Books

The New Policeman is up for the Whitbread Book of the Year Award

Previously unpublished poems by Charles Bukowski show a mellower, if no less voluble, version of the man. Review by D H Tracy

Palestinian memory is explored in this vibrant novel that's 'not a predictable novel of despair and accusation'. By Lorraine Adams

Julian Barnes' latest novel, based on real events in the life of Arthur Conan Doyle, is a mystery story that raises questions about mortality, identity and humanity. Terrence Rafferty is intrigued.

Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie's India-set novel released last year is to be found garnering the same reactions in the early days of 2006. Both he and Nick Hornby were passed over when the judges opted to give the Whitbread Prize for Fiction to Ali Smith's The Accidental. A story of how a 12 year old girl and her family's lives are disrupted when a stranger is met on holiday, is a less conventional choice than usual from the Whitbread judges. Maybe the withdrawal of Whitbread plc led to a rush of blood to their heads, allowing them to shy away from the usual, safer choices.

Alfie Green and The Magical Gift and Alfie Green and a Sink Full of Frogs are the first and the latest in the Alfie Green series by Joe O'Brien – a very welcome addition to the growing number of Irish-published books for the five-to-nine age group.

Wordgloss: A Cultural Lexicon by Jim O'Donnell. The Lilliput Press, €20

This bitingly funny and fiercely observed new novel, which won Britain's Hawthornden Prize and the South African Sunday Times Literary Award, is reviewed by Tony Eprile

When glasnost collapsed the rigid structures of Soviet art and culture in the 1980s, most attention went to those who had been freed from repression. In The Dream Life of Sukhanov, her ironic, surreal, sometimes stunning and always chaotic novel, Olga Grushin writes about those who had been doing the repressing.

Zakes Mda's latest novel is set in South Africa and features an unusual seaside love triangle. By Madison Smartt Bell