A look at some of 2019’s most prominent literary offerings....
BOOKS ROUNDUP
The king of horror ventured into science fiction, telling the story of good versus evil in his latest thriller, The Institute. The tale of a group of kids with special powers who are stuck in a sinister institution, the novel earned Stephen King considerable praise from fans.
With her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale adapted into a successful web television series, Canadian author Margaret Atwood published the sequel The Testaments, which continued the yarn 15 years after the events of its predecessor. The book was well-received and went on to be crowned the joint winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other.
British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak saw further success this year with the release of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, the English translation of her 2018 book On Dakika Otuz Sekiz Saniye, which told the powerful story of a dying prostitute and her outcast friends in Istanbul.
Mystery thriller The Silent Patient, the critically acclaimed debut novel of Cyprus-born screenwriter Alex Michaelides, captivated readers with the account of a famous painter who shoots her husband and then refuses to speak another word.
American fiction writer Ian Doescher put together the style of the Bard of Avon and Tina Fey’s teen comedy Mean Girls in the book William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls, showing us what it would have been like if this hilarious story of teenage rivalries was written by the Elizabethan dramatist.
Nothing to See Here found American author Kevin Wilson telling a warm tale of a woman who recruits her former boarding school roommate to help look after her twin stepkids who … burst into flames when they are upset!
The third most powerful woman in the world published her first book this year. Melinda Gates urged society to eliminate gender bias in The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World and donated all her proceeds from the project to charity.
Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Talking to Strangers took a fascinating look at why interactions with strangers often go wrong.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators presented a peek behind the scenes of Ronan Farrow’s 2017 reporting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal and exposing corruption and cover-ups.
American whistleblower Edward Snowden told his story in his memoir Permanent Record, revealing how he built and why he chose to expose the U.S. government’s mass surveillance system.
American-British author Bill Bryson turned his attention towards the human body, detailing the workings of our mortal coil in The Body: A Guide for Occupants, a book that made good use of the writer’s knack for making scientific topics interesting and accessible for the layman.
Everyone’s favourite geek Randall Munroe published his new book, How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, impressing us once again with his wit and wisdom. This time, the xkcd-creator chose to offer his offbeat take on the mundane by turning everyday problems into “much bigger and more exciting problems” using science and creativity.
- S.A.
