The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism

John Barnes
Headline, £20, pp320

The adjective in the title of John Barnes’s treatise is apt; this book certainly feels uncomfortable, but important, too. He argues, for example, that all the initiatives to prevent racial abuse in UK football stadiums don’t stop racism as a conscious or unconscious act. Rather, they just allow us not to hear it for two hours. If Barnes has solutions, they are bound up in societal change and education rather than acts such as taking the knee. Passionate, confrontational stuff.

The Manningtree Witches

AK Blakemore
Granta, £12.99, pp304 (paperback)

Blakemore has previously published two collections of poetry and it shows; the way in which she makes this award-winning tale of witch trials in 17th-century Essex sing with vivid and sensual language is remarkable. Her narrator, 19-year-old Rebecca West, becomes one of the accused and it’s her deft commentary on the patriarchy, balancing wit and anger, fear and suspicion, which makes this debut such a joy. With this historical novel full of relevance for our times, Blakemore makes it clear that the witch hunt isn’t a thing of the past.

The City of Mist

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Orion, £14.99, pp192

This short story collection is a posthumous parting gift from Ruiz Zafón to his millions of fans. The whole point of his oeuvre, so perfectly realised in his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, is that he thickly layers gothic Barcelona detail on to tragic, romantic and mysterious narratives. Short excerpts aren’t, therefore, the most obvious entry point to his work. Still, with much-loved places and characters from that series making fleeting reappearances, it’s a fitting coda to his life and world.

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