Books of the Week

Xu Hongci

Xu's story is so cruel and frustrating that it reads like a Hollywood film, but this account is true - the brutality was real. Hongci spent his early years toeing the line of China's totalitarian Communist Party, sincerely believing in its politics and approach. But one day he spoke his mind at university and his peers pounced, criticising him for his apparent anti-regime beliefs. Xu was imprisoned on trumped-up charges in one of Chairman Mao's labour camps in April 1958. Over the next 14 years, he worked diligently – as a doctor, metalworker, miner or labourer – at a number of camps. The work was hard and food was often scarce. Xu saw people die around him and watched his friends betray him publicly, yet he never lost his resolve. He tried to escape four times, finally succeeding in 1972, and is thought to be the only person to have done so. Everything about Xu's story, from his childhood to how this book came to be published, is fascinating, but heartbreakingly sad. Thankfully, he got his happy ending.

Three Daughters Of Eve

Elif Shafak

For anyone trying to make sense of the current political tumult, Shafak's timely novel is a good place to start. At first glance, Three Daughters Of Eve tells the story of Peri, an academic introverted young girl from Istanbul, torn between the religiosity of her devout mother and the secularism of her irascible atheist father. At Oxford, she is determined to find out which of her parents is right about God and where her own beliefs lie - and, under the tuition of an unorthodox but beguiling professor, she flourishes. It's also the story of modern Istanbul and the constantly changing ley lines of politics, money, faith and patriotism. Perhaps, most significantly, this book is an intelligent exploration of the questions and anxieties thrown up by Trump and Brexit. It looks at how people of different faith and cultures view each other and shows us that many of the divisions we cling to are based on our own assumptions and lack of knowledge. Shafak's characters are forced to question everything, whether fervent believers, ardent atheists or totally bewildered by religion - as the author explodes myth after myth about right and wrong. Ultimately Shafak shows that whether religious or atheist, remain or Brexit, East or West, we are all human, all worthy of love and understanding.

Euphoria

Heinz Helle

Five old schoolfriends trek through the wintry landscape of the Alps, but this is no happy reunion or jolly holiday anymore. It is the aftermath of some (vague) apocalyptic event, with their path taking in burnt-out cars, dead bodies and a general sense of desolation. In short chapters that feel like a series of bleak, brutal prose poems, Helle's writing (and Kari Driscoll's translation of it) creates a vivid, troubling and distinctly disturbing sense of quiet desperation. The narrator slides between flashback reveries of the world he's lost (including, at one point, an unexpected and lengthy description of an online porn clip) and the savage lifestyle of primal instinct he now inhabits. This grim eschatology makes for a dark and uneasy struggle to survive, and at just over 200 pages it is short enough that, like the human race, it is over before you really notice.

The Doll Funeral

Kate Hamer

From its opening lines, "My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my parents..." bestselling author Kate Hamer's novel is disturbing and compulsive. We quickly learn teenage Ruby is physically abused by her repulsive stepfather, but must pretend the bruises on her arms and black eyes are a result of clumsiness. Delighted to discover they are not her blood relatives, she vows to hunt for her real parents and from this point unfolds a curious and chilling tale of voodoo doll rituals, secrets, lies and surreal events. Kate Hamer's previous book The Girl In The Red Coat was a huge hit and The Doll Funeral looks likely to follow suit. With poetic, but crisp prose, she explores what it means to belong and how the past is far more entwined with the present than most of us imagine.