Francis Kett foreword:
It’s been a good year for books. Many an author was hard at work during last year’s lockdowns, and while we didn’t manage to read every single one which came out this year, the most thought-provoking novels quickly floated to the top of the list.
After a thrilling year, we are pleased to bring to your attention ten thrilling reads which we thought best encapsulated the literary achievements of 2021. That said, I heartily commend to you the best books we read over the last twelve months:
10. Doom by Niall Ferguson
A historian whose reputation precedes him, Ferguson is a writer who isn’t afraid of dealing with controversial topics. His books often deal with small trivia like the rise of Western Civilisation, the British Empire, and the entire history of finance. But it is Ferguson’s financial expertise and a keen eye for historical data which makes him stand out among other writers with lofty ambitions. Doom is a look at some of the worst catastrophes in human history, including natural disasters, plagues, and wars.
The book does a very good job of putting the 2019-2021 pandemic in historical context and, through comparison, demonstrates that it doesn’t rank so highly when compared with many past events. Examining other catastrophes like super volcanoes, asteroid impacts, and famines, one comes away with the view that disasters are simply a feature of human life, it’s just that we haven’t seen such a big one for quite some time. There are some very interesting tangents that Ferguson brings up like advancements in statistical and network science in explaining historical phenomena, and cyclical theories about history in general. The book could be criticised for being a little too meandering at times, but if one is interested in reading about a history of such disasters, then few books could be more recommended than this one.
9. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
As an elevator pitch, the book likely wouldn’t have you sticking your foot in the door. And yet, upon reading the first few pages, you know you’re in the hands of a master. The book begins from the point of view of two characters, a trans woman and her detransitioned ex (male to female, and then back again), who reconnect after the detransitioned party accidentally gets his new partner pregnant. If it sounds like a mess, it is, deliberately so, and navigating the emotional mess takes up the course of the novel, with a few flashbacks in-between to spread out the expositional butter. It’s complicated, but authentic. The characters persuade you from the first few chapters that the world they live in is a real one, making for a book that is self-conscious in just the right way.
Only a few other books, in the likes of The Secret History and The Black Dahlia, had me so convinced that the story happened to the person telling it, in some form or another. Many books have made me grin or snigger, but Torrey Peters’ is the first novel since Catch 22 that had me laughing out loud. The difficult topics of the book: suicide, transitioning, detransitioning, raising a child outside the nuclear family, break up, are all treated with enough gravity to take seriously but not enough to dent the humour. It is also, first and foremost, a book about relationships — more akin to the work of Nick Hornby than any political pundit. For style, if nothing else, it warrants a place among the best books of 2021.
8. The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Tran Nguyen, Vietnamese American author is probably one of the most interesting living fiction writers. His first novel, The Sympathiser (2015), won multiple awards and critical acclaim which means the sequel has a lot to live up to. The first novel is set in America just after the Vietnam War after the fall of Saigon. The sequel is set in 1970s France and follows the same character involved in both a drug gang war and the political turmoil of the time.
The basic plot and setting are perfectly well devised, but it’s the gripping style of the writing that makes Thanh Nguyen’s work really stand out. The author manages to pull off writing something akin to an intellectual thriller, by using a very well-read main character who mentally comments on things he’s reading and relates it to his daily struggles. At its best, this style makes for genuinely hilarious and witty reading, as the author can subtly weave the literature of postmodern France with a tense narrative and memorable characters. At other times, it is a little too heavy-handed, where one feels the writer makes a point of lecturing the reader through the characters or making a few too many obscure references. There are other problems with the story, such as too much convenience writing, and a less than satisfying ending, though despite its shortcomings the book is one of the best examples of modern thrillers. Gripping but original prose is not easy to come by, and one can’t help but look forward to what the writer will accomplish in the future.
7. The Monkey King by Wu Cheng En, translated by Julia Lovell
Yes, this book is a new translation, so of course the original didn't come out in 2021, but this is a good excuse to recommend what is arguably the greatest work of literature that Chinese civilization has ever produced. It is quite difficult to judge a translation but the last one was in the 1980s and can be a bit overwrought at times. I can say that Julia Lovel’s translation opts for readability over replication, which is a good choice for a novel that relies on the expression and liveliness of the characters. While Shakespeare was writing his first plays, China was also experiencing an epoch of literary achievement.
The author Wu Cheng’en (his authorship is debated but there are few other candidates) decided to write an anonymous book in vernacular Chinese rather than the traditional classic scripture, and compiled folktales of demons and legends in the places he lived. The Journey to the West, as the novel is traditionally known, is a stunning rendition of Chinese folklore, working as both an advocate for Buddhist philosophy and a critique of the corruption of the political class of the time. In an era where news about China is seldom good, it is worth remaining aware of the cultural achievements that its civilization once produced.
6. The Power of Geography by Tim Marshal
A follow-up to Marshal’s Prisoners of Geography (2015), the sequel covers several poorly understood regions of the world, such as the Sahel, Ethiopia, Iran, and space.
With a focus more on geopolitics than geography for his second book in the series, Marshal offers insights from his experience reporting on twelve wars from his career working at just about every UK news outlet under the sun.
His key insights actually come closer to home; his analysis of how the UK might out-influence the EU via the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), perhaps with the help of yet-to-be separated EU states, for example.
Additionally, for anyone keen to understand the geopolitical situation in Libya, why Greece and Turkey are coming close to conflict, or what led to the turmoil in Ethiopia, you could do far worse than a flick through The Power of Geography.
The chapters on the African Sahel and the colonisation of space stand out in particular, peeling back decades of conflict and packing the meat of the issue into easily digestible chunks. It easily stands out as one of the best geopolitical reads of the past few years, let alone in 2021.
5. Beyond Order by Jordan Peterson
Straight off the back of severe depression and pneumonia that lasted for nearly eight months, Jordan Peterson triumphantly returned at the beginning of this year to write a sequel to his bestselling book 12 Rules for Life (2018) after recovering from a harrowing experience, which he claims would have killed him if not for the support of his family and fans. The difficulty of the last year comes through at times in the writing of his new book which deals with much darker themes than the previous title. In comparison, Beyond Order attempts to navigate areas of chaos in everyday life that inevitably creep in once order has been established. While the book starts slow, going over some of Peterson’s familiar philosophical archetypes, the book delves into much deeper themes as it goes on, outlining some of the darker aspects of human nature.
The advice contained within is arguably more refined and applicable than his previous writing and has a greater sense of urgency. He is at his best when describing patients from his own experience as a psychologist, including many enlightening stories, and the final chapter offers an intense rationale for why it is worthwhile to struggle in life, despite all its trials and torments. Though the book should be recommended alongside his previous work, Peterson still deserves his acclaim as one of the most influential intellectuals in the Western World.
4. Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
It would be unfair to advertise Kolbert’s novel as purely about geoengineering; i.e. using cloud seeding technology to regulate the climate, but it most succinctly sums up the book’s message: that overcorrection rather than inaction can be just as environmentally damaging, if not more so.
She uses the example of Asian carp, first introduced into the US in 1972 for phytoplankton control in culture ponds. The ecological problem they solved soon gave way to a greater one when the carp began out-competing all other fish in their area. Several states erect electric fish barriers, with one going so far as dumping poison in the water to prevent further migration. The issue of overcorrection is one that stems throughout the book, with intervention to prevent catastrophe creating unforeseen and even more catastrophic consequences.
Into this backdrop falls geo-engineering, a technology that promises the possibility of reversing a great deal of the damage wrought by carbon emissions. The methods of doing so include maintaining reflective sails over large portions of the sky, spraying crushed-up diamonds into the atmosphere, and injecting salt crystals to seed reflective clouds above the arctic.
But among the dismal statements summarising the health of the earth are several hopeful messages, among them the progress made in carbon sequestration. With coal being phased out, the question of how much artificial “coal” we can create - and where we should put it - raises an interesting question.
While shying away from suggesting solutions, Kolbert does nod in a direction the world may be heading towards. For anyone interested in a way of thinking about the question, it should be at the top of their list.
3. This is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth
With a subjective list, the temptation is to be sucked in by books about things I know little about. Is giving a book about Vikings on this list an acknowledgment that it is simply an interesting Viking book that came out this year, or should it stack up against all the previous books written about Vikings to merit a place on the list?
Anyway, I knew very little about cyberweaponry before reading This is How They Tell Me the World Ends, and have struggled to find a comparable topic about which so little is public information. Spying, the book tells you, is far easier to do remotely than in person.
Written by the New York Times’ cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, the book concerns the cyberweapons arms race; specifically, the underground network of security services and hackers which build zero-day exploits — vulnerabilities in widely-used software which can be used to steal data, shut down networks, or take control of devices remotely.
What follows is a history of how the software bugs-for-money market started, including the budding interest of US intelligence services in computer exploits following 9/11, the destruction of Iran’s nuclear projects, as well as the Russian, Israeli, Emirati, Chinese, and North Korean hacking efforts.
Among other revelations is the story of how the CIA was preparing for a nuclear first strike against Iran because it believed the enemy countries’ hackers were about to breach a New York dam in an attack that would have killed thousands.
The book is peppered with similar anecdotes, which would make the tale worthy of recommendation alone if not for the way in which Perlroth is able to tie the personal stories of many hackers and organisations into the narrative — making it one of the most fascinating reads of the year.
2. The Next 500 Years by Christopher Mason
There has been a raft of books coming out about genetic engineering over the past few years, ever since Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui created the first human genetically-edited babies in 2018 and then promptly disappeared, almost as though they were competing with each other to be the pre-eminent title. This is the best one, though.
The Next 500 Years is a book oriented around genetic engineering, but is really about the possibilities that synthetic biology opens up for the human race. Unlike other science-focused books we read this year, 500 Years brings with it a philosophical position: that humans have the moral obligation to both discover and inhabit new worlds.
Mason calls his philosophical position deontogenic ethics (a branch of deontological ethics; the position that actions themselves are right or wrong rather than based on the consequences of actions). Anything that consciously continues the existence of life’s molecules is ethical. Anything that does not is unethical. From there, Mason proposes that genetically engineering humans so that they might better survive either living on new worlds or the transit to them is the logical next step.
Starting the first quarter of the book outlining the history of genetic engineering, Mason puts himself on steady footing for the rest of the novel, where the book gives way to the kind of description which would seem outlandish in the sci-fi section.
Such depictions include developing green humans for photosynthesis with an extra-large portion of skin which they might be able to roll out in the sun during a lunch break, constructing exo-wombs to avoid the negative health impact of giving birth, and creating radiation-resistant humans who might better be able to survive living on space stations, Mars, or Saturn’s moon Titan.
And yet it is backed up by what has already proven to work with current synthetic biology. The author spent several years working with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 520 days on the International Space Station, studying what protections are needed to allow interplanetary survival. Combining philosophy with science is a rare skill that is often done poorly, but I cannot remember reading a book better able to explain complex science without dumbing down the essentials so that the realistic implications of the technology become obvious.
The book expanded not just my expectations of what synthetic biology could accomplish, but my imagination for what might be possible. And not just possible, likely. Many of the techniques using synthetic biology are already being tested, if not perfected. Hence did Mason feel that writing the book was necessary. As my favourite non-fiction book not only of 2021 but for several years, I would encourage everyone to give it a read.
1. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Recent recipient of a Nobel Prize, Ishiguro seems like a writer who has already established himself in the literary canon, and his latest novel reads something like a reflective memoir to his loved ones, only through the medium of a solar powered android and its relationship with a young girl.
While we have already lived through something of an AI craze in the last few years where robots were going to take all our jobs and rule over us, the book doesn’t feel like a genre gimmick or an experiment. Rather, Ishiguro uses the soft sci-fi setting as a background to delve into much deeper themes about human relationships.
Not to give too much away, but the main focus of the book is the nature of parental love and sacrifice within families. Though it is a slow and contemplative read, the characters are made to stand out through the writer's truly excellent prose.
The subtle detail in the observations, and the decision to make the only character an android, means that the style of the book feels original, and the characters compelling. The best thing about it is the believability of the relationships and scenarios that are created, and even though the ending leaves a somber note, it stands out as one of the most memorable fiction stories in a long time.
Honourable mentions:
Rationality by Steven Pinker
First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie
Skin Taker by Michelle Paver
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe