A feast in store - Books - Entertainment - theage.com.au
in Charles Webb s sequel novel, Home School." align="center" /> Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman, with Anne Bancroft in the film) in Charles Webb's sequel novel, Home School.
Photo: Supplied
can never have too many books.
Here's a taste of what will be served in the year to come.
THE TITLE OF A forthcoming book by Sherman Young, The Book is Dead (UNSW Press, May 2007), makes a bold claim. Don't believe it.
If you like a good novel by a big name, 2007 should be your year. And if you like passionate non-fiction, you're in for a treat, too, with local and international authors fulminating and God.
from Stephen King's son; and a new (posthumous) book from J.
R .R. Tolkien, and we can be sure that the book is very much alive - and kicking.
Trust Norman Mailer to take on a big subject. In his first major novel for more than a decade, The Castle in the Forest (Little, Brown, April), he asks: who was Adolf Hitler? We are promised plenty of twists and surprises.
Other literary stars with a new book include Ian McEwan, whose novel On Chesil Beach (Random House, April) is described Another Booker Prize winner, Graham Swift, has a new novel, Tomorrow (Picador, May), which looks at coupledom, parenthood and selfhood. Also from Picador in May is Jim Crace's everyone is migrating away from America.
Another "what if?
" book is Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael nation. It is, we are told, "a novel of colossal ambition and Tree, February) from Marina Lewycka, author of the smash hit A Khaled Hosseini, author of the bestselling The Kite Runner; and Oystercatchers (Fourth Estate, February), from Susan Fletcher, author of the award-winning Eve Green.
book by Mohsin Hamad, an award-winning novelist and Muslim commentator.
Michael Ondaatje sets his new novel, Divisadero (Bloomsbury, May), in 1970s California and the south of France. Faulks (Random House, July); Ballad of a Chain Smoker, by Detectives, by Roberto Bolano (Picador, May); and Death of Thomson (Bloomsbury, April).
For many readers, the highlight of the year will be Toni legalised racism.
Others will be most excited by news of a novel from the Japanese surreal master Haruki Murakami, After Dark (Random House, June).
Very few short story collections, but watch out for volumes by two masters: E. L .
Doctorow's Sweet Land Stories (Abacus, March) and Edward P. Jones' All Aunt Hagar's Children (Harper Perennial, May). And on the local front, there's multiple prize winner Paddy O'Reilly's first collection, The End of the World (UQP, April).
Benjamin Braddock, hero of The Graduate, makes a comeback in Charles Webb's sequel, Home School (Random House, July). But the most amazing comeback is from the grave: a new J. R.
R. Tolkien epic, The Children of Hurin (Harper Entertainment, April), restored from his manuscripts by his son Christopher.
Farewell (Allen Unwin, November), a successor to his forward to another crime verse novel, El Dorado (Picador, foreheads with gold.
Taken (Fourth Estate, March) promises to be a quintessentially Melbourne novel about living in the 1970s suburbs. And David Brooks' The Lighthouse (UQP, November), his first novel for 10 years, looks at 100 years of family history and secrets.
Fourth Estate, second half of the year); Elizabeth Stead (
The Gospel of Gods and Crocodiles, UQP, May) and Antoni Jach (
Napoleon's Double, Giramondo, March).
Tom Keneally's The Widow and Her Hero (Random House, March) is about a widow whose commando husband hid a secret. Gail Jones' Sorry (Random House, May) is about a curious child raised in the outback. And Turner's Paintbox, by Paul Morgan (Penguin, April), is said to do for sight what Patrick Susskind did for smell in Perfume.
Nicolson, February), a thoughtful and funny look at what Middle Eastern religion might offer the West. Another is Mosquito (Harper Press, March) by Roma Tearne, a story of love, loss and civil war in Sri Lanka.
The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall (Canongate, April), is an offbeat thriller, love story and quest.
Also off-beat and new vampire love story by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Text, March). of Flowers, a novel of old Iran, Headline, May); and Ben Dolnick (Zoology, Harper Press, second half of the The Secret of Lost Things (Fourth Estate, March), about a bookstore. Another much-fancied new Australian writer is Torsten Krol, whose Callisto (Picador, June) is a black comedy, also set in America.
Both books have already been sold widely overseas.
August); and James Woodford (Whitecap, Text, July).
Patterson has three titles out next year.
Devotees can expect new Sam Bourne, Jeffrey Deaver, Janet Evan-ovich and Martin Cruz Smith.
Approach to Garbadale (Little, Brown, March); Mark Mills' The Savage Garden (HarperCollins, March); and the tantalisingly titled The Death of Dalziel (HarperCollins, March): has Reginald Hill really killed off his fat hero?
Heart-Shaped Box, Gollancz, May), who happens to be Stephen signed him up for a seven-figure sum.
Shane Maloney (Sucked In, Text, May); and more crime from Garry Disher (Chain of Evidence, Text, March); Gabrielle (Bright Air, Allen Unwin, August); and Peter Temple, in October. Look forward also to new thrillers from Matthew Reilly, John Birmingham, Kathryn Fox and James Phelan.
Hope to Die by J.
M. Calder (January); The Beijing On the international bestseller front, look out for new titles Armistead Maupin, Anita Shreve, Wilbur Smith and Jasper Fforde. (HarperCollins, May); and Jessica Adams' Summer Psychic (Allen Unwin, May).
And followers of Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori series can expect a prequel, Heaven's Net is Wide (Hodder, September).
As comedian Dave Hughes says, "I'm angry." So are many of the authors of next year's top titles on political, social or environmental issues.
They want us to share their indignation and alarm over the way the world is going.
argues for environmental change. Al Gore argues that there's a Assault on Reason (Bloomsbury, June).
In The Upside of we are heading for global catastrophe, unless we do something about it now. Australian authors weighing into the debate include former Biodiversity Crisis, Penguin, July).
February) and Michael Otterman's American Torture (MUP, March).
Aus-tralian leaders cop it from books such as Linda Weiss, Nation (Quarterly Essay 25, Black Inc, March); and Clive Unwin, February).
No details yet, but Don Watson's Democracy in America (Random House, October) is sure to be provoca-tive; as is a timely book on the David Hicks case, The Mercenary the Marine, by Leigh Sales (MUP, October).
Several books are anti-religion, in general or in particular.
May). Michael Onfray attacks Christianity, Judaism and Islam in Atheist Manifesto (MUP, April). Nick Guyatt looks at the House, September).
Not so much against religion, but definitely unor-thodox, are John Carroll's The Existential Jesus (Scribe, March); and Tanya Levin's People in Glass Houses, on the Hillsong sect (Allen Unwin, May).
For media watchers, the book of the year will be Margaret Simons' The Media in Australia (Penguin, Septem-ber). Darryn Lyons (Penguin, August); Rupert's Amazing Adventures in China by Bruce Dover (Penguin, September); Death, Sex and Money by Michael Young (MUP, May); and Foreign chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, reportedly signed for Fidel Castro's My Life (Allen Lane, September), put Clinton (by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta jnr, John Murray, Errington, MUP, May).
by William Hague (Harper Press, June) and Marlborough by Richard Holmes (Harper Press, second half of the year). Less the Eminent Lives series (Harper Press, second half of the and stage director Jim Sharman (MUP, October); Eric Clapton: by Bruce Beresford (HarperCollins, August); Imagine This by Julia Baird, John Lennon's sister (Hodder, February); Memories, Dreams and Reflections, by Marianne Faithfull (Fourth Estate, second half of the year); Could It Be Forever? by David Cassidy (Headline, April); and the Trynka (Sphere, April).
Memoirs, literary and popular, are still a big genre in 2007. Among Aus-tralian titles, look out for former ABC managing director Blain's Births, Deaths and Marriages (Pica-dor, October); and Donald Horne's last work, Dying: A Memoir (Penguin, Princess (HarperCollins, April) is likely to be a big hit.
relatives murdered in the Holo-caust (HarperCollins, February); and a young film critic's story, Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Ghahramani's story of her imprisonment and torture in Iran, My Life as a Traitor (Scribe, July) - and now there's another sub-genre: memoirs of boy soldiers.
These include Liberation by East Timorese writer Naldo Rei (UQP, Estate, May). For an older sol-dier's story of war gone wrong in Iraq, there's The Deserter's Tale by Joshua Key (Text, that add up to James' cultural history of the 20th century.
Nancy Underhill (Penguin, August); and Arthur Boyd: A Life in the Paint by Darleen Bungay (Allen Unwin, November).
War stories again dominate the history lists. Australian Ham (HarperCollins, second half of the year); The Vietnam Years by Michael Caulfield (Hachette, August); The Anzacs, an illustrated history by Peter Pedersen (Penguin, Unwin, September); and A Very Rude Awakening: When War Came to Sydney Harbour by Peter Grose (Allen Unwin, war brides, Swing By, Sailor (Hodder, April).
Fateful Choices (Allen Lane, October), on decisions that Lemon Tree (Random House, May) looks at 100 years of William Rosen (Random House, July) tells how bubonic plague destroyed the Roman Empire.
were to appear next year: J.K. Rowling's final instalment, see.
Keywords: Random House, Allen Unwin, Fourth Estate, Harper Press, Charles Webb, Benjamin Braddock, My Life, Allen Lane
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