News from Nowhere’s round-up of radical reads

By Mandy Vere

First off, two great novels you may have missed amongst all the Da Vinci Code-hype. Kartography by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury £6.99) is an involving story about two youngsters growing up in Karachi, soulmates split apart by family secrets even as Pakistan is split apart by ethnic violence around them - full of longing and passion.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury £6.99) is set in Afghanistan as Amir's friendship with Hassan is affected by caste & class and a betrayal which can only be atoned for many years later. Both fabulous reads which will teach you much about the countries involved.
Caroline Moorehead's Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (Chatto £12.99) is a remarkable human testament to the lives behind the prejudiced headlines - its cover shows a man in African dress surrounded by wire fences and snow, a moving image of displacement.
If you followed the saga of the protests against Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's Behzti (Oberon £7.99) you might like to read the actual play and make your own mind up - in all the talk of censorship v free speech, the point seemed to get lost that she was talking about male violence and since when did that distinguish between different buildings?
On a lighter note, crossover children's books are all the rage nowadays, and you could do a lot worse than enjoy Lionboy by Zizou Corder (Puffin £4.99) a sparkling adventure of Charlie, a mixed-race boy who can speak "cat" on the trail of the baddies who've kidnapped his scientist parents. Drug companies don't like their new cure for asthma - they might lose out on profits. It's set in the near-future when global warming has made it impossible to fly or even drive a car any more - interesting how this is just seen as part of the backdrop.
And for another take on environmental change, try Kim Stanley Robinson's thriller, Forty Signs of Rain (Harper Collins £6.99). The back cover says "It's easier to destroy the world than to change capitalism even one little bit" - hopeful, then!
For a title which speaks for itself, how about So Now Who Do We Vote For? By John Harris (Faber £7.99). I hope he's got an answer. Or maybe Polly Toynbee has in Better or Worse? Has Labour Delivered? (Bloomsbury £7.99).
Well, after all that, I think you need some sustenance for the soul, and who better to deliver it than Studs Terkel, the American oral history guru. His latest title is Hope Dies Last: Making a Difference in an Indifferent World (Granta £14.99 Hb) in which he listens to ordinary people musing on the question of hope. Apparently it "glows with human warmth and an unquenchable passion for justice". Ahh, just what we needed.

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