Our pick of the latest releases

Out of It

Selma Dabbagh

Bloomsbury, £7.99

For the Mujahed family, living among their neighbours' tents in the only house on the block that has not been demolished, life in Gaza is horribly ordinary. Young Rashid smokes weed and volunteers at a refugee camp while waiting for papers that will allow him to study in London. Following the death of one of her students, Rashid's sister Iman is sent to her father in the Gulf, where she is encouraged to "develop herself as a woman"; life in Gaza doesn't always lend itself to GHDs and eyelash curlers. Their brother Sabri compiles a history of Palestine from the wheelchair to which he has been confined since he lost his wife, his son and his legs in an Israeli bomb attack. Their mother's story unfolds almost accidentally among the killings, arrests and political power struggles. This is an engaging and impressive debut novel, and Dabbagh's lyricism reveals the unexpected beauty and strength of the human spirit that survives in the most difficult circumstances. CLAIRE LOOBY

Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A New Commentary

Don Paterson

Faber and Faber, £9.99

A couple of years ago, the Scottish poet, musician and Eng lit university teacher Don Paterson started rereading Shakespeare's enigmatic 154-strong sonnet sequence at the leisurely rate of one or two a day. He kept a "reading diary" of any thoughts and insights that came to him along the way, with the present book standing as the defiantly unedited result of this experiment. What we have is a splendidly energetic and thought-provoking exercise in close textual reading that is written in a prose style which veers wildly from the colloquium to the colloquial to the downright chatty. Depending on your point of view, this last is either a breath of fresh air or a painful reminder of that geography teacher you had at school who used to come into class wearing ever-funkier pullovers. Still, this humanely priced volume does the one thing truly needful: it takes the fear out of reading Shakespeare. DARAGH DOWNES

The Frost on his Shoulders

Lorenzo Mediano, translated by Lisa Dillman

Europa Editions, £9.99

The poor boy who sets his eye on a rich girl is a common theme in Irish folklore. Lorenzo Mediano's story is set not in the west of Ireland, however, but in the Spanish Pyrenees just before the outbreak of civil war. In a strictly regimented society Ramon, a poor shepherd among many poor shepherds, falls in love with Alba, the daughter of a rich landowner. She returns his favour, despite her father's anger, and Mediano sets the reader up with a story that is sweeping in its narrative and evocative in its detail. Ramon overcomes internal exile, hunger, poverty and the mountains themselves to try to earn enough to win his beloved's hand. Ironically, it is a final brutal act of treachery that may enable the lovers to fulfil, we hope, their dreams. It is the sort of romance to stir the coldest of hearts. POL O MUIRI

Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads

Benedict Rogers

Rider Books, £12.99

For 50 years the Burmese "have lived as captives in their own nation", ruled by a succession of brutal military regimes that "rank among the worst dictatorships in the world". These regimes' methods have included rape as a weapon of war, torture, forced labour, internal displacement, conscription of child soldiers, use of human minesweepers and death inflicted in many ways. Reform is now in the air, but, superficial so far, it needs to be institutional, legislative and constitutional in one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Rogers, a human-rights activist who has been to Burma many times, believes the country should be treated holistically. He weaves together, most readably, many aspects of the country's story: how it came to be where it is today; the triumphs and tribulations of Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement; the struggle of ethnic groups to assert their rights; the politics of the military rulers; and the destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis. All in all, this is an inspiring and important book. BRIAN MAYE

Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer

Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Bloomsbury, £12.99

The 19th-century painter Samuel Palmer believed in an unfettered rural ideal, something he explored in his paintings and his life. As part of the Ancients, a collective of artists, he led a community in Shoreham, Kent, living in a cottage called Rat Abbey and inhabiting the Romantic vision he passionately believed in. This biography sympathetically draws on the influences and experiences that shaped his work, from William Blake through to nature itself, the most powerful teacher of all. He was almost forgotten until a show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1926 and, later, Geoffrey Grigson's 1947 biography, which helped to reposition him as one of the period's most important artists. Rachel Campbell-Johnston's biography is a poetic coda to that, wading through a life that contained poverty and tragedy yet was also full of "mad splendour". It's a brilliantly written book, a fitting vision for a true visionary. SIOBHAN KANE