Our top 5 books of the month kicking off the Autumn take in fiction, foodie explorations, memoir and literary experimentation. From Emmanuel Carrère’s unsettling excavation of history and memory in Kolkhoz, to Fuchsia Dunlop’s richly informed tour of flavour in Five Tastes: The Magic of Flavour in a Chinese Kitchen, these are books well worth investigating. Mathias Énard’s Perfecting the Shot blends violence, art and obsession, while Helle Helle’s Hafni Says finds drama in the deceptively ordinary. Rounding out the selection, Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times offers a richly imagined, multi-generational portrait of a place and its people.
Kolkhoz by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by John Lambert, has as its focus this hugely popular French intellectual’s relationship with his late mother, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, a leading historian of Russia and ‘perpetual secretary’ of the Académie Française. The title comes from a domestic term used within the family to describe those nights when Emmanuel and his two sisters slept in their mother’s bedroom when their father was away. Kolkhoz is the Soviet term for a collective farm. Carrère also explores the political rift between him and his mother in her later years.
Blending biography, genealogy and self-portraiture, Carrère reflects on his own life, including his struggles with being bipolar, past relationships and his literary life while assessing his mother’s formidable ambition and legacy with critical honesty and tender affection. Previously hidden chapters of the family history come to light, including the unexplained disappearance of Carrère’s maternal grandfather, Georges Zourabichvili, at the Liberation of France during World War II. Winner of the Prix Médicis this IS definitely one for your TBR pile!
Five Tastes: The Magic of Flavour in a Chinese Kitchen by Fuchsia Dunlop revolves around the traditional Chinese philosophy of flavour, notably balancing five foundational tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and aromatic.
Nigella Lawson: ‘If you cook, you need this book’
Created as a masterclass in traditional Chinese flavouring techniques applied to accessible, everyday cooking, it emphasises the connection between health, pleasure and balance in the kitchen.
The Happy Foodie has some mouth-watering top recipe picks!
Perfecting the Shot by Mathias Énard trs. Charlotte Mandell
In an unnamed civil war of the past century — it could be Lebanon, or the Balkans — the narrator, a young sniper barely past adolescence, has become the best as he loves what he does thanks to sheer concentration, control and patience. Yet he is never satisfied. He strives for the perfect shot, pushing his limits by targeting increasingly difficult subjects. Military or civilian, man, woman, child, or the elderly — all that matters to him is that his shot is a work of art. Cold, cruel, and amoral, he feels virtually nothing beyond pride in his job well done.
The one flaw in the armour of this killing machine is Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl he hires to care for his sick mother. Beautiful, gentle and captivating, she haunts his thoughts. He longs to conquer her, but how can he, when he is consumed by death and is incapable of expressing ‘love’ through anything other than violence and murder? Written in pure precise controlled prose like a sniper’s shot, this is a complex, disturbing and compelling read.
Hafni Says by Helle Helle trs. Martin Aitken
Forty-eight-year-old Hafni embark on a solo road trip of self-discovery across Denmark’s main islands to celebrate her impending divorce. She plans to treat herself to the best open-faced sandwiches (smørrebrød) along the way. As Hafni travels from Roskilde through Funen to South Jutland, her planned itinerary continually unravels into awkward encounters, miscommunications, lost belongings and intense existential anxiety. One month later, she makes a phone call from a lay-by to tell us where she went, what went wrong and why she’s been gone for three weeks longer than expected. Helle Helle balances dry, deadpan Scandinavian humour with a heartbreaking look at middle-age crises, loneliness and vulnerability.
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk trs. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is the breakthrough work that established Tokarczuk as a major force in international literature. It is set in the mythical, fictitious Polish village of Prawiek (translated as ‘Primeval’). The narrative frames the village as the literal and spiritual centre of the universe, bounded by four rivers and watched over by four archangels. It runs from the eve of World War One, through World War Two and Nazi occupation, to the communist post-war era, into the 1980s. Rather than following a single linear plot line, the novel charts the collective history, private tragedies and cosmic rhythms of the village through short, episodic chapters.
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