A round-up of the week's paperbacks
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
By Samantha Power
Penguin, £12.99
Sergio Vieira de Mello, humanitarian, philosopher and diplomat, is the focus of Samantha Power’s moving biography. The book reveals a singular man, possessed of an indefatigable work ethic, heroic honour and bravery, saintly compassion and seductive charm. The Brazilian was an inspiration to those around him, and his diplomatic skill and leadership landed him at the centre of scenes of turmoil in Cambodia, Lebanon, Bosnia, East Timor and Iraq, where he brought his mix of idealism and pragmatism to bear on seemingly insoluble problems. Power, who in January was appointed as director for multilateral affairs in Obama’s administration, writes adroitly and with passion about Vieira de Mello and the UN as a whole, showing it to be a gargantuan bureaucracy at the mercy of the interests of its member states and its own inflexible rules. It is an eye-opening book, and its climactic description of the Baghdad attack that killed its subject is very powerful.
Colm Farren
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century
By Alex Ross
Harper Perennial, £14.99
This frenetic tour of 20th-century music initially confines itself to classical music, but as the brilliantly new colourful branches of jazz, rock and pop unfold, so does Ross's narrative. Ross is music critic for the New Yorker, and here he weaves a history of startling intricacy that rattles along at an incredible pace, shunting over anecdotes and theory with guile and illuminating intelligence. Ross's treatment of the collision of art and politics is fascinating, but perhaps the finest points are those when musical genres intersect and remind the reader that no art form should live in an ivory tower. At one point, Ross tells us how Charlie Parker, while playing at Birdland in 1951, spotted Stravinsky at one of the tables and immediately incorporated a motif from the ballet Firebirdinto his song Koko, causing the composer to "spill his scotch in ecstasy". Which is exactly as it should be.
Laurence Mackin
The Kit-Cat Club
By Ophelia Field
Harper Perennial, £9.99
In the late 1690s, an astute London publisher, Jacob Tonson, struck a deal with pie-maker Christopher (Kit) Cat: he would pay to feed aspiring authors in exchange for the publishing rights to their forthcoming works. The resulting Kit-Cat Club became a centre of Whig power. Field's history of the club concentrates on its most influential members. One was the playwright and architect John Vanbrugh, who designed Castle Howard for Lord Carlisle (another member) and Blenheim. Also a member was the dramatist William Congreve, mocked by arch-Tory Daniel Defoe for his efforts to establish a theatre in Haymarket ("Apollo spoke the word/And straight arose a Playhouse from a turd"). Addison and Steele, the fathers of modern journalism through their establishment of the Spectator, were also in the club. The quiet scholarly Addison came to Dublin as number two to Thomas Wharton (another member) when he became lord lieutenant of Ireland. All this may sound heavy going, but it is quite the opposite – the clubbers had great conversation and fun.
Brian Maye
The White Tiger
By Aravind Adiga
Atlantic Books, £7.99
The White Tigerof the title of this stark, surprise Man Booker Prize winner is Balram, a boy so unworthy of notice that he was not named until he went to school. He grows up deep in the Darkness – his word for extreme poverty and hopelessness – moves to Delhi and becomes a driver for a rich businessman and his American wife. Balram's account of his mother's funeral – "her death was so grand that I knew . . . her life must have been miserable" – and his searing account of life as a servant, with all its attendant misery and intrigue, underline very clearly and without lyricism the fact that India, for all its good things, can be a very hard place. Yet it is impossible to summon any sympathy for this thoroughly dislikable protagonist, whose actions – detailed over seven days in letters to the Chinese premier – underline the irony of his lament that the new generation "is growing up with no morals at all".
Joyce Hickey
China Cuckoo
By Mark Kitto
Constable £8.99
Mark Kitto loves China. His wife is Chinese. He speaks the language fluently. He managed to become a "mini media mogul", publishing the highly successful That's. . . English-language listing guides to Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. But communists will be communists, and the state took over his business. Kitto finds relief from the struggle against the Chinese system in the mountain resort of Moganshan, built as a summer escape from sweltering Shanghai. In remote, decaying Moganshan, he first manages to build a house, then he converts an ex-brothel into a thriving modern cafe, with English-style bacon a speciality. The author is a redoubtable battler and makes use of charm, persistence, flattery and liquor-sodden banquets for the local bureaucrats. Kitto is hyperactive and self-absorbed but he paints an evocative and occasionally lyrical picture of life on the mountain. It comes complete with typhoon, house fires, a cast of eccentric and lovable neighbours and a rare sighting of a princely wild boar.
Tom Moriarty