Six tales that leap from the page

The Royal Society of Literature this week revealed the shortlist for the Ondaatje Prize, an award of £10,000 for ‘a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place’. Michael Kerr chooses extracts from the shortlisted books

pine trees, 40ft beneath the danger of wind and drifts. The oldest ewes will have led them here, and will stand stubbornly if the younger ewes try to lead them out to danger. The flock takes its cue from the elders. They know they are safe here, with tussock grass to chew on to keep them alive if the snow lasts for days. This place is almost as good as a barn, windless and watered by the beck that still carves the ghyll out of the mountainside. and awkwardly as the political technologist’s faux-Western-style parties. Elsewhere you can spy a neonmedieval: behind high black gates peek out Disney-like towers tacked onto pink concrete castles, with rows of offices shaped like knights’ helmets, so they look like an army of warriors emerging from the ground.

Often you find all the styles compiled into one building. A new office centre on the other side of the river from the Kremlin starts with a Roman portico, then morphs into medieval ramparts with spikes and gold-glass reflective windows, all topped with turrets and Stalin-era spires. The effect is at first amusing, then disturbing. It’s like talking to the victim of a multiple personality disorder: Who are you? What are you trying to say?

Increasingly, new skyscrapers recall the Gotham-Gothic turrets of Stalin-