RaveNew Statesman (UK)A magnificently evocative English edition by Margaret Jull Costa ... Typically for Marías, the book picks at the moral and aesthetic conventions of the spy-thriller though a succession of (often historical) digressions; the style is Sebald meets John le Carré ... [His] fogeyish, backwards-looking demeanour also made Marías a superb chronicler of his own generation ... In a typically ambiguous detail, Marías put one of the most resonant passages of his final novel into the mouth of one of the terrorist suspects that Nevinson encounters in Ruán ... Nothing would be more alien to the spirit of Marías’s work than an attempt to distil a straightforward moral or message from it.
Henry Kissinger
PanThe New StatesmanThe 99-year-old Kissinger has written what purports to be a handbook for the leaders of today and tomorrow ... It is a nice conceit and the juxtaposition of those six intriguing and world-shaping politicians is instructive. Kissinger knew them all and enlivens his text with accounts of his own interactions with the leaders and those around them ... Details from within the rooms where the second half of the 20th century was shaped are plentiful ... There is, however, an asymmetry at the heart of the book that undermines its stated purpose. One does not have to agree with, like or even respect Adenauer, De Gaulle, Sadat, Lee or Thatcher – though at points Kissinger does convince on their remarkable qualities – to acknowledge them as leaders of stature. The same does not apply to Nixon, who simply does not belong alongside them ... Kissinger makes an energetic case for his former boss’s inclusion. He whitewashes the appalling costs of Nixon’s thuggish foreign policies in Chile, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia and overstates the visionary quality of Nixon’s China trip...And his defence of Watergate is staggeringly weak, amounting to the argument that the president’s underlings had misunderstood him ... The high point of his audacity is a section in which the author briefly contemplates the long-term rise in political polarisation and divisive culture wars in American politics ... Kissinger’s assessment of Nixon – the longest of the six – compromises the book ... reads as a bid to burnish Nixon by association with the likes of Adenauer and Lee, and by secondary association to burnish too the legacy of the architect of the foreign policies that it claims earns him his place in such illustrious company: one H Kissinger ... It fundamentally fails in that goal. The informed and authoritative nature of Kissinger’s other portraits only serves to illustrate the gulf between their subjects and the thuggish, crooked Nixon.
Tim Parks
PositiveNew Statesman (UK)\"Parks shows us many of the complex realities of the country Garibaldi helped create. There is much humorous juxtaposition between the minor hardships of the modern hiker (sink-washing sweat-sodden hiking gear, blisters and, in one case, a broken Nespresso machine) and those of the marchers ... Moreover, by remaining so true to the historical route, the author and his partner achieve something like a cross-section through today’s Italy. Their walk captures the country not always seen in travel brochures and olive oil adverts ... Parks’s deep affection for Italy with all its flaws—present in his writing since his earliest non-fiction works—is implicit and compelling.
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