Debut novelists crack the nod on Booker longlist

Short, sharp guidance and observations from a journalist with attitude. All books available from Exclusives

IF YOU READ ONE BOOK THIS WEEK

Redemption, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Penguin) R140

ADLER-Olsen has been welcomed as the new golden boy of Nordic noir. This engrossing, weighty page-turner is the third novel to feature Copenhagen cold case cop Carl Mørck. Here he investigates the kidnapping of two boys in a case that has connections to a religious cult.

THE ISSUE

Once again it's the absence of the big names that is so noticeable about this year's Man Booker longlist: no JM Coetzee, Margaret Atwood or Roddy Doyle. Four authors, meanwhile, make the cut with debut novels: NoViolet Bulawayo, for We Need New Names; Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman; Richard House, The Kills; and Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart.

The rest of the longlist is Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, Harvest by Jim Crace, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, Unexploded by Alison MacLeod, TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, and The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. The winner will be announced on October 15.

CRASH COURSE

Does alcohol help writers? It's surprising how many swore blindly on a good beltful. Described by The Times of London as a "hugely enjoyable ramble among the empty bottles and pools of vomit", Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink takes its title from Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - "Echo Spring" is what its alcoholic protagonist, Brick, called the family liquor cabinet - and hints at the drinking problem that affected the author's own childhood, the violent drunkenness of her mother's lesbian partner.

More terrific non-fiction on booze, The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey, by Lawrence Osborne, is travel writing built around a simple thesis: it is useful thinking of the clash between East and West as "wet and dry, alcoholic and prohibited" and existing in "a spirit of mutual incomprehension". His book is an engaging traipse through Oman, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, among other places, in search of drink - cocktail hour, for Osborne, is 6.10pm. Occasionally he cannot remember how he got to bed the previous night, but he seems largely in control of himself.

The same, alas, could not be said for Jowita Bydlowska. Her Drunk Mom: A Memoir is the current "go-to" horror story of alcoholic excess. Three years after giving up booze, Bydlowska had a glass of champagne to celebrate the birth of her child - and was immediately returned to being a full-blown alcoholic. This account of her recovery, though brutal and unsparing, has been praised by the critics.

THE BOTTOM LINE

"The Egyptians began the slanders against us." - Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking, by David Nirenberg (Head of Zeus)