Allan Massie
I haven't read a better new novel this year than Clara's Tale by Pierre Peju (Harvill Secker, £12.99). Excellently translated by Euan Cameron, this is a meditation on the nihilism of the 20th century, but also a fine narrative, sometimes chilling, sometimes with marvellous moments of redemptive tenderness. It owes something to Camus, and discharges that debt admirably. Charles Allen's Kipling Sahib (Little, Brown, £20) is both a delightful evocation of late 19th-century India and an acute study of Kipling's genius; utterly absorbing. Other Colours by Orhan Pamuk (Faber, £20) is a very fine collection of essays, memoirs and reflections on literature, life and politics; it includes his delightful and inspiring Nobel lecture. I also greatly enjoyed The Renaissance Popes by Gerard Noel (Basic Books), full of agreeably scandalous stories, also offering a spirited defence of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. I rarely read overrated books these days, experience having taught me that novels praised by certain reviewers are far better avoided.
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