10 Brilliant Books You've Never Heard Of: Perfect Gifts For Bookaholics

A couple of years ago, I wrote a list of Brilliant Books You've Never Heard Of. As Christmas is coming up, I thought it's time to update and expand the list!

Below are a few awesome books which even your bibliophile friends probably haven't read yet. These are books which probably never made it to a Waterstones 3 for 2 table, books which don't appear on the Goodreads shelves of avid readers I follow. Some are older books, which were moderately successful in their time, but which are largely unfamiliar to millennials. So, you know, perfect gifts.

Mood: Happy, Adventurous

For those who like fun-filled stories filled with thrills and adventure

The \ Occasional / Diamond Thief is a YA adventure scifi novel.

Kia Ugiagbe, is a 15-year-old girl on a distant planet. On her father's deathbed, he reveals a secret: hidden at the back of a drawer, there is a huge diamond. Her father, she realises, must have stolen it!

Fast paced, fun, and tense, The Occasional Diamond Thief is great fun. Kia is easy to root for: she's hard-working, not brilliant at everything she does, but dedicated. She has a sense of humour and just the right amount of cheek.

There is a sequel, which is just as good. Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

The Dragons of Heaven is set in a world where superheroes and some kinds of magic are real.

Our hero is Mr Mystic. Able to control shadows and even drift from the 'real' world into a shadow realm, Mr Mystic is a fedora wearing, British-sounding, Chinese-magic-wielding martial arts expert. Oh, and she's also a woman, Missy Masters, who inherited the superpowers from the original Mr Mystic.

If you want a book that is fun, funny, thrilling, a bit romantic and sexy, joyful, whip-smart, and a good romp, this really should be up your street.

Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Mood: Literary, coming of age, but exciting

For those who like coming of age novels with complexity, warmth and a plot that moves. 

The Chicken Soup Murder is told from the perspective of Michael, a primary school boy about to move on to "Big School".

However, all is not well in his world. His best friend's father has recently died. His neighbour's dog has died. And now his neighbour Irma is dating a policeman, whose son bullies Michael.

Then, Irma dies, and Michael suspects foul play.

The Chicken Soup Murder is a warm, addictive, gently amusing novel about the everyday tragedy that is death, but also a novel about childhood and growing up.

Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Konstantin is a biographical novel about a boy growing up in Russia,and becoming an oddball young man.

Konstantin is a boy with a huge imagination. After losing most of his hearing, he spends the rest of his life a bit removed from his peers. However, this is not at all a misery book. Konstantin is full of infectious enthusiasm, permanently fascinated, and brave, even foolhardy.

Beautiful prose and the energetic protagonist make this a joyful book. Read my full review of Konstantin to find out more.

 

Jasmine Nights is a coming-of-age novel set in 1963 Thailand. It’s the story of Little Frog / Justin, a 12-year-old boy from a very rich family. Justin is a somewhat eccentric, aloof boy. Then, he is gradually nudged out of his shell by his grandmother, and by the kids who live next door...

Jasmine Nights is a story touching on race and prejudice, finding out about sex, Thailand, the periphery of the Vietnam War, different social classes, but above all else, it is the story of a lonely boy becoming slightly less lonely and growing up a little. Amusing and complex, it reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Read my full review of Jasmine Nights to find out more.

Mood: Literary Science Fiction and Fantasy

For those who like their speculative fiction thoughtful and ambitious.

The Falling Woman is a classic that few millennials will have read. It won a Nebula Award in 1987.

Elizabeth is an divorced archaeologist on a dig in Central America. She can glimpse ghosts of the past, especially at dusk and dawn. One day, one of the spectres looks at her and starts to talk...

Diane is her daughter, joining her on her dig after a bereavement. Diane hasn't seen Elizabeth since childhood, and isn't sure what she has gone out to find.

The story builds up its world and characters one step at a time. Gradually, it gains tension, a sense of the uncanny, a foreboding feel... Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

Sequela is the debut novel of a Scottish poet. It tells the story of a scientist whose job is to create sexually transmitted viruses (STVs). In this future, STVs have become fashionable: they indicate whom one has slept with. Each symptom pattern is linked to different powerbrokers, and every 'player' is trying to have the most rarefied rash pattern.

It's high concept, but really, this is a character-based thriller. The tension comes from social interactions, from office politics, from personal relationships and how they develop...  It's a unique and frighteningly convincing novel.

Read my full review of Sequela to find out more.

 

The Beauty starts years after all the women have died. Men and boys have survived, seemingly unaffected by the bizarre fungus plague that wiped out womankind. It's a very short novel. It's postapocalyptic, it's horror, it's science fiction and it's unlike anything I've read: it's full of ideas, atmosphere and the uncanny, and it sticks with you long after you'd finished reading.

Read my full review of The Beauty to find out more.

 

In Great Waters is set in an alternative history where merpeople are real. They are not like humans: fiercer, more direct, more single-minded. They can interbreed with humans, which results in physical and mental differences. Thus we meet Henry / Whistle, a crossbreed who is born in the sea but grows into adulthood among humans.

In Great Waters is outstanding because of its immersive, gradual worldbuilding. Tension builds up slowly: by the time your fascination is satisfied, the story has sneakily turned into a thriller that can't be put down.

Read my full review of In Great Waters to find out more.

 

Mood: Childlike awe and terror

For those who remember how big and wonder-filled and scary the world was when we were kids... or for kids.

Oy Yew is a tiny boy who grows up sustaining himself on crumbs and the smells of food. One day, he is forced into servitude, first in a factory, then in a country mansion. His comrades in slavery are other waifs, children who arrived as boat people on tiny rafts.

But things are about to go from bad to worse: How come there have been so many accidents lately? What secrets lurk in the sinister Bone Room? And why is Master Jep suddenly so interested in Oy's thumbs?

This is a fantastically atmospheric novel. It's uncanny and tender and beautiful.  Even as an adult reader, I was on the edge of my seat. Read my full review, then buy the books as a gift or for yourself!

 

What books would you add to the list?

Have you read any excellent, but underrated / not very widely known books lately? Add a comment, give some recommendations!

Review: Apu Ollantay A Drama of the Time of the Incas

Apu Ollantay is a unique artefact. It is the only drama / play script which was written in Quechua and which claims to be of Inca origin. That claim is disputed. Reading it in English makes for a curious and not always comfortable experience. You can download a version for free through Project Gutenberg - and that is the version I read and link to.

There are three aspects that my mind focused on when reading Apu Ollantay:

1) The framing (written by its translator, an academic)

2) The historicity (what was the context of its writing, is it authentic, is it Inca?)

3) The text itself

The Framing: On Translators and 19th Century Scholars

Since the framing takes the form of a lengthy foreword followed by lots of footnotes, it's fair to look at that first. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is "of its time". The translator/author gives context of the claimed history of the play itself, which is useful, and the provenance of the written text which he used for his translations. Translations, plural, because the version preserved for history on Project Gutenberg was not his first attempt. In fact, the author reveals that there has been some controversy: he first translated the text, line by line, in 1871 "with many mistakes, since corrected". In strolls a person whom the author obviously isn't terribly fond of:

"In 1878 Gavino Pacheco Zegarra published his version of Ollantay, with a free translation in French. His text is a manuscript of the drama which he found in his uncle's library. Zegarra, as a native of Peru whose language was Quichua, had great advantages. He was a very severe, and often unfair, critic of his predecessors.

The work of Zegarra is, however, exceedingly valuable. He was not only a Quichua scholar, but also accomplished and well read. His notes on special words and on the construction of sentences are often very interesting. But his conclusions respecting several passages which are in the Justiniani text, but not in the others, are certainly erroneous. (...)

The great drawback to the study of Zegarra's work is that he invented a number of letters to express the various modifications of sound as they appealed to his ear. No one else can use them, while they render the reading of his own works difficult and intolerably tiresome 

 (....)

There is truth in what Zegarra says, that the attempts to translate line for line, by von Tschudi and myself, 'fail to convey a proper idea of the original drama to European readers, the result being alike contrary to the genius of the modern languages of Europe and to that of the Quichua language.' Zegarra accordingly gives a very free translation in French.

In the present translation I believe that I have always preserved the sense of the original, without necessarily binding myself to the words."

(Emphasis mine)
It's a little strange to read. There is begrudging admission that Zegarra's work was invaluable. At the same time, the author is bitter and much annoyed about the (admittedly accurate!) criticisms that Zegarra made about his own work (and that of other Western academics). So, in response to these criticisms, the text now preserved on Project Gutenberg was produced - a looser translation, which sticks closer to the scansion and poetic forms of the original, but is less loyal to line-by-line meaning. (He also sticks to his own conclusions about what scenes were supposed to convey, e.g. by including "humorous" dialogues that Zegarra didn't)

Still, reading the snide asides about the "difficult and intolerably tiresome" text produced by the only native scholar (& Quechua speaker) and the whining about how "severe and often unfair" his criticism of the efforts of non-native scholars were, while acknowledging that his criticisms were broadly correct... it's hard not to see this as pretty staggering entitlement and arrogance on behalf of Sir Clements Markham (the scholar who wrote this translation). It's also a bit rich that he almost complains about Zegarra having a "great advantage" due to being a native Peruvian & Quechua speaker. The end result is that I wish Zegarra had written an English translation, or that my own French was serviceable enough to seek out his work and read that instead of this one.

Another example of being "of its time" is in the footnote where Sir Markham writes that "The Inca Pachacuti does not appear to advantage in the drama. But he was the greatest man of his dynasty, indeed the greatest that the red race has produced." (again, emphasis mine)

So: the framing makes me distrust this version of the text a bit. Being a loose translation is fair, so long as there is loyalty not just to form, but also to substance. A loose translation written with some colonial arrogance thrown in? It undermines my trust in the authenticity of the text.

Historicity: An Inca Play?

Spanish conquistadors reached the Inca in the 1530s. The first written text of Apu Ollantay was put on paper in 1770. The Markham text was written in 1910. So 240 years passed between the conquest and the time when the play was written down for the first time, and another 140 before this translation was produced.

A lot happened to the Inca and their descendants in those 240 years.

Markham outlines the historicity right at the start:

"The drama was cultivated by the Incas, and dramatic performances were enacted before them.(...) Some of these dramas, and portions of others, were preserved in the memories of members of Inca and Amauta families. The Spanish priests, especially the Jesuits of Juli, soon discovered the dramatic aptitude of the people. Plays were composed and acted, under priestly auspices, which contained songs and other fragments of the ancient Inca drama. These plays were called 'Autos Sacramentales.'

But complete Inca dramas were also preserved in the memories of members of the Amauta caste and, until the rebellion of 1781, they were acted. (...) Taking the name of his maternal ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amaru, the ill-fated Condorcanqui rose in rebellion, was defeated, taken, and put to death under torture, in the great square of Cuzco. In the monstrous sentence 'the representation of dramas as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrate in memory of their Incas' was prohibited.[2] This is a clear proof that before 1781 these Quichua dramas were acted."

Despite his claims, I am aware that there is an oft-quoted stance taken by academics studying the Selk'nam people of Patagonia that those were the only native peoples with a pre-conquest history of drama, in the shape of their Hain rites of passage. Assuming that academics studying the Selk'nam were not completely ignorant of the work academics studying the Inca had produced, this suggests that the historicity of Incan drama can't have been universally accepted by scholars.

Did the Inca perform plays? And was Apu Ollantay an Inca play? Did people pass on Inca dramas in oral history within one caste / family for hundreds of years, ready to be recorded at last by Western & priestly scholars with a sudden interest in recording such things? And is the resulting record authentic to pre-conquest Inca dramatic lore?

After reading the play, I think that, whatever the kernels of its original seed, it must have undergone a lot of adaptation in the hundreds of years under Spanish rule. From things as simple as having a scythe as a symbol of death (even though the Inca had a scythe, I doubt it had the same symbolism), to casting the founder of the Inca empire and venerated Inca hero as the villain of the piece, the text feels like most of it was meant to appeal to post-conquest society. I have no doubt that there were performative arts in Inca times - storytellers, songs, festivals, rituals - and I can imagine staged plays being part of that, too. But reading an English text written in 1910 by a British scholar based on texts recorded in 1770... that text did not feel like it was part of a pre-conquest canon of plays, not to my eyes.

Apu Ollantay: A Romance

The story of Apu Ollantay is very simple. If I had to summarise it, I'd describe it as Romeo and Juliet crossed with Coriolanus, minus any complexity. Full plot (SPOILERS) ahead:

Big general Ollantay is in love with princess & daughter of his king. The king's law decrees that royals may only marry each other. General & princess have married in secret. The general asks the king for his blessing, is refused, and plans a rebellion & conquest, but by the time he is ready to do this, the king has taken his court elsewhere. Ten years later, and the civil war caused by the general's uprising is still in progress. The princess had a daughter, who lives in a temple of sacred virgins and is sad about being alone and locked up. Also, she hears mournful cries at night. King dies. Little girl discovers that the mournful crying comes from her mother, who is locked up in a dungeon below the temple. New king sends out his general to conquer the rebels once and for all, which he does by acting as a trojan horse. When the rebel general is brought to the new king to face justice, he is suddenly offered mercy and permanent rule over a province of his own. Then, the little girl storms the palace and pleads for her mother's life, so the king (and all present) go to investigate, discover the locked-away princess in the dungeon, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I felt that the plot was very thin. I do wonder whether my impression would be different if I saw the play performed on stage: reading scripts can sometimes feel a lot flatter than seeing them performed.

The tone of the Markham text feels a bit faux-Shakespearian (hence my comparison to Romeo & Juliet and Coriolanus). The author makes choices about which Quechua names and words to use, and which to translate, but these choices are to the detriment of the text when characters make a lot of puns that are now broken. (One character has a name that includes the Quechua word for "rock" or "stone", so there is a lot of talk about stones and rocks whenever he is around. Only the footnotes make clear that these are puns. Another character is called "joyous star" in Quechua, so when others ask her where the joy has gone, or refer to her as "the star", then the text again relies on footnotes to clarify the meanings).

There are references to locations, plants, animals, and some customs which are Inca. At the same time, the court, the generals, the temple of virgins... those things don't seem very different from tropes in Western drama. Incan religion is laid on very, very thin, if at all. If the play was not originally conceived in post-conquest times, then it seems very likely that it was toned down to avoid persecution by the zealot Catholics in charge for hundreds of years. The end result is a play that, in its English translation, could just as well be a play about any other old civilisation. Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Macedonians, Ottomans. Is it the act of translation itself which causes this feeling - of a story dipped in Inca decorations for flavour, rather than an Inca story? Or is it the fact that, whatever kernel of Ollantay's story had been the root of this play, it probably took on influences by the conquerors and their cultural traditions (or rather,  was it heavily edited and amended over time because of prevalent persecution)? I don't know.

All in all, I would buy a ticket and see this play performed on stage, to see if it feels differently that way. I would love to see it in Quechua, with English subtitles or surtitles. However, on paper / screen, the text is an interesting curiosity, but not quite the immersive dive into Incan culture I had hoped for.

Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books I'd always meant to read one day, but it never quite bubbled to the top of my list until I saw that the Cardiff Book Collective was reading it. Running my own book club, I've always been a bit curious about what the other local book clubs might be like, so I figured this would be a useful excuse to check out the competition.

It was good fun, and if your booky tastes are a little more literary / less genre-bound than mine, it's a book club I'd recommend for people in Cardiff. Top tip: if you want to make a good impression on bibliophiles, I can now heartily recommend not declaring that an antagonistic fire chief who burns people's books, libraries and occasional bibiophiles is the true hero of a dystopian novel. Sharply indrawn breaths all around the table... ;-)

Fahrenheit 451 is a classic, superfamous dystopian novel. It's not quite up there with 1984 and Brave New World, but leading the charge of the second tier of the genre, alongside The Handmaid's Tale. Everyone knows that the title is derived from the temperature at which paper burns, and most people probably know that the book is a bout a firefighter in a world where firefighters don't extinguish fires, but burn books instead.

Our hero, Guy Montag, is a firefighter dancing on the edge of mania. From his rictus grin at the start of the novel (as he throws flames with his kerosene hose) to the paranoid feeling that someone has been watching him on his way home from work, he is clearly just a little off balance. It's when he meets a stranger - 17-year-old Clarissa, that his life really begins to change.

Clarissa opens his eyes to the world. She does this by asking questions (to which he has no answers) and teaching him to pay attention to... well, things, people and the world. And then she and her entire family disappear.

Montag begins to crumble. He's been stealing and hiding books in his house. His marriage is hollow and empty. The girl who fascinated him is gone. And then an old lady decides to die a firey death with her books rather than allowing herself to be taken away and thrown in a mental facility. Meanwhile, the cyborg hound (eight-legged, dog-brained, mechanical) in the fire station responds to Montag as if he were a threat, and his colleagues and chief notice his increasingly odd behaviour...

As a dystopia, Fahrenheit mixes the uncannily prescient (re: the media, the anti-intellectualism, the dumbing down of people) with the future-blind (gender equality / women's lib was seemingly unimaginable to the author, while nuclear wars seemed inevitable). It's absolutely worth reading, for the ideas behind it more than anything else.

Rating: 4/5

For me, the entire novel exists in order to justify one character's monologue. SPOILERS AHEAD!