Books of the Year (those not published by Five Leaves)

It's been a decent year for reading, with two or three let downs by some favourite writers. Solar by Ian McEwan did not excite me, but was not as dull as the Booker-winning The Story of an Ending by Julian Barnes, which ending came mercifully soon. The year started off well though, with Colm Tobin's novel of migration, Brooklyn (Penguin), which I'd been looking forward to, followed immediately by the late Tony Judt's book of essays/memories Memory Chalet (Heinemann). One week of January gone and I knew these two would be in my top ten reads of the year. I'm a big fan of essays, or occasional pieces, which brought Ian Hamilton's The Troubles with Money and Other Essays (Bloomsbury) and Damn Fools and Utopia by the late Nicolas Walter (PM Press) into my top ten. I'll ignore that part of Hamilton's book which is about football. The last essay in Walter's book (thinking of Judt) was written while he was dying, and is about dying, and is worth the cover price alone, the rest are about the 1960s. Four of this year's top ten are related to East Europe. I re-read John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - probably for the third or fourth time - and it remains outstanding. This year's Booker longlist included two East European-based novels. Snowdrops by AD Miller (Atlantic) is set in the mafia state of modern Russia and is terrifying. This made the shortlist, while The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuiness (Seren) dropped out at the longlist stage, though I think it is a better book. The last hundred days are those of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, with the narrator being a young English lecturer living there. The publicity made a huge difference to the sales of this previously ignored book from an indie press, which is good news. The only East European book by an East European that made this chart was not new, the Complete Works of Isaac Babel (Norton). At 1,000+ large format pages this is not something for a quiet evening at home but it is complete, with different versions of some of his short stories. His murder, in 1940, makes me impotently angry.
The last two of the top ten, which is, by the way, in random order, includes that "travel writing" classic Naples '44 by Norman Lewis (Eland), which I'll re-read soon. It reminds me very much of Alexander Baron's writing on the British occupation of Italy. Finally, one large photographic book, Ida Kar: bohemian photographer (National Portrait Gallery) - the only book here with a Five Leaves' connection, as her subjects included our writers Laura Del-Rivo, Bernard Kops and Terry Taylor. Their images also appeared in a terrific Kar retrospective at the NPG.
I'd also like to give an honourable mention to Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs by DD Johnson (AK Press), a rollicking novel of life in the international anarchist direct action movement.
Seven of this year's top ten, plus the runner up, were from independent presses (hurrah!) but only one by a woman (shame). Most, but not all, were published this year.

Damned fools in utopia

Or to give the new book of Nicolas Walter's essays its full title, Damned Fools in Utopia and Other Writings on Anarchism and War Resistance edited by David Goodway. Nicolas Walter died in 2000, having been one of the most consistent writers for Freedom and its offshoots Anarchy and The Raven, as well as the atheist/freethought press. He was famed as a fierce reviewer and a stickler for details (he was, after all, the chief sub-ed at the TLS for a period). He also wrote a stream of letters the broadsheet press. His published output beyond the many magazines he contributed to was, however, sadly limited. On his death it was widely assumed that Freedom Press would publish a selection of his essays but they had "moved on". Other attempts to secure a publisher in the mainstream of the anarchist movement failed. Five Leaves stepped in eventually and a book of his historic essays, The Anarchist Past, appeared in 2007, edited by David Goodway. Too late, sadly, as, perhaps, there had been something of a generational change in the anarchist movement and Nicolas - perhaps also because he had little book-published work - was no longer well known. How quickly people forget. There were always two volumes of essays planned by David Goodway. I cannot now remember why I did not simply announce the second volume to appear under Five Leaves, especially as the content of that volume held more interest for me personally. Perhaps there were some issues, perhaps I was just too busy. Checking past emails I find that the editor asked our friends at PM Press in the USA to bring out an edition there. We discussed a joint edition but when PM opened a London office using the same trade reps as Five Leaves it seemed easier to leave the field to them with one edition for both countries. We're not short of books to publish.
Now that Damned Fools in Utopia has finally appeared with PM I regret not doing the sensible thing which was to have brought it out in 2008 or 2009 and let PM have American rights. It is - as it was then - a very good selection of essays, the heart being about Nicolas' work within the peace movement, and in particular the Spies for Peace. There are also very good essays on libertarian individuals - Orwell, Alan Sillitoe (who was an occasional contributor to the anarchist press), Herbert Read, the largely forgotten Guy Aldred and the "crank" publisher CW Daniel, the UK publisher of Tolstoy and health books (whose imprint ended up being owned by Random House!).
The selection ends with the short essay by Nicolas, "Facing Death" which was first heard on the World Service. Nicolas was, by then, indeed facing death, knowing, as an atheist, that there was nothing beyond. A fine essay which deserves a wide circulation.
Had we published the book I'd have argued with David Goodway about the title - I never liked it - but would probably have accepted defeat. But though I hope the volume is widely read I do regret that PM has set the price at £16.99 and used a white cover which is, after a brief skim through, already grubby. I've read the essays before, some in their original form and all in David Goodway's selection but there are many I will return to again and again, by which time the cover will be as grubby as the content shines.