Yesterday, I went to an event at the Wellcome Collection in London to hear the six authors nominated for this year’s Wellcome Book Prize discuss their shortlisted books. The annual award is open to works of fiction and non-fiction which engage with some aspect of health, illness or medicine, or “the ultimate human subject” as chair Anne Karpf said in her introduction.
The books on this year’s shortlist are:
- Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
- The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink
- NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
- Playthings by Alex Pheby
- It’s All in Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan
- The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
‘Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer’ (also published under the title ‘The World Between Two Covers’ in the United States) is Ann Morgan’s account of how she read a book from every country in the world after realising that her literary diet mostly consisted of British and American authors. Rather than cobbling together Morgan’s reviews of the 197 books she read in 2012 which are already available for free on her excellent blog 
Translated from the Japanese by Deborah Boliver Boehm, ‘Death by Water’ by Kenzaburo Oe tells the story of Kogito Choko, an author aged in his 70s reflecting on his long career. For many years, he has struggled to write the “drowning” novel based on his father’s death shortly after the Second World War. Kogito returns to his rural home town to look at his father’s red leather trunk which his mother had instructed him not to open until ten years had passed after her death. However, it soon transpires that the contents of the trunk do not provide him with many answers, leaving Kogito limited time to unlock the secrets he needs to finish his book. 
Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap, ‘A Strangeness in My Mind’ by Orhan Pamuk tells the story of Mevlut Karata, a yoghurt and boza seller who lives in Istanbul. Melvut arrives in the city at the age of twelve in the late 1960s with his father from a poor village in Anatolia. He later elopes and marries Rayiha despite a case of mistaken identity in which he believed his love letters were being delivered to her sister. Over the course of four decades, he observes the political upheavals in the city and also experiences many personal challenges. 
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty is an informative and thought-provoking memoir about the death industry written by a mortician seeking to demystify a taboo topic feared by almost everyone. Stories of burial practices, death rituals and cultural attitudes from around the world and throughout history are interwoven with Doughty’s personal experiences including the circumstances which led her to start working at Westwind Crematorium in San Francisco nearly a decade ago at the age of 23. Doughty’s sense of humour is appropriately dark without being disrespectful as she recounts some of her more memorable experiences at the crematorium and challenges readers to confront their own mortality. As much about life as it is about death, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ is a fascinating look at a widely misunderstood career choice, although not a book I would recommend to the very squeamish or recently bereaved. 
Translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas, ‘The Four Books’ by Yan Lianke is set in a labour camp in the ninety-ninth district near the Yellow River in north China where the Theologian, the Scholar, the Musician, the Author and other disgraced intellectuals are tasked with growing crops and smelting steel as part of their political “re-education”. The camp is led by a juvenile commander known as the Child who is also seeking approval from the “higher ups” in the party. However, as the economy fails and famine sets in, the inmates are left to survive on their own in appalling conditions. 
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang and translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith tells the story of Yeong-hye who suddenly declares she will no longer eat meat after having a disturbing dream. Originally published as separate “novelettes”, the three parts of the story are told from the point of view of her husband, brother-in-law and sister respectively who are all outraged by her decision to become a vegetarian in a society where refusing to eat meat is extremely rare. 
‘Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain’ by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman explores the background of the phone hacking scandal which engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News International. It was revealed in 2011 that messages on a mobile phone belonging to murdered teenager Milly Dowler had been hacked by journalists working for the News of the World, a former tabloid newspaper. The organisation initially used a “rogue reporter” defence but further evidence exposed how the practice had been carried out extensively for several years under the watch of several senior editors. This subsequently led to a complex investigation and public inquiry which implicated politicians and the police as much as the press. 
Following some early discussions this week, here is the shadow panel’s official response to the 
Kate Atkinson’s previous novel 
In 1964, the eponymous narrator of ‘Eileen’ by Ottessa Moshfegh is twenty-four years old, living with her alcoholic father and working as a secretary at a correctional facility for teenage boys. During the week leading up to Christmas, Eileen Dunlop is planning to disappear from her coastal Massachusetts home town which she names only as X-ville and start a new life in New York City. However, when she meets Rebecca Saint John, a new colleague at the correctional facility, events begin to take an unexpected turn. 
‘The Good Liar’ by Nicholas Searle tells the story of Roy Courtnay, a conman aged in his eighties living in the leafy suburbs of England who is attempting to swindle wealthy widow Betty McLeish out of her life savings after meeting her on a dating website. However, although Betty appears to be a very easy target for Roy, she also appears to be suspiciously willing to become his latest victim.
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco has been widely compared to ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy. Its unnamed central character is battling to survive in a desolate drought-ridden landscape. Having run away from home for reasons which are revealed towards the end, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a goatherd. The absence of names for places and characters gives the book a timeless quality and although post-apocalyptic fiction has never been my favourite genre, Margaret Jull Costa’s excellent translation adds colour and depth to a very bleak story. 
‘In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences’ by Truman Capote outlines the investigation into the murders of farmer Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie and two of their teenage children at their home in Kansas in November 1959. After reading a short news article in the New York Times about the killings, Capote travelled to the small town of Holcomb with his friend, Harper Lee, where he undertook extensive research and interviewed hundreds of people who lived in the area or were involved in the case including the chief investigator, Alvin Dewey, and eventually the murderers themselves. 
The subtitle of Gavin Francis’ travel memoir would be a reasonably concise answer to the question: “What comes to mind when you think of Antarctica?”. While ice and emperor penguins are the more obvious responses to be expected from those who have never been there, it is the silence of such a remote landscape which Francis dwells on in his account of the fourteen months he spent as the base-camp doctor at the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley research station on the Caird Coast. What becomes clear from reading ‘Empire Antarctica’ is that claustrophobia and isolation are also major factors, although that would have made a much less satisfying book title. 
‘The Noise of Time’ by Julian Barnes is a fictional account of the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the most famous Russian composers of the twentieth century. The novel focuses on three key points in his life at twelve-year intervals. In the first part, Shostakovich is waiting by a lift shaft expecting the secret police to take him away and interrogate him at The Big House during the height of the purges in 1936. In the second part, he travels to the United States to deliver a speech on behalf of the Soviet Union in 1948. In the final part set in 1960, he is asked to become a party member under Khrushchev. 
A Little Blog of Books 
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