Entry type: Short listsTTTT

From leadership seminars in fancy hotels to medieval figures walking from town to town looking for work in small town factories; from the naïve waitresses working in the mecca of five star hotels to farmers struggling to grow the right crops for the 21st century, Siddhartha Deb’s book is the riveting, moving, darkly comic, brilliantly told story of modern India. With the novelist’s vision, reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, combined with the modern narrative force of Maximum City, Deb’s account paints a portrait of this country in turmoil through the story of its people: aspiring and deluded, desperate and hopeful, beautiful and damned. Taken from Penguin Books

Over the last thirty years, Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals. His originality, bravery, range, and wit made him first a leading iconoclast of the political left and then, later in his career, a formidable advocate of secular liberalism. When the Twin Towers were attacked in September 2001, Hitchens was re-energised again, quickly emerging as one of the fiercest and most influential advocates of war on Iraq. In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval officer father; to his life in Washington DC, the base from which from he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds. Along the way, he recalls the girls, boys and booze; the friendships and the feuds; the grand struggles and lost causes; and the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life. Hitch-22 is, by turns, moving and funny, charming and infuriating, enraging and inspiring. It is an indispensable companion to the life and thought of our pre-eminent political writer. Christopher Hitchens died on 15 December 2011.

• Christopher Hitchens: Introduction to Animal Farm (extract)
• Christopher Hitchens at Vanity Fair
• Christopher Hitchens at The Atlantic
• Christopher Hitchens at Slate
• Christopher Hitchens on Journalisted

The Caucasus mountains form Russia’s southern border and run from the Crimea to the Caspian Sea. Their jagged white peaks inspired Pushkin and Lermontov, overshadowed decades of guerrilla warfare and were explored by 19th century British mountaineers, but the region is better known to us now (if it is at all) for the struggle in Chechnya and the 2008 summer war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia. In Let Our Fame Be Great Oliver Bullough takes the reader through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Turkey and the Middle East, tracking down the nations dispersed by the brutal wars Russia fought to add these mountains to its empire. Then he journeys through the North Caucasus itself, telling the stories of the land and its peoples. Many of the events he uncovers have never been described in English, while some have never been written about in any language. Let Our Fame Be Great recounts the struggle and survival of peoples who have been mostly forgotten for two hundred years. Their fame is not great, but truly it deserves to be.

• Oliver Bullough’s website
• Oliver Bullough at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting
• Oliver Bullough on Journalisted
• Oliver Bullough on Twitter

Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, postsiege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin’s merciless Ministry of State Security. So when Andrei is asked to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are fearful. Trapped in an impossible, maybe unwinnable game, can they avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves? The Betrayal is a powerful and touching novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and a moving portrait of a love that will not be extinguished.

• Helen Dunmore’s website

For much of the world, Iran’s 2009 summer of upheaval was an epic piece of theatre distantly observed. As citizens took to the streets in their millions to protest a stolen election and the regime that made it possible, and later, in smaller numbers, did battle with the shock troops of the Islamic Republic, so the country became effectively off limits for the world’s media. This dramatic confrontation – and the deep divisions that opened among Iran’s rulers as a result – have yet to be convincingly described for a Western audience. Afsaneh Moqadam observed and took part in the momentous events of that summer. Here, through the eyes of Mohsen, one of Tehran’s young, courageous protesters, Moqadam tells the story of these historic months, from the mass marches that greeted the disputed election results to their brutal suppression by the hated Basij militia – and a dark aftermath of imprisonment, torture and a show trial worthy of Stalinist Russia. The result is an inspiring account of a confrontation that has signalled the fragility of the Islamic Republic and given pause to those Western leaders, notably President Barack Obama, who must grapple diplomatically with what may become the world’s next nuclear power. Above all, Death to the Dictator! is testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and its ability to strike fear in the hearts of despots.