Summary: some humanitarian assistance for book shopping this Christmas

As Christmas approaches some of you may be pondering books for yourselves or the bibliophiles in your life.

So here, in (more or less) chronological order are my best books of the year. Four entries are Irish; three about aspects of the British empire and one is about an aspect of the American empire; two trace the roots of Israel’s genocide in Palestine; two are feminist dystopian thrillers and one is a bit of feminist literary criticism; and there is one that is about pretty much everything. And there is some stuff about the Roman Empire, because there sorta has to be.

Each item has a link to a longer review if you want to know more. Hopefully some will supply some of you with some inspiration. 

1. The Kidnapping: A hostage, a desperate manhunt and a bloody rescue that shocked Ireland, by Tommy Conlon and Ronan McGreevy – a lucid and gripping account of an incident in the Troubles that illustrates just what an all-Ireland affair they were.
2. Empireworld, by Sathnam Sanghera – an elegantly written exploration of the contemporary impact of the British Empire on the world.
3. Brotherhood: when West Point rugby went to war, by Martin Pengelly – an important insight through the prism of rugby into American war-making amongst the post-9/11 generation of American officers.
4. Dirty Linen: The Troubles in my home place, by Martin Doyle – An outstanding portrait of the pity of war in the North of Ireland, that also builds a picture of the pervasiveness of collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries.
5. Resting places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution, by Ellen McWilliams – an exceptional book in which the interplay of the most personal of histories with the political helps illuminate some of the most shameful aspects of Ireland’s past.
6. Spent Light, by Lara Pawson – “It’s quite hard to describe really. To begin with, it’s about a toaster, but it ends up being about everything,” the Kirkdale Bookshop on Spent Light.
7. Ghosts of the British Museum, by Noah Angell – a fascinating exploration of the dark side of British history and culture through the spooky stories of one museum
8. Sweet Home, by Wendy Erskine  – a wonderful collection of short stories of contemporary Belfast
9. (A twofer) The General’s Son, by Miko Peled; and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe – two outstanding works of personal and national history that amount to a searing protest against genocide and apartheid by two Israelis of conscience and exceptional moral courage.
10. Another twofer: The Handmaid’s Tale, and the Testaments, by Margaret Atwood – two all too believable dystopian thrillers, set in a United States that has been transformed into a theocratic dictatorship of the sort imagined in the fevered dreams of the legions of Trump’s incel supporters
11. The Flashman Papers, by George McDonald Fraser – not sure if this is a thoughtful rumination on Empire masquerading as a scurrilous romp or vice versa. A sort of Carry on British Colonialism with all the casual racism that entails.
12. Of course, you may still be thinking about the Roman Empire – some of us are men after all. So there are these: Palatine, by Peter Stothard; Emperor of Rome, by Mary Beard; Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age, by Tom Holland
13. Finally there is Monsters: what do we do with great art by bad people? by Clare Dederer – a fascinating exploration of the relationship between the audience and the monstrous artist, included, not least, for having the chutzpah in recognising that Stephen Fry can be an awful eejit sometimes.

That makes 13. A lucky number.