The City Always Wins

by Omar Robert Hamilton

Journalist and filmmaker Omar Robert Hamilton's debut novel The City Always Wins follows a group of friends, colleagues and protesters at the front line of the 2011 Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. Focusing on young couple Mariam and Khalil, it takes you to the heart of the action as the activists attempt to dodge bullets while throwing stones at the authorities. Hamilton, founder of the Mosireen Collective in Cairo, a non-profit media collective charting events during and after the Arab Spring, shows the impact of new media on the movement as the characters produce the ChaosCairo podcast and website carrying "news, tactics and triumphs" from the "unstoppable" revolution. Khalil moves from having his "back straighten with virile pride" when he gets a complimentary Facebook message hailing his bravery on a Chaos post, thinking "the whole word is watching, all your ex-girlfriends are watching", to realising as the political landscape shifts beyond recognition "we were prime time once, we had so many friends once". There is no shirking the grim realities in this profoundly moving work, which opens in a morgue, and is ultimately an elegy, not just for the loss of revolutionary hopes, but also youth and young love.

Johannesburg

by Fiona Melrose

Set over the course of one day - that of Nelson Mandela's death - Melrose's second novel boasts an array of characters that give the novel a weighty depth: An agitated mother turning 80 and her free-spirited daughter returning from New York to host a party neither woman really wants; senior employees of an embattled mining company in the heart of the South African capital; a pair of siblings torn apart by first poverty, then tragedy; and their friends, colleagues and housekeepers, who help paint a picture of bustling life in a city infamous for danger and racial tension. Melrose's writing is breathless at times, but in a way that means the pages fly by. Clearly written from the heart, in it we can find much of our own lives, regardless of the setting. Mandela's death is never truly looked at in great detail, but those first handful of pages set a scene so that 'Tata' and all his trials and tribulations weigh heavily in the background. Melrose paints the city beautifully, full of grace, colour and even fear. With tales of love, war, troubled families and self doubt taking centre stage, at a time of national and worldwide mourning for South Africa's greatest statesman, she shows the human condition - and the need for belonging, if even to oneself - as being as complicated as 'Tata' himself. In the end, it is better to be remembered for who we are than what we were.

The Upstairs Room

by Kate Murray-Browne

Billed as a 'ghost story for the housing crisis', Kate Murray-Browne's debut novel The Upstairs Room follows a couple, Eleanor and Richard, who move their young family into their dream Victorian home in East London. Things quickly unravel as Eleanor becomes crippled by sickness and paranoia, blaming the strange atmosphere in the house as her grip on reality blurs and she becomes obsessed with the spooky upstairs bedroom. Her husband is too distracted by their young lodger Zoe to notice, while she is also plagued by unsettling dreams. The novel has huge potential and Murray-Browne shows her skill by weaving scenes of family life with eerie vignettes - the name Emily scrawled across the walls, a dead crow teeming with maggots and white stones piled deliberately on the steps outside. Unfortunately it does not quite deliver on its ambitions as the author seems unable to decide whether it is a ghost story or a sharply observed domestic drama. When she cranks up the tension, it becomes a compelling read, but certain narrative threads fall flat. The Upstairs Room would make a good holiday read as it is an easy page-turner to be gobbled up feverishly over a couple of days, but it may leave some readers feeling unsatisfied.

The Last Wolf: The Hidden Springs Of Englishness

by Robert Winder

Robert Winder is a journalist, author and former literary editor of the Independent. His book Bloody Foreigners: The Story Of Immigration To Britain, was published in 2004 and revised and updated in 2013 to include the Syrian crisis. The vote to leave the European Union and the cracks in the United Kingdom confirmed Winder's feeling that Englishness was a theme worth exploring. In the book, he explains that Englishness is not a matter of values or principles, and he links our national identity to geographical factors such as climate and natural heritage. He weaves a fabulous tale of wolves and sheep, water and coal, rain and agriculture, industry and architecture, and through all this he tries to pinpoint unique qualities that grew out of our landscape. Illustrated with black and white photographs, this a wide-ranging exploration of England and what it means to be English. It is funny, readable and well-researched, but Winder's enthusiasm often carries him a little off topic.