Culture Wars reviews contemporary fiction along with regular feature coverage of fiction festivals such as Jewish Book Week and prizes like the Orange Prize and Man Booker.

Browse books by title with CW new books archive feature.

Truth Story

Love and the Incredibly Old Man, by Lee Siegel (University of Chicago Press)

In June 2005, Lee Siegel writes, Juan Ponce de Leon, legendary discoverer of Florida, inventor of rum, popcorn and cigars, 540 year-old beneficiary of the Fountain of Youth, commissioned, to ghost-write his autobiography, Professor of Indian Religions at the University of Hawaii, Lee Siegel.

Sensuously spinning plates - Sea of Poppies, Man Booker Shortlist 2008

Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh

As one reads, one’s mouth waters for dhal and rhotis, one can almost feel the fabric of a sari, or hear the swish of the enormous ornamental kites that the royal prince flies as his world collapses around him. What the book lacks in intellectual rigour it more than makes up for in its vivid, almost all encompassing, sensuousness.

Synthetic fallacy - The Clothes on their Backs, Man Booker Shortlist 2008

The Clothes on their Backs, by Linda Grant (Virago Press)

Narrative accoutrements – Vivien’s love interest, for example – don’t entirely convince and, in this case, seem thrown in merely as tools to craft the novel’s climax. Irritating, too, is Grant’s habitual ticking off of London landmarks like a tourist’s itinerary, a common conceit with novels set in the city, but one no less annoying for its frequency.

Disposable teens

Real World, by Natsuo Kirino (Vintage)

Kirino shows that the causes of Worm’s murderous outburst are identical to the key symptoms of hikikomori – or acute social withdrawal; a Japanese social phenomenon and a term popularised within the media since 1998.

Bark without bite

Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Vintage)

It can only be assumed that, much like the story, the dogs merely ran around chasing each other’s tails until they collapsed with a worn out thud.

Through a novel, darkly

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Phoenix)

This combination of fortitude, darkness, history but enduring humour embodied by Fermin is also the incarnation of Zafon’s depiction of post-War Spain; a fragmented and unsettled country. There is a sadness that hangs over Barcelona as so many people carry the scars of loss and fear that the years of the Civil War effected.

Trading places

Blonde Roots, by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton Ltd)

Evaristo’s book is funny, and she avoids the fallacious trap of equating suffering with moral authority.

Non-fat fiction? No thanks

Granta 102: the nature of writing, edited by Jason Cowley

Perhaps the simile of the ‘Classic Combo’ is apt here: Granta 101 was the reliable favourite, filled with lots of tasty treats and still on the whole good for you. Granta 102 is the fad diet, grounded in Real Science and somehow different to all those other ones, which advertises itself on the subtext that by following it you will be better (morally and physically) than those boring, die-hard traditionalists.

A common condition

Waiting, by Ha Jin (Vintage)

Despite the occasional grating Americanism (‘Girl, you’re crazy!’), the descriptive prose is elegantly written, full of beautiful descriptions, particularly of the natural world, which offer a stark contrast to Lin and Manna’s strictly regimented lives in the People’s Liberation Army.

Devilish history

Documents Concerning Rubashov the Gambler , by Carl-Johan Vallgren, translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death (Vintage)

In a time when we are constantly trying to extend our lives, it is fascinating to hear the story of someone who so desperately wants to die; as his documenters say, ‘He is a case study in the mechanisms of suicide, he symbolises the wretchedest of the wretched: those who want to die but cannot’.

Soggy pages

The Standing Pool, by Adam Thorpe (Jonathan Cape)

The air of menace grows: what’s the next source of doom? Will it be the murky waters of the swimming pool, the toxic chlorines, the high-voltage electric fence, or the rampaging wild boars?

Confined woman

The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry

The character of Roseanne is based tangentially on one of Barry’s great aunts, who similarly disappeared into an institution, having somehow transgressed the rigid codes of Catholic Ireland.

Anti-climax climax - Orange Prize 2008 shortlist

The Outcast by Sadie Jones

Jones skilfully crafts the narrative to avoid self-righteousness; and rather shows how the effects a single tragic event can be mishandled into a malicious force.

One of our decade’s quintessential stories

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton Ltd)

What really sets this novel above other material on America is the tone of it – which far from being angry or boring – has a fragile and almost fairytale quality.

The road to nowhere (Orange Prize 2008 WINNER)

The Road Home, by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)

If anyone can spot an incident in the book that doesn’t seem inspired by the Guardian editorials page, then I would be indebted if they would point it out.