The year in review

Published 16 December 2002

The literary editor's Christmas recommendations

The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature by Steven Pinker (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press)
John Gray: "The belief that there is no such thing as human nature has come to be the core dogma of radical humanism . . . Pinker provides rigorous and dispassionate analysis in this magisterial and indispensable new book." NS, 16 September

Interesting Times: a 20th-century life by Eric Hobsbawm (Allen Lane)
Richard Gott: "Those who still relish a sturdy defence of the Enlightenment will read this book with huge enjoyment." NS, 23 September

Kamikaze: Japan's suicide gods by Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase (Longman)
J G Ballard: "If the future is a marriage between Microsoft and the Disney Corporation, what can the rest of us do about it? Reading this strangely moving account of the kamikaze pilots, one dimly senses that the fightback may have already begun, launched more than 60 years ago when Japanese carrier planes bombed Pearl Harbor." NS, 9 September

Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals by John Gray (Granta Books)
Edward Skidelsky: "Gray's scepticism has now taken on a more universal dimension. Straw Dogs is a bold departure; it is an attempt to articulate a total view of the world, a Weltanschauung." NS, 2 September

London Orbital: a walk around the M25 by Iain Sinclair (Granta)
Will Self: "Sinclair's recent work represents some of the most important in contemporary English letters . . . [This book] is so very big, that it makes the Dome seem as small as any very big thing can be." NS, 30 September

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (Picador)
Richard Dowden: "You put down Fuller's account of her childhood in Ian Smith's Rhodesia and wonder how anyone could make the period of the vicious war for white supremacy so moving and funny." NS, 18 February

Spies by Michael Frayn (Faber and Faber)
Hugo Barnacle: "What carries the day is the sense of adult drama off-stage, the carefully chosen period detail, the scrupulous style and the powerful, tense scene-setting. Familiar elements from The Go-Between and What Maisie Knew emerge, but are quickly forgotten in the sheer, immersive pleasure of reading." NS, 4 February

Platform by Michel Houellebecq (Heinemann)
Andrew Hussey: "There are few writers in any language who understand the present age as well as Houellebecq." NS, 19 August

Address Unknown by Kressmann Taylor (Souvenir Press)
Francis Gilbert: "This novel remains one of the most significant, innovative and genuinely engaged fictions about the Nazi era." NS, 4 March

Unless by Carol Shields (Fourth Estate)
Rachel Cusk: "Shields has produced a very, very clever book about motherhood, art, language and love. It is a lament, a punch in the face, an embrace." NS, 29 April

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