Paperbacks

Esther's InheritanceSándor Márai, trans. George Szirtes Picador, £7.99

Esther has been living a quiet, undisturbed life when one day, she receives a telegram from her former lover, Lajos, who abandoned her 20 years previously: he is coming to visit the next day and suddenly, she feels alive. She tells companion Nunu who says "Good . . . I will lock away the silver". For Lajos is a liar, fantasist and thief, as Esther knows well – and yet she feels fated to be with him. Sandor Marai's wry, elegiac novella is translated by English/Hungarian poet George Szirtes in a piercing, economical style which brilliantly evokes Esther's fading world of middle-class gentility as it unravels in this story – first published in 1939 – of family secrets, passionate love and betrayal. Marai, a major 20th-century Hungarian writer, was rediscovered after his death in 1989. Esther's Inheritance– now also a film – whets the appetite of those of us just discovering his work. - Frances O'Rourke

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How We Can Save the World and Create Prosperity.Nicholas Stern, Vintage, £8.99

In 2005, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown asked ex-World Bank man Nicholas Stern to study the likely impact of global warming on the world economy. The 2006 Stern Reviewmade a detailed case for phasing out the world's dependence on hydro-carbons. In this impassioned book, Stern brings his case to a wider audience, both recapping and updating the thesis of his review. He devotes only a page-and-a-half to debunking those who "naysay the science" on man-made global warming . But his insistence that a "decarboning" of economic life makes sense even if current climate change models turn out to be unreliable will give pause to all but the most doctrinaire. A switch to low-carbon energy, Stern argues, will not only prove a powerful driver of economic prosperity, it will also create a cleaner and more biodiverse world. - Daragh Downes

The Children's Book. AS Byatt, Vintage, £7.99

In this encyclopedic and allusive novel, short-listed for last year's Man Booker Prize, AS Byatt chronicles two dozen lives and four families in the two decades before the first World War. Olive Wellwood, certainly drawn from E Nesbit, is a best-selling author of fairy tales with a large young family. In their charmed country home, filled with summer garden parties and eccentric, intellectual visitors, Olive's storytelling becomes intertwined with the larger narrative – the individually bound books she writes for each of her children have the Germanic darkness of Grimms' tales mixed with the actualities of her children's lives. There are also scholarly (sometimes tiresome) descriptions of diversions as varied as the Arts and Crafts movement, the suffrage movement, and the development of London museums. At times the darkness of this novel, its complex exploration of the relationships between parents and children, is stalled by the various lessons in cultural history. But, for such a massive tome, it is surprisingly enjoyable. - Emily Firetog

Viva South America,Oliver Balch, Faber, £9.99

Oliver Balch’s travelogue on South America, which takes in nine countries, does its best to conquer the central problem of most country-

hopping books, which is to balance variety with a central theme. Balch decided to follow the spirit of Simón Bolívar in modern South America, who has inspired the leftward tilt there recently. For a while, it works, as Balch highlights the common themes of corrupt élites abandoning the poor, massive inequality, and the rise of movements attempting to re-distribute power.

However, these themes become more strained as several chapters deal with unconnected subjects, such as race in Brazil and women's rights in Chile. The book later resembles a series of essays, rather than a coherent whole. These essays are entertaining and enlightening, but are to be recommended to those new to the continent rather than those already interested. Balch's writing is light and easy, and his book is a solid introduction to its subject. - Shane Murray

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, Graham Farmelo, Faber, £9.99

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 and was proclaimed "Einstein the second" by the press of his day. Stephen Hawking has called him "probably the greatest British theoretical physicist since Newton". Yet when Paul Dirac's biographer went into Bristol Records Office in May 2003 he was met with the question, "Who's he?". Dirac isn't even the most famous alumnus of the local primary school. (That would be Cary Grant.) This masterful biography, which earlier this week won the Costa Biography Award, seeks to restore Dirac's rightful claim on posterity by giving us a deeply humane portrait of an almost peerless scientific genius who was addicted to the Dandyand the Beanocomics, besotted with Cher and dismissive of any music group whose singer went around claiming to be a walrus. There's even a cameo appearance by our very own Éamon de Valera, whom Dirac spotted taking copious notes at a 1942 Dublin conference on quantum mechanics. An tUasal de Valera's day job at the time? Taoiseach. - Daragh Downes