The Guardian's Blog, page 153

The best books for Christmas

Stuck for gift ideas? From Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk to Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men, we've put together a list of eight present perfect titles from around the world

Over the past year, World library has recommended 30 books from 10 countries to read. If you're looking for a Christmas present, here are eight of my favourites (in no particular order):

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

The first novel in Mahfouz's sumptuous Cairo trilogy offers an inside view of modern Egypt as the country attempts to emerge from British occupation and forge its own identity.

A prosperous merchant rules over his family with an iron hand, ensuring they abide by Qur'anic principles and demanding unquestioning obedience. His own behaviour is far from irreproachable, however, as he pursues fine wines and voluptuous women.

Nobel prize-winner Mahfouz paints an intimate portrait of the family as their trials and tribulations mirror those of their changing country.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Adichie's powerful novel of Nigeria's secessionist Biafran war weaves together the lives of five protagonists, among them a charismatic, revolutionary academic, his beautiful partner, and their houseboy.

As the conflict deepens, the region's Igbo population is sucked into hunger, squalor and violence. Personal friendships and loyalties are severely tested, but the story encompasses wider themes such as postcolonialism, ethnic loyalties and race. The new nation's hopes and dreams flower briefly, only to be brutally crushed.

A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb

Robb cleverly entwines Brazil's food with its history and politics, his appetite for culinary delights matched by his appetite for knowledge.

His sweep through 500 years of history is entertaining and informative, and often reads like a novel (and a thriller at that).

The titular death involves the mysterious end of a fixer and bagman to a corrupt president, although there are many other deaths – through genocide, massacres and assassinations. Robb paints an affectionate portrait of the country, but burns with anger at the inequities in Brazilian society.

A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

As Kenya readies for independence in 1963, the residents of a village prepare to celebrate the transfer of power. But beneath the surface, things are tense: the British colonials are leaving and there are scores to settle.

During the struggle for independence, some villagers collaborated with the "white man", while others joined the Mau Mau rebellion. The comrades of a local rebel leader who was captured and hanged are determined to avenge his death.

Each chapter in the book fills in pieces of a puzzle as Ngugi retells the colonial story from a Kenyan perspective.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Nobel prize winner Márquez takes us on a magic carpet ride through Colombia's turbulent past in this dazzling, classic novel.

Fact is mixed with fantasy in a saga that spans many generations of the Buendía family and plays out in the mythical town of Macondo.

In this enthralling and highly comic romp through history as seen through the eyes of a single family, civil war rages, lives are lost, hearts break and dreams shatter. The looping chronology, along with generations of Buendías sharing names and characteristics, keeps readers on their toes.

This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

The first book in Pramoedya's epic Buru quartet, set towards the end of Dutch colonial rule, is a bittersweet coming-of-age novel. The narrator, Minke, is a gifted 18-year-old from an aristocratic family who is the only "native" Indonesian at a prestigious Dutch school.

The tale excoriates a society in which social standing and rights depend on the amount of European blood in one's veins. Minke refuses to accept his place in a racially stratified society, falling in love with a beautiful "Indo" (Indo-European) girl. But their hopes for the future run up against Javanese prejudices and unyielding Dutch colonial law.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

An American missionary drags his wife and four daughters to a village in the Belgian Congo to bring the word of his God to the natives. It's 1959, a year before the country gains its independence. The novel spans 30 years in the life of the family as it slowly implodes and then rebuilds itself.

Congo permeates the story, as it grapples with its independence and a descent into violence. The wife and daughters tell the story – we never hear directly from the father, but his presence and stifling righteousness loom large.

Kingsolver skewers colonialism, patriarchy and religious fanaticism, while also reflecting on guilt and personal responsibility.

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar

Matar's debut novel reflects the brutality of Gaddafi's Libya through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy as he struggles to make sense of his father's disappearance and the terror it induces in the adults around him.

That's not all the boy has to deal with. His mother is becoming dependent on the illicit "medicine" supplied by the baker; she's burning the books his father loves; and his best friend's father is on television begging for his life. All this leaves him in a state of "quiet panic".

Matar's own father disappeared into Gaddafi's jails in 1990, and his whereabouts remain unknown.

FictionHistoryPoliticsGabriel García MárquezHisham MatarNaguib MahfouzChimamanda Ngozi AdichieNgugi wa Thiong'oBarbara KingsolverPushpinder Khaneka
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20: Tolkien's 20 rings of power

JRR Tolkien's 20 rings of power feature in today's advent calendar extract, from Rogerson's Book of Numbers

JRR Tolkien's works are deeply embedded within a lifetime of mythological and philological scholarship that merges strains of Celtic, Norse, Zoroastrian, Chinese and Byzantine storylines with his own imagination.

At the heart of his Lord of the Rings trilogy is the dark lord Sauron, who has made 20 rings of power: three for the elves; seven for the dwarves; nine for the kings of men; and one, forged in Mount Doom, which will allow him to control all the 19 ring wearers as explained by the secret rune verse, "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

The "kings of men" become the nine (another significant Tolkien number) dark riders – a mounted hit squad devoted to the service of the dark lord Sauron. Originally led by the witch-king of Angmar and the easterner Khamu, they were given rings to bind them into obedience to Sauron, and their character, shape and substance are gradually subsumed until they become spectral Nazgûl, "ring-wraiths".

Tomorrow: the 21-gun salute

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson

Reference and languagesLord of the RingsJRR TolkienBarnaby Rogerson
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Don't judge a cat book by its cover

Publishers may think a cute animal on the cover is what sells in the supermarket, but ask around online and those who buy pet books will tell you otherwise

The moment of receiving your first book jacket is one that every author remembers. I was so excited when I got mine – a jacket, for a book, written by me, that was going to be published – it took me a while to realise it wasn't quite right. When the time came for the smaller, mass market paperback edition of the book concerned (a memoir about my golfing adolescence, called Nice Jumper) and my agent and I suggested a change of image, my publishers were only too happy to work towards something that suited everyone.

That was 12 years ago, though, and the publishing industry has changed a lot since then, with supermarkets becoming increasingly dominant and power swinging away from editorial and towards sales. It had already changed a lot by early 2009 when Simon & Schuster, the publishers of my fifth book, Under the Paw, sent me their proposal for the book's paperback edition. I instantly knew I hated the cover and instantly knew there was not a lot I could do about it.

In Under the Paw, I'd written about the chaos of more than three decades living at the beck and call of several of the world's most demanding felines. I was realistic about the book's marketing: although proper writers such as William Boyd, Kate Atkinson and David Sedaris had said nice stuff about it, it was, after all, a memoir about some cats, and no state-of-the-nation literary epic. Nonetheless, Simon & Schuster's birthday-cardish cover – an anonymous actor kitten sitting in a pair of jeans, against a sky-blue background – seemed a curious choice. "Here," it seemed to say, "is a memoir about Mr Tiddles, with many syrupy stories about how he healed a troubled family." Not: "Here is a book where well-loved cats occasionally shit in dressing gown pockets and get called dickheads."

I'd been told by Simon & Schuster that the pet books which sold, and made it into supermarkets, were those with a very simple image of a cute animal on the cover. In this case, it was perhaps understandable that they hadn't chosen to feature one of my cats, who had chunks missing from their ears and often wandered into the house with slugs and twigs stuck to their fur. But this cover seemed to belong to a completely different book.

The case was even more extreme for Under the Paw's follow up, Talk to the Tail, for whose cover Simon & Schuster chose another image of an actor kitten straight from the Hallmark collection, despite the fact that the book – which is only 50% about cats, with other animals hogging the other half of the action – doesn't even feature a kitten. This, I was informed, was what you had to do to make animal books sell in the 21st century. At the same time, if making books sell was the objective, it seemed a little odd that the choice had been made to publish the hardback and paperback of Talk to the Tail in successive Januarys, traditionally the month when the cat-loving public take a break from buying books.

I accepted all this because, in a recession-ravaged publishing industry, I felt increasingly glad to still have my work published at all. My loud dad's standard comment when I ever moan to him about work – "AT LEAST YOU'RE NOT STILL WORKING ON THE CHECKOUT IN TESCO" – rang in my head increasingly often. Asking not to have my books mismarketed would probably be downright greedy.

But over the next year or two, I received countless emails and tweets from readers regarding the cover images. "I enjoyed your cat books," several wrote, "but why do they have such appalling covers?" Others asked why they couldn't see photos of the cats who featured in the books, or said they'd bought the books after reading my writing elsewhere, but done so very much in spite of the cover images. When you write a book, you are forever judged by it. That includes the cover. Most people who'd seen my cat books, without actually reading them, thought I was an entirely different kind of writer to the one I am. Many must also have picked them up hoping their content did match the cover and been disappointed.

There was also a major flaw in Simon & Schuster's plan: despite good reviews, and its allegedly supermarket-friendly cover, Talk to the Tail did not make it into any supermarkets, and sold relatively poorly. Due to these sales figures, Simon & Schuster rejected my proposal for the followup, The Good, the Bad and the Furry. Luckily, I was able to find another publisher, Little Brown, who believed in the project, and wanted to help create a book whose inside and outside I was proud of – albeit one I would have to write very quickly, for the smallest advance I'd ever received.

During the book's creation, I also set up a Twitter account for my mournful, saucer-eyed 18-year-old rescue cat, The Bear, where, with an accompanying photo, I would tweet an absurd event or fact that "made him sad". I don't want to waste valuable writing time on Twitter, but, then, I would also rather like to be writing epic novels in the publishing climate of 1970s California, and sometimes you have to be realistic about the era you're living in: by building The Bear's following to over 30,000, I gained the leverage to persuade Little Brown to put him on the cover, replete with torn ears and world-weary stare.

During The Good, the Bad and the Furry's first, partial week of publication in October, it went straight into the Sunday Times's non-fiction paperback bestsellers top 10, aided no doubt also by Tesco, who'd agreed to stock it, largely as a result of its cover image. Its continuing excellent sales and The Bear's now almost 60,000 Twitter followers have persuaded Simon & Schuster to change the covers of Under the Paw and Talk to the Tail to images featuring my cats when the time comes for a reprint.

Were Simon & Schuster wrong to choose the original paperback covers? Definitely. Does that mean I always know best about what kind of cover should be on my books? No. Ultimately, authors should be writing, not thinking about what will make their books sell, but the internet has brought a lot of us closer to our readership, and made us more aware of what they want – sometimes more aware than the people who are thinking primarily in pound signs. I still trust publishers to take care of me, but I no longer think of them as a nurturing, all-knowing parent in the way that I once did. In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman famously says that the first rule of Hollywood is "Nobody knows anything". Perhaps the first rule of publishing should be another version of that: "Nobody knows anything most of the time, but the reading public should not be treated like idiots."

Tom Cox's The Good, the Bad and the Furry is out now via Little Brown

PublishingCatsPetsTom Cox
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Watership Down by Richard Adams: A tale of courage, loyalty, language

A sense of mythical nostalgia makes this story – of a treacherous journey and quest for survival – one to pick up, time and time again

Watership Down, Richard Adams' first novel, made its way into my life in the Christmas of 1974 and has drawn me back to its yellowing pages ever since. A present from a much loved uncle, the story of the quest for survival by a brave, easy to love band of rabbits, seemed to combine the intimacy of a myth with the scale of a battle. For me it continues to hold the lure and the comfort of a pilgrimage to be made and remade.

"The primroses were over:" the seasonal melancholy of the first line runs as a thread through the text, its sad beauty drawing us in. From the beginning, the fact of seeing of the world and the initial surroundings of Sandleford Warren through the eyes of the rabbits is something which, as readers, we don't question. So immersed are we in their vantage point that the appearance in the closing chapters of a human in the shape of Lucy, the farm girl at Nuthanger, comes as something of a reversal. Adams has sometimes been said to have "anthropomorphised" the rabbits but it always seemed to me that their charm was rather that we become them.

The words on a new noticeboard fill the sensitive seer rabbit, Fiver, with a sense of "some terrible thing – coming closer and closer", threatening their beloved Sandleford: "the field's full of blood". Fiver's warning is ignored by the chief rabbit, forcing a small brave group – of those convinced that the warren's days are numbered – to leave, in search of a new home. Thus begins the journey at the novel's heart.

There is a fragility as well as strength about the little group that sets forth. Fiver is accompanied by his brother, Hazel, who is himself elevated to a new and unanticipated position as leader. New tests face them. Complementing Hazel's loyalty and wish to see the best in others, Bigwig brings physical strength and courage, and we find ingenuity in Blackberry. The mix plays a huge part in the book's charm.

While the shape of each character is filled out as the journey advances, the presence in the party of Silver and Bigwig, physically the strongest of the group, and formerly of the Owsla, military element of the warren, consolidates a sense of the battle to come.

In the way of all pilgrimage, their journey (reflected in quotations from Bunyan and in a physical map in the back of the book) presents dangers and hurdles on its way. Fiver's vision is of safety at Watership Down, but the rabbits' first arrival there brings only the realisation that a warren without does cannot survive. A group of emissaries must venture to the nearby warren, Efrafa, known to house many does – and over which the tyrannical figure of the antagonist, General Woundwort, looms. In tandem, Hazel and Pipkin lead a raid on a nearby farm, learning only then of their fellow rabbits' escape from Efrafa (seemingly a police state), having fought for their lives.

Against these ongoing struggles, Adams provides humour and the magic of storytelling within the story. From Dandelion we hear tales known to all rabbits and told "on winter nights when the cold draught moved down the warren passages". Tales of of Frith, a god-figure, and his bestowal to the legendary rabbit hero, El-ahrairah, of the safety of all rabbits – now and in future generations. Such are the glimpses of hope to which we cleave, when news reaches the group of the destruction of Sandleford and their sense of exile seems complete on the worst of Fiver's visions coming to pass.

When the labours of Hazel and his band risk taking too much out of us, humour comes in the shape of Keehar, a strangely accented black-haired gull they encounter, wounded, along the way. Characterised by an "outlandish and distorted)" accent (inspired by a fighter Adams met in the Norwegian Resistance) and serving as a part of the rescue of the rabbits, he brings levity and friendship.

The novel has its own fictional language, Lapine, invented by Adams but somehow easy to accept as one we have always known. It is the language of the countryside, of its copses and beeches and of the weather that read as a kind of rapture to my eight-year-old mind: "Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather ... The changes in the warmth and the dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beams in the light wind."

The poetry of the rabbits' silflay, their gathering at the surface to feed, on summer evenings, "in the grass under the red may and the sweet, carrion-scented elder bloom" speaks to something perennial. The symbolism, mythology and meaning of the individual rabbits' names remain with the reader a long time after the last sentence is read.

Adams dedicated Watership Down to his daughters Juliet and Rosamond, and always underplayed any claim to an intended allegory, saying: "I simply wrote down a story I told to my two little girls." On my first acquaintance with it, something that carried them on their journeys held, for me, a mythical nostalgia for a world I didn't know I was missing. Its comfort lies not in all ending well but in the courage, loyalty, language and truth of the the journey. It's a journey I know I will make again.

FictionKeren Levy
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Who is the greatest American novelist? 3: Cormac McCarthy v John Fante

You nominated the contenders – now reader Matthew Spencer pits McCarthy's The Road against Fante's Wait Until Spring, Bandini

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19. Sacred 19 of the Bahá'í

Today our books advent calendar, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers, focuses on the Bahá'í community's affinity to the number 19

The much-persecuted Bahá'í community emerged in 19th-century Persia, though is today a diaspora of around 5 or 6 million is spread around the world. They believe in the spiritual unity of mankind and revere Siyyid Ali Muhammad, who in 1844 foretold the appearance of a great prophet – who they believe was revealed in 1860 as Baha'u'llah ("Glory of God"). It was Baha'u'llah who compiled their Holy Book, which continues the spiritual development begun by Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and the other great prophets of the world.

The community has a special affinity to the number 19. They have a 19-day month, a 19-month year, an annual 19-day fast, and a communal festival every 19 days with prayers and consultations. This is seemingly based on the numerical value of "Wahid" – the One – though older associations exist, for 19 is the sum of the 12 signs of the zodiac together with the seven planets, reinforced by the 19-year-long Metonic cycle before the solar and lunar calendars exactly repeat themselves.

Tomorrow: Tolkien's 20 rings of power

• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson

Reference and languagesBarnaby Rogerson
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For slash fiction devotees, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

After Caitlin Moran offends the fan fiction community by encouraging Sherlock actors to read out saucy extracts, David Barnett makes the case for amateur adaptations of iconic works

Journalist and author Caitlin Moran has earned the ire of the fan fiction community by encouraging actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to read out a slice of Sherlock/Watson slash fiction on stage at the British Film Institute.

The occasion was a preview on Sunday evening of the much-anticipated new episode of Sherlock, which will air on BBC1 on New Year's Day. The slash in question was an edited excerpt from a piece posted on the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own, entitled Tea, and written by a user called Mildredandbobbin.

Fan fiction is written by amateur authors using characters from (usually) the published authors' works, TV shows or movies. Slash takes fan fiction to another level: it imagines relationships – often sexual – between those characters that were never intended by the original authors. Slash takes its name from the punctuation between characters' names to denote sexual content and probably dates back to the 1970s, when it came to prominence with Captain Kirk and Mr Spock, in the original Star Trek series. There's a possibly apocryphal tale, which I like to believe is true, purporting that William Shatner asked Spock actor Leonard Nimoy what this Kirk/Spock stuff was all about. Nimoy apparently replied: "It's you and me, Bill. Fucking."

Since then, with a little help from the internet, fan fiction and slash fiction have become massive, with huge online communities sharing their work. Hence the angry response to Moran using a piece of Sherlock/Watson slash to – in the perception of the community – poke fun at the genre.

The excerpt from Tea envisions a disillusioned Watson returning to the 221B Baker Street after an uninspiring date, sad because what he really wants is Sherlock:

'I can give that to you,' he said, his voice uncommonly rough. 'Let me.'

John's tongue darted out to wet his lips. 'Let you …'

Sherlock solemnly began unbuttoning his cardigan. 'You need to be touched. Let me.'

John gave a shuddering sigh and leaned his forehead back against Sherlock's. Their noses bumped, cheeks grazed, and then John lifted his hand to Sherlock's cheek and their mouths crushed together.

There does, it has to be said, seem to be something inherently funny about writing erotic fiction based on established fictional characters. Like people who knit daleks or create huge model railway layouts, fan fiction writers are seen as gently mockable; slash writers even more so.

However, on Tuesday, Mildredandbobbin wrote an open letter to Caitlin Moran saying:

In a rather spectacular manner, you managed to antagonise an entire fandom made up almost entirely of young, liberal-minded women like me, AKA your core readership. How did you accomplish this? On paper, it doesn't sound like much: you picked an erotic Sherlock fan fic off the Internet and made the stars of the show read an extract aloud for shits and giggles. But, while it was most certainly shit, it wasn't giggles for anyone, and least of all for us.

When people come out from behind their hobbies, the mockery seems more churlish. At its worst, fan fic is harmless; at its best, it can lead to much bigger things. Let's not forget that Fifty Shades of Grey originally began life as fan fiction using characters from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Now it's author EL James who is laughing, all the way to the bank.

Game of Thrones author George RR Martin is famously against the genre, saying that he and writers who share his view "are doing it to protect ourselves and our creations". But many authors are more than happy to let amateur scribblers play in their toyboxes – JK Rowling among them, providing the fan output is not for profit and not sexually explicit.

And even more admit to what many writers must have done in their childhoods – writing stories using other people's characters. The Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot said: "I myself used to write Star Wars fan fiction when I was a tween." And Cassandra Clare, author of the recently filmed Mortal Instruments series, started off writing Harry Potter fan fiction and Lord of the Rings parodies.

As a writer myself, I'd be honoured if someone found my characters compelling enough to want to write about them. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and just as a bad adaptation of a movie or a continuation of a dead author's series doesn't detract from the original work, so fan fiction can't do any real harm – while at the same time it makes some people very happy.

FictionCaitlin MoranTwilightFifty Shades of GreyEL JamesSherlockBenedict CumberbatchMartin FreemanStar TrekDavid Barnett
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Love in a Cold Climate: still sparkling, despite its age

Nancy Mitford's novel offers a funny and subversive take on the self-assurance of a 1940s aristocratic family. Each reread uncovers new details, and uses a sharp wit to examine love, attraction and ageing

As all Guardian readers know, the royal family traditionally likes to play parlour games around now. In 1949/50, according to Nancy Mitford's biographers Selina Hastings and Laura Thompson, the charades included one where the then Queen "kissed the King & shivered & everybody guessed at once!!" The answer was, of course, Love in a Cold Climate, which started enchanting readers, royal and not, in 1949 and has never stopped.

It is a book about rich, aristocratic people, people with titles and no jobs, and although Mitford liked to claim to be left wing, she was never one for giving up any of her privileges, and had some decidedly undemocratic ideas about the role of women and who should have the vote. And yet the book is subversive as well as funny and comforting. These people, with their firm self-assurance, their conviction that they are the top of the pile and deserve all the comforts they have, are gently sent up and shown to be absurd. And – strangest of all – a plainly gay character is introduced, has a wonderful time and (apparently to the horror of American readers and publishers in the 50s) is allowed his own happy ending and lovers.

The book's timing slots in with that of Mitford's 1945 The Pursuit of Love – the two plotlines run in parallel – and it shares many of the same characters: Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie and their impossible children, cousin Fanny who narrates both books, and the health-obsessed Davey Warbeck. Along come the Montdores, who have conveniently been in India to explain their absence from the first book, and are very grand. Daughter Polly, a deb, is very beautiful, but she has no sex appeal and there is an enigma about her, a mystery. On a first reading it is a surprise when we find out what it is: on subsequent go-rounds you can see the clues. She is banished from the family and disinherited, and at this point the book resembles a Greek tragedy rewritten by Noël Coward.

Her aging parents track down the male heir, distant cousin Cedric: "Now fancy moving, in Canada. You'd think one place there would be exactly the same as another, wouldn't you?" When he turns up he is not the provincial lumberjack they are expecting, but something much more exotic, a blond and beautiful Parisian gay man, Sebastian to Polly's Viola. The story of how he transforms the monstrous Lady Montdore takes up the rest of the book, ending up in a farrago of birth, death and displaced lovers "having our lovely cake and eating it too".

In amongst all this there are splendid set pieces: a very grand house party, an Oxford academic dinner party, a top-of-the-range London ball. All are hilarious, and treated with no respect at all. Mitford is very sharp and witty about many things: how attraction works, love, aging, the rich women who have no real interests in life beyond sex. She has the essential cold heart to look on and laugh at the dramas and the horrors, and to enjoy the jokes.

And then there is Lady Montdore, with her "worldly greed and snobbishness, her terrible relentless rudeness", who is surely Mitford's finest creation. She is crass, vulgar and tactless, and never softens or acquires a heart of gold. But Lady Montdore is also clearly enormous fun to have around, and these dire traits make her excellent company, for the other characters as well as us – she makes Maggie Smith's dowager in Downton Abbey look rather average. Nancy Mitford is supposed to have based her on her own mother-in-law, Baroness Rennell, whom she disliked very much, and on Violet Trefusis, one of those "characters" who is well worth looking up on Wikipedia, and who was lover to Vita Sackville-West and great-aunt to Camilla Duchess of Cornwall.

I like this book so much that I have done major research into not one but two of Cedric's ball costumes. I can still discover new things (this time, the word "gink", slang for an odd or foolish man) and still laugh over the best bits: "Sexually unsatisfied, poor her". Lady Montdore trying to stop Fanny from getting engaged by sending for the editor of the Times so the announcement can be withdrawn. The chubb fuddling. Why you should marry a rich man: "One day… you'll be middle-aged and think what that must be like for a woman who can't have, say, a pair of diamond earrings. A woman of my age needs diamonds near her face, to give sparkle."

There have been two attempts to make a TV series of the book – both well worthwhile – but surely it is time for another (like productions of Pride and Prejudice, it gives the up and coming young actresses of England the chance to get a small part as one of the sisters) and it is quite plain who should play Lady Montdore: Rupert Everett, who was so good as the headmistress in the recent St Trinian's films.

Early in the book, Lady Montdore, Fanny and Polly share a car on the way home from a wedding, and they all chat: "Lady Montdore was wonderful when it came to picking over an occasion of that sort, with her gimlet eye nothing escaped her, nor did any charitable inhibitions tone down her comments on what she had observed." Exactly true of Nancy Mitford too, and that is what reading the book is like. And so, exactly the book to re-read on the sofa during the Christmas holidays.

FictionNancy MitfordThe Mitford sistersClassicsMoira Redmond
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Who is the greatest American novelist? 2: Vladimir Nabokov v Kurt Vonnegut

You nominated the contenders – now reader Matthew Spencer pits Nabokov's Pale Fire against Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions

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Books for the devoted development reader

It's Christmas time, and there's no need to be afraid. Unless, of course, your gran's a development specialist with a formidable temper and a voracious appetite for reading. In which case, we've got you a little something …

It was the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring. Largely because its frazzled and furrowed-browed occupants were still scuttling up and down the local high street, the clock ticking towards closing time, wondering what on Earth qualifies as a suitable gift for the discerning development reader. Sound like you? Well, fear not. Here on the Global development desk, a number of books have caught our eye this year. So relax, grab yourself a glass of mulled wine and a mince pice, and read on – we've got your Christmas list covered.

The Idealist, by Nina Munk

"That's what I do. I write a letter. Then another letter. Then an op-ed. And then I throw a tantrum," economist Jeffrey Sachs tells author Nina Munk in a book gently exposing the crude realities of development projects created in the boardrooms of the west and blind to the peculiarities of the people and places they are designed to support. From 2006, Munk shadowed Sachs across Africa and into state offices and UN meetings as he sought backing – financial and ideological – for his Millennium Villages Project (MVP). The idea was simple in Sachs's mind. Hand out fertiliser and mosquito bednets, build schools and health centres, and you could end poverty in five years – all for $120 ($73) a head, funded by an increase in foreign aid. Sachs selected "model" villages in 10 African countries for his experiment. In Sachs, Munk shows us an intelligent man who refuses to countenance the possibility that his ideas could be flawed as the MVP runs out of money, switches focus and is extended. We see him shouting and belittling anyone who disagrees or tries to block him. But this book is in no way a hatchet job. By juxtaposing stories from the MVP head office in New York with those from Africans managing the project and living in the model villages, Munk, who spent six years tracking progress, simply lays bare the complexities of development. This is an engaging, eye-opening read. Liz Ford

The Morality of China in Africa, edited by Stephen Chan

Reams have been written about China in Africa, with the dominant story one of Beijing's unrelenting quest for natural resources. But while attention has focused on mass Chinese mining and infrastructure projects on the continent, Beijing has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on schools, hospitals, opera houses and football stadiums. Many of the cultural and sporting projects across the continent are probably "upfront sweeteners" to win government favour, downpayments for future commercial deals, suggests Stephen Chan, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. But he rejects the idea that China has a master strategy in Africa: "There are 54 countries in Africa. You're off your head if you think there's one single agenda." Nuance and frankness permeate this collection of essays, in which Chan brings together African and Chinese perspectives to examine evolving Sino-African relations and upend many much-repeated assumptions: that Africa is of critical importance for China, that Beijing sees no risk in its engagement in Africa, and that there is a single Chinese agenda. Claire Provost

The Poverty of Capitalism: Economic Meltdown and the Struggle for What Comes Next, by John Hilary

NGOs, increasingly taking a seat at the table alongside companies, governments and donors, are entering into and sponsoring a growing number of "public-private partnerships". In The Poverty of Capitalism, the executive director of NGO War on Want, John Hilary, critiques both these phenomena and the "myth" of corporate social responsibility. The book tracks what Hilary condemns as the failures of corporate globalisation and the rise of popular resistance movements worldwide. It also presents a sharp critique of mainstream British development charities, which Hilary condemns for choosing to cosy up to corporations and governments, rather than align with grassroots movements such as La Via Campesina, the international federation of peasants' groups. Claire Provost

An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Despite considerable economic growth and increasing self-confidence as a major global player, modern India is a disaster zone in which millions of lives are wrecked by hunger and pitiable investment in health and education services. India consists of pockets of California amid sub-Saharan Africa, sum up Amartya Sen and his long-time colleague Jean Drèze in this book. They want attention, particularly from the vast swath of the Indian middle classes who seem indifferent to the wretched lives of their neighbours. So they have aimed their critique at India's national amour propre by drawing unfavourable comparisons, first with the great rival China but even more embarrassingly with a string of south Asian neighbours. They argue that India's overriding preoccupation with economic growth makes no sense without recognising that human development depends on how that wealth is used and distributed. What's the purpose of a development model that produces luxury shopping malls rather than sanitation systems that ensure millions of healthy lives, ask Drèze and Sen, accusing India of "unaimed opulence". The country is caught in the absurd paradox of people having mobile phones but no toilets. Madeleine Bunting

Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Why are some countries rich and others poor? This basic question has bedevilled economists for centuries. Competing theories have included climate, geography, culture and bad policies. But these are all wrong, argue economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and James Robinson of Harvard in Why Nations Fail. Instead, prosperity and poverty are determined by institutions, which in turn are determined by the type of politics a country has, they argue. Drawing on a vast range of historical and contemporary examples, Acemoglu and Robinson say sound institutions are needed to spur virtuous cycles of innovation, expansion and peace. Why Nations Fail is a wildly ambitious book, asking very big questions. Based on more than a decade of research, it tries to popularise the theoretical and often dry academic work of its authors, who also set up a blog on the book's themes and no doubt felt vindicated when it landed on the New York Times bestsellers list – and stayed there for weeks. David Cameron said he is "obsessed" with the book, calling it a "very good guide for policymakers and for diplomacy". The populist tack didn't satisfy everyone, however, and Acemoglu and Robinson were accused by at least one other economist of failing to cite evidence from scholarly literature. A paperback edition came out in 2013. Claire Provost

Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, by Karima Bennoune

Writing a book about Muslim fundamentalism, the subject of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, felt like dancing in a minefield, admits Karima Bennoune. The law professor, who describes herself as a secular person of Muslim heritage, set out to capture the voices of those battling fundamentalism on the frontlines in countries such as Algeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Russia and Pakistan. Bennoune lays out a critique of Muslim fundamentalism, not from a crude "war on terror" viewpoint, but from a human rights perspective. Ultimately, Muslim fundamentalism is not a question of security for westerners, says Bennoune, but a more basic question of human rights for hundreds of millions of people who live in Muslim-majority countries. She has little patience with the argument that human rights is a western concept that should not be applied to Muslim countries. Mark Tran

Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure, edited by Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and Kate Hawkins

Not a book you can miss on the shelf, with its fluorescent pink cover and a provocative title, Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure seeks to challenge the view that women and sex equate to disease and violence in a development context. And it succeeds. Chapters float from gay relationships, disability and sex work to HIV, porn and sex education in countries including Malawi, Uganda, India and Nigeria. The whole book is couched around the concept of pleasure, and why it needs to be accepted that women – yes, even those in poorer countries – have the right to enjoy sex and have charge over their bodies. The book, part of a series on feminism and development from Zed Books, is an academic text, but is still an accessible read, raising legitimate, provocative questions about how we view women in developing countries. It challenges us to see women as more than just baby producers at risk of HIV and domestic abuse, but people with the right to have fun and make their own choices. A refreshing read. Liz Ford

Christmas
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