Recent paperbacks

James Hughes-Onslow

Dialogue with Death Arthur Koestler (Papermac £3.95) Written in 1937 shortly after he was released from a prison cell in Andalusia where he had been under sentence of death for 96 days. These thoughts from the diary he kept were reissued, by coincidence, in the week of his death. 'Dying is a confoundedly serious thing, one shouldn't make a melodrama out of it.'

The Fifty-First Michael Stewart (Arrow £1.60) A left-wing government trying to nationalise North Sea Oil is up against a cartel which plots to bankrupt Britain and make her the 51st American state. Violence, treachery in Whitehall, financial manipulation, the lot.

Becoming a Writer Dorothea Brande (Papermac £2.95) First published in America in the Thirties, now available in Britain for the first time. The main problem for aspiring novelists is not lack of ability, she says, but of confidence, freedom and self-respect. John Braine and Ted Willis are among her more successful fans.

The Art of Japanese Management Richard Tan- ner Pascale and Anthony G. Athos (Penguin £1.95) The Japanese Art of Management, surely? Using the Matsushita Electrical Company as an example the authors show how Japanese industry has often succeeded by borrowing western ideas and abandoning their own. Selective plagiarism could be the answer for us too.

Slow Boats to China Gavin Young (Penguin £2.95) A seven-month trip from Piraeus to Can- ton on a bizarre variety of craft. Young once worked for an Iraqi shipping company and this may account for his eye for detail as well as for his survival.

Jesus: An Experiment in Christology Edward Schillebeeckx (Fount £4.95) Did Jesus know he was an experiment in Christology, I wonder. Apart from that this is a serious piece of biblical scholarship that tries to bridge the gap between the academic theologian and the 20th-century Christian.

The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Civilisation Edited by Arthur Cotterell (Papermac £7.95) Human behaviour owes more to tradition than to environment. Cotterell writes on the Indus and China (perhaps the most independent of all societies) with other specialists on their own sub- jects — Richard Leakey on pre-history for exam- ple.

Masterstroke Tim Heald (Arrow £1.50) Simon Bognor, suave but accident-prone detective of television fame, disentangles some sophisticated treachery at Oxford. Thank goodness Heald went to Oxford and not, say, Reading.

July's People Nadine Gordimer (Penguin £1.95) How South African liberals cope with civil war. Penguins have recently published four other Gordimers: The Late Bourgeois World (£1.50), A Guest of Honour (£2.95), Six Feet of the Country (£1.75) and A Soldier's Embrace (1.95).

The SAS: The Official Hisiory Philip Warner (Sphere £1.95) Called the Special Air Service to confuse the Germans, they are as likely to arrive by submarine, canoe or skis as by parachute. 'You do not have to be a millionaire, a peer, an Etonian, or a superb athlete, to make it with the SAS' says Warner 'You just have to have your priorities right.'

Herpes: The Facts J. K. Oates (Penguin £1.50) A doctor writes about a disease he has had (on the lip) since he was 11. It is contagious, incurable and recurring but anxiety can cause more pro- blems than the virus itself. Herpes, what you do when you have it, Oscar Gillespie (Sheldon £3.95) Another doctor writes less movingly but more expensively.

When the Emperor Dies Mason McCann Smith (Abacus £3.95) This story of an Ethiopian emperor who captures some Brits in 1868 while Sir Robert Napier approaches with 12,000 men has been written by a former Hollywood film ex- tra with one eye on the scenery and one on the film rights.

Markets of London Alec Forshaw and Theo Bergstrom (photographer), (Penguin £4.95) Rather quaint but handy too. If you want to barter for shark's fins try Brixton. Camden Passage for arts and crafts, Club Row for pets, Nags Head for clothes, Cutler Street for gold and silver coins — and so on.

Flaubert in Egypt translated and edited by Fran- cis Steegmuller (Michael Haag £5.95) At the age of 28 Flaubert went to sample the delights of the East, which seems to have inspired him to write Madame Bovary. Vivid descriptions of the Sphinx, the prostitutes and the bitter-sweet smell of bedbugs and sandalwood.

Girls at Play Paul Theroux (Penguin £1.75) One of the earlier novels (1969) by this intrepid traveller. We find him in Black Mischief country, Kenya in the uncertain days shortly after in- dependence.

The Helen Smith Story Paul Foot (Fontana £2.50) How the dead nurse's father applies per- sistent bloodymindedness to a Foreign Office cover-up and wins. A gripping tale but an in- furiating one — where does the FO find such brilliant liars?

Charles Cotton: Selected Poems Edited by Ken Robinson (Fyfield £3.25) A Derbyshire man and a fishing friend of Isaac Walton, Cotton (1630-1687) wrote mostly about Dovedale, rang- ing from boating to bowling and touching on the tempestuous events of his times such as the Plague and the Popish Plot.

Shelley on Love: An Anthology Edited by Richard Holmes (Anvil £3.95) Largely unknown prose writings, taken from notebooks, essays and reviews from the age of 17 until his death at 30. The romantic's view of women as property, promiscuous love and the chains of matrimony.

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World G. E. M. de Ste Croix (Duckworth £15) They gave us democracy and class warfare too, rang- ing from property to marriage and from slavery to Roman imperialism.

On the Yankee Station William Boyd (Penguin £1.50) Thirteen short stories by the much- acclaimed author of A Good Man in Africa. This time our good man is in Africa, America, Scotland, Nice, Cambodia, Oxford, Devon, just about everywhere.