday read”. The title comes from Bell’s belief in the labour movement’s right to fight. It’s illustrated by apposite Zapiro cartoons. The Infinity of Lists: from Homer to Joyce, by Umberto Eco (Maclehose Press/Book Promotions) England’s Domesday Book is essentially a list of the assets of the kingdom drawn up for William the Conqueror. When faced with chaos and confusion, people tend to make lists. In this richly illustrated volume, the Italian writer and novelist Umberto Eco looks at lists appearing in art and literature. Catalogues, inventories, ranks are all examples of lists, some designed “to suggest countless magnitudes”. Time Out described this book as “a dazzling tour through two millennia...”. Buried on Avenue B, by Peter de Jonge (HarperCollins) NYPD detective Darlene O’Hara gets the story first. A New York home-help comes in to report that her client, an Alzheimer’s patient in his 60s with a history of drug abuse, has told her that years ago he killed a friend in a fight and buried him in a park off Avenue B. The police take the story seriously, dig up the park and find a body. Only, it is the body of a 10-year-old boy. This is not the open and shut case O’Hara was expecting, and she is launched on a major investigation. Peter de Jonge has co-authored three books with James Patterson.