Book reviews: Also published this week...

Published on Saturday 11 October 2008 17:30

Non-fiction Hell-Fire Clubs Evelyn Lord, Yale UP, £19.99

Sometimes seen as the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment, this volume strips away the myths from such societies as the Beggar's Benison, the Mowhawks and the Medmenham Friars – radicalist seed beds or seedy cliques of Satanists?

Quantum

Manjit Kumar, Icon, 20

An elegantly written and accessible guide to quantum physics, in which Kumar structures the narrative history around the clash between Einstein and Bohr, and the anxiety that quantum theory "disproved the existence of reality".

Fiction

Folly

Alan Titchmarsh, Hodder & Stoughton, 18.99

A multi-generational saga from the prolific celebrity gardener with the grab-line "Their love story began before they were born..." The opening chapter quotes Hardy, but comparisons, as they say, are odious.

A Time To Every Purpose Under Heaven

Karl O Knausgaard, Portobello, 18.99

Billed as the most exciting Scandinavian fiction since Miss Smilla, this eclectic,hefty novel features a Renaissance boy who might have encountered an angel, and devotes his life to determining if the divine can change.

Travel

The Island That Dared

Dervla Murphy, Eland, 16.99

"Travel legend" Murphy has long been obsessed with post-revolutionary Cuba and this travelogue recounts her ongoing love affair with the island, mixing reportage with commentary

Passport To Enclavia

Vitali Vitaliev, Reportage Press, 12.99

A paean to local identities, Ukrainian-born Russian exile Vitaliev journeys to the fragments of countries lingering behind other borders, and makes a compelling case against the centralism of what he dubs the EU-SSR