I read book reviews and I'm often reasonably up on the anticipated and well-promoted books of the season. So when I go to real bookshops my favourite thing is to find books I hadn't heard of before. Here are some I've enjoyed recently.
'Fear and His Servant' by Mirjana Novaković, trans. Terence McEneny
I found this on a trip to Bath, in my favourite bookshop, Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights. It's narrated mostly by the devil, who has gone to eighteenth-century Serbia to investigate rumours that there are vampires there, but also partly by a sad noblewoman he meets there. The devil, in disguise as an Austrian count, is strangely petrified of the vampires, but the people in Belgrade are also worried about the advancing Ottoman armies. This book probably has all sorts of political resonances because it was published in the early 90s, soon after the wars in the former Yugoslavia; but I don't know enough about Balkan history to pick them up, so I just enjoyed its compelling oddness.
'The Godmother' by Hannalore Cayre, trans. Stephanie Smee
An impoverished middle-aged police translator of Arabic becomes tired of acting as a shill for the institutional racism of the French state, while also finding herself with some very specific knowledge after decades of listening in to recordings of people arranging drug deals. I found this at Mr B's too.
'Dimension of Miracles' by Robert Sheckley
I found this in Topping's bookshop, also in Bath. (They have very high shelves and those rolling ladders to get at the top books! And the building they're in has a portico and pediment like a Palladian temple, and turns out to be where my mother and her siblings went to Sunday School.) I mostly just picked it up because of a blurb by Neil Gaiman saying Douglas Adams had told him it was the only thing he thought was like the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. And it is like it, though with a bit more pointed satire of earth I suppose. It is striking how few things are like the Hitchhikers' Guide -- that's the only thing I've come across which is older, but even in terms of later things there's not much. The best thing I can think of is 'Space Opera' by Catherynne M. Valente, which is a brilliant and very over-the-top story where aging rockers find themselves having to represent Earth in a sort of inter-galactic Eurovision Song Contest to prove that humans count as a sentient species.
'Vagabonds!' by Eloghosa Osunde
I found this in the Waterstone's in Exeter that's between the High Street and the Cathedral Green. This bookshop still throws up good things for me, even though most of the Waterstone's energy has moved down the road to the High Street shop that's opposite John Lewis. It's set in Lagos and is partly narrated by the servant of the spirit of the city, with the stories of Lagos's outcasts, underground people and ghosts in between. It's very good and has an amazing energy. There seems to be a lot of excellent writing coming out of Lagos, and it gives the impression that the city is a crazy and relentless place. I'd love to go but I would never dare.
