The Written World
Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman
Hodder & Stoughton £7.99
Ned Beauman was selected by BBC Two’s “The Culture Show” as one of the ‘Debut Dozen’ – 12 novelists forming Britain’s brightest new writing talent in literary fiction. Boxer Beetle was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2010.
Boxer Beetle is easily the best of the ‘debut dozen’ selections. This amazing novel has the complexity, the brilliance and the sheer narrative power of the work by Salman Rushdie. Boxer Beetle moves like lightning; the speed of the plot is quite breathtaking and it is very, very funny throughout.
Take Ned Beauman’s characters: they are so weird and horrible as to be completely unforgettable. There’s the brutal nine-toed boxer Seth Roach, who is invincible in the ring but viciously gay – and the man-eating species of Beetle (anaphthalmus Hitleri) which bears the mark of a Swastika on its back and is accepted as a gift by Adolf Hitler…..not to mention the ultimate geek Kevin who carries the repellent stink of the Fish Malodour Syndrome (trimethylaminuria) sufferer.
Ned Beauman weaves an intricate plot full of action and incident that includes some extraordinarily erotic scenes of gay sex. The book opens with a vision of Goebbels’ birthday party, pauses to accommodate the odd murder, offers a passing nod to collectors of Nazi memorabilia, pops over to the wilds of Poland seeking the Hitler beetle and ends with the horrid beetles eating the Welsh assassin alive. In fact Ned Beauman finds his own novel so irresistible that he insinuates his real self into it (in the style of Alfred Hitchcock) as a respondent to an email alert.
It would be wrong to say that Ned Beauman is a promising new writer. The promise has already been delivered in the swashbuckling pages of Boxer Beetle. We eagerly look forward to his next novel.
Fixing Britain by Lord Digby Jones
John Wiley £18.99
Every so often across the millennia a voice of reason is heard, advising the ruler of the day. Famously and enduringly Plato published a critique of democratic Athens in his ‘The Republic’; Aristotle formed the political mind of Alexander the Great, Kautilya wrote his famous political and military philosophy ‘The Arthashastra’ to guide Indian Emperor Chandragupta; Niccolo Machiavelli recorded his strictures on how a country should be run in ‘The Prince.’
And today we have the blueprint for economic recovery from Lord Digby Jones, ‘Fixing Britain.’
Move over Machiavelli
Machiavelli has been described as the father of modern political theory - Digby Jones emerges as a consummate realist, the 21st century voice of Britain’s economic, political and social situation on the domestic and the global fronts. Machiavelli's Il Principe was written after he was removed from all positions of responsibility - finding a parallel with Lord Jones’ present fallow period where he plays no significant public role.
‘Fixing Britain’ is a prescriptive book, an analysis of the ills that beset us, our past mistakes—and a clear laying down of the course we must follow to win back our economic dignity and our social self-respect.
Digby Jones has been visible on the national and international politico-economic stage for over two decades as a charismatic speaker with fearless views and an insistent voice on the subject of the excellence of the British product and person.
But Lord Jones is no airy-fairy theorist. His strictures are the result of long years at the hub of modern business life ---completely pragmatic in their form and content.
One-man Opposition
Lord Jones’ clear eyed vision of contemporary Britain is buttressed by a refusal to be influenced or limited by the traditional methodology—he is a one man Opposition to hide-bound establishment. He eschews the limitations of narrow political aims and refuses to be hogtied by the appalling obstructionism of the elephantine civil service machine.
Digby Jones is a hero of modern Britain. ‘Fixing Britain’ is about repairing the mess politicians and governments have made of our lives. It holds a mirror to our own failings as well and offers a rescue package of warnings and hints.
Not a Panacea
In no way am I suggesting that Lord Digby Jones’ book offers a cure-all, a panacea for all our ills. Like all similar treatises through recorded history, it has its failings, its bias, its weaknesses.
What ‘Fixing Britain’ does is to stimulate not just debate, but also change - and hopefully, some positive action.
2011 WINNER of the Orange Prize for Fiction
Téa Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife
The Orange Prize for Fiction is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman. Celebrating its sixteenth anniversary this year, the Prize rewards excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world
The 2011 shortlist was:
Emma Donoghue (Irish) - Room; Picador
Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) - The Memory of Love; Bloomsbury
Emma Henderson (British) - Grace Williams Says it Loud; Sceptre
Nicole Krauss (American) - Great House; Viking
Téa Obreht (Serbian/American) - The Tiger’s Wife; Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Kathleen Winter (Canadian) - Annabel; Jonathan Cape
