Review: The Saladin Murders

By Matt Rees
Atlantic, £11.99

Morse, Rebus... and now Yussef,” raved The Observer in its assessment of Matt Rees’s first foray into fiction, The Bethlehem Murders (now available as a £6.99 paperback). I can’t say I agreed with The Observer then, but on the basis of his second novel, The Saladin Murders, Rees’s hero, Omar Yussef, is becoming more and more likeable — even if no better as a detective.

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Review: Beaufort

By Ron Leshem
Harvill Secker, £12.99

For a country so dominated by conflict, Israel has produced remarkably little literature about its wars. Only two major books have been written about the near-defeat of 1973, for example. And Beaufort, Ron Leshem’s powerful book about the retreat from Lebanon in 2000, was rejected by several publishers. He was repeatedly told that the public was not ready to confront this traumatic episode in its recent history.

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When blame hits history

Journey to Nowhere
By Eva Figes
Granta, £14.99

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Wonder boy - and author

Howard McNamee, the Glaswegian protagonist of The Truth About These Strange Times by Adam Foulds (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99), is 28, overweight and a towel collector in a gym. Until his mother’s recent death, he lived with her and now returns home each night to talk to her, addressing the clothes hanging in her wardrobe.

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Review: Waltenberg

By Hedi Kaddour (Trans: David Coward)
Harvill Secker, £20

Part spy-thriller, part novel of ideas, Hedi Kaddour’s huge, ambitious novel takes on the history of the 20th century, from the First World War to 1991. It tells the epic story of the dream of Communism and its failure through the lives of a group of French and German intellectuals, some of whom turn out to be spies. Being a French novel, though, it is as interested in discussing Flaubert and Marx as it is in espionage.

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Qaradawi predicts a Muslim apocalypse

The unexpurgated views of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi about Israel, Jews, Zionism and Palestine have been revealed for the first time in an English translation of a book he wrote in Arabic four years ago.

In a compilation of 14 rulings on various aspects of the Middle East conflict called Fatawa on Palestine, or “Rulings on Palestine”, the Islamic scholar feted by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone predicts an apocalyptic final battle between all Jews and all Muslims that would presage the day of judgement.

Mr Qaradawi believes that:

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Bibi plans ‘comeback book’ on the economy

Likud Leader Binyamin Netanyahu is preparing to bring out an autobiographical book on his term as Israel’s Finance Minister as part of his plan to rehabilitate his image and sweep back to power in the next elections.

The new book, expected to come out towards the end of summer, deals with the reasons that Israel’s economy is booming, despite a lack of natural resources and devoting a significant portion of its GDP to security costs.

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Review: On The Other Hand

By Chaim Bermant
Vallentine Mitchell, £17.95

Chaim Bermant, who died 10 years ago, wrote a weekly column for the Jewish Chronicle for more than 30 years. One of the most admired journalists of his time, he was looked up to not only in Furnival Street but also in Fleet Street.

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I'm happy to be mummy's boy

William Sutcliffe is a novelist concerned to celebrate an important relationship

William Sutcliffe is not anticipating a call from the compilers of the Man Booker Prize shortlist for his new novel, Whatever Makes You Happy (Bloomsbury £10.99). “If you are writing about young people, you are disqualified from every literary prize,” Sutcliffe claims. “You are also disqualified if you are funny, use lots of dialogue, or write about contemporary Britain — everything I tend to do.”

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Review: 1948: The First Arab-Israeli war

By Benny Morris
Yale University Press, £25

Writers and scholars (myself included) have tended to ignore, or dismiss, the jihadi character of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and to regard the Arab rhetoric that accompanied their assault on the Jewish community and state as empty words.

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