The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 Books & arts 852
1Schism. By Paul Blustein. CIGI Press; 400
pages; $27.95. McGill-Queen’s University
Press; £27.99
A fascinating, detailed account of the
history of tensions in America’s trade
relationship with China. It explains the
back story to today’s conflict—and reveals
how difficult it will be to escape it.
Capitalism, Alone. By Branko Milanovic.
Belknap Press; 304 pages; $29.95 and £23.95
A scholar of inequality warns that while
capitalism may have seen off rival eco-
nomic systems, the survival of liberal
democracies is anything but assured. The
amoral pursuit of profit in more liberal
capitalist societies has eroded the ethical
norms that help sustain openness and
democracy, he argues; now that tendency
threatens to push such places in the direc-
tion of more authoritarian capitalist soci-
eties, such as China.Culture and ideas
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last
Trial of Harper Lee. By Casey Cep.Knopf; 336
pages; $26.95. William Heinemann; £20
An ingeniously structured, beautifully
written double mystery—one concerning
the Reverend Willie Maxwell, who was
accused of murdering five relatives for the
insurance money in Alabama in the 1970s
(before being fatally shot himself ); the
other, Harper Lee’s abortive efforts to write
a book about the case. Tom Radney, a
lawyer who is the story’s third main char-
acter, defended Maxwell—and his killer.
Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary
Legacy. By Benjamin Balint. W.W. Norton;
288 pages; $26.95. Picador; £14.99
An account of the struggle over Kafka’s
papers between competing archives in
Israel and Germany—plus a woman who
inherited them from a friend of his editor,
Max Brod—which played out after most of
the writer’s family had died in the Holo-
caust. A book about the provenance of art,
and how much, in the end, it matters.
Underland: A Deep Time Journey. By Robert
Macfarlane. W.W. Norton; 384 pages; $27.95.
Hamish Hamilton; £20
A haunting examination of the world
below the surface—a place that has always
been envisioned as a zone of treasure and
of dread. From the Paris catacombs to the
soil of Epping Forest to caverns in remot-
est Norway, the author, a celebrated na-
ture-writer, re-envisions the planet from
the ground down.
Three Women. By Lisa Taddeo. Simon
& Schuster; 320 pages; $27. Bloomsbury
Circus; £16.99
Eight years of reporting went into this
portrait of American sexuality from a
female perspective. The author’s threesubjects “stand for the whole of what
longing in America looks like”; she spent
time in their home towns to study their
daily routines, jobs and, above all, their
desires. With a novelist’s eye for detail, she
captures the pain and powerlessness of
sex, as well as its heady joys.
A Month in Siena.By Hisham Matar.Random
House; 126 pages; $27. Viking; £12.99
The author’s life and writing have been
shaped by his Libyan father’s kidnapping
in 1990 by the regime of Muammar Qad-
dafi. In previous work he tried to uncover
what happened; in this slim, bewitching
book he finds answers, of a sort, by travel-
ling to Siena. Meditating on art, history
and the relationship between them, this is
both a portrait of a city and an affirmation
of life’s quiet dignities in the face of loss.
This is Shakespeare.By Emma Smith.
Pelican; 368 pages; £20
A brilliant and accessible tour of Shake-
speare’s plays that is also a radical mani-
festo for how to read and watch his work.
Witty, irreverent and searching, this book,
by a professor at Oxford University, shines
dazzling new light on the oeuvre of the
world’s greatest literary genius.Fiction
Stalingrad: A Novel. By Vasily Grossman.
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler.
NYRB Classics; 1,088 pages; $27.95. Harvill
Secker; £25
At last, the Russian novelist-journalist’s
mighty prequel to “Life and Fate”, his epic
of the battle of Stalingrad and its after-
math, has received a definitive—and
hugely powerful—English translation. A
seething fresco of combat, domestic rou-
tine under siege and intellectual debate, itconfirms that Grossman was the supreme
bard of the second world war.
Ducks, Newburyport. By Lucy Ellmann.
Biblioasis; 1,040 pages; $22.95. Galley Beggar
Press; £14.99
The year’s unlikeliest literary triumph: a
1,000-page fictional monologue delivered
by a worried Ohio housewife and baker,
much of which is made up of a single
sentence. A prize-garlanded novel that is
funny, angry, erudite, profound—and full
of great cake recipes.
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange
World.By Elif Shafak. Bloomsbury; 320 pages;
$27. Viking; £14.99
The protagonist of this story is dead when
it begins. The body of “Tequila Leila” has
been dumped in a wheelie bin on the
outskirts of Istanbul; yet, somehow, her
mind remains active. While it does, she
scrolls back through her life—a pained
childhood, stalwart friends in adult-
hood—in a powerful, unflinching novel
that, like all of the Turkish author’s work,
is political and lyrical at once.
Homeland. By Fernando Aramburu. Translat-
ed by Alfred MacAdam. Pantheon; 608 pages;
$29.95. Picador; £16.99
A monumental novel—and a bestseller in
Spanish—which explores how eta’s terro-
rism divided families and lifelong friends
in a claustrophobic Basque town. Empa-
thetic but morally acute, this may be the
definitive fictional account of the Basque
troubles; it suggests that redemption is
hard but not impossible.
The Volunteer. By Salvatore Scibona.
Penguin Press; 432 pages; $28. Jonathan
Cape; £16.99
This intricate novel spans decades and
continents and incorporates multiple,
looping stories. After being captured in