Page-turners from Jo Brand, Darren Harriott, Neil Morrissey and Nina Wadia

1 June 2022

Highlights on this week's Between the Covers include: Jo Brand on reliving history's big moments through eyewitness accounts; Neil Morrissey's pick is a page-turning Booker Prize-winner; Darren Harriot brings a book reflecting on how to live your life; and Nina Wadia suggests a compelling mystery in Lahore. Darren's mind is “blown” by Big Jubilee Read selection The Handmaid's Tale.

Each week we reveal the favourite books brought in by guests on Between the Covers. In the fourth episode of the current series, Jo Brand, Darren Harriott, Neil Morrissey and Nina Wadia each give Sara Cox a new reading recommendation.

Episode 4 - Favourite books from our guests

The cover says: The Faber Book of Reportage is John Carey’s remarkable collection of eyewitness accounts that draws on the voices and emotions of the people who experienced some of history’s most memorable events.

Jo says: “It's eyewitness accounts from history, starting with Vesuvius and going through to the downfall of President Marcos in the Philippines in about the mid-'80s. It's just so fascinating and it's the sort of book you can pick up and put down, because there are short pieces in there and much longer pieces.

For example, there's a brilliant piece from about 1350, which is all about women going to jail; this group of very rowdy women who would go to jail, dressed up as knights, and just cause trouble! And there's some gruesome stuff in it as well: One which is seared on my brain is a description by the writer Fanny Burney, in Paris in the 18th century, of having a mastectomy without anaesthetic.

To me the most moving one in there is an interview with a 23-year-old woman in Victorian times who'd worked in this particular factory since she was seven and it had really affected her; she had terrible disabilities from it, and it's just so sad, so moving. There’s funny stuff, interesting stuff, loads of brilliant stuff really.”

The cover says: With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways.

Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, he explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.

Darren says: “I love this book because it talks about how you want to be remembered in your life. I went through a phase where I was so self-obsessed with my career, trying to make it, and I became very unhappy.

In this book, David Brooks talks about these two Adams from the Genesis creation story: He talks about ‘Adam One’; he is the one that we all know, he wants to be popular, wants to win, wants to produce. Then he talks about ‘Adam Two’; he is a little bit more fuzzy: ‘Adam Two’ is the one who does good deeds, doesn't expect anything back, is more focused on who they are as a person, how they can help people and how they can get happiness from helping others rather than just chasing happiness. It gives loads of great details.

There are also essays about different people who have listened to their moral courage and gone out there and found their vocation, for example Eisenhower. And Francis Perkins, who was the first woman to be in the US cabinet, what she did to become who she is. It's definitely helped me.”

The cover says: After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding.

For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the fault-lines in their relationship.

Neil says: “It's absolutely breathtaking. It deserves every prize because [as well as winning the Booker Prize, Coetzee] won the Pulitzer Prize for the body of work that he produced as well.

What is it about? There's a distinguished professor who teaches poetry and literature in the university in Cape Town. But he's also a bit of a sex addict. He's had two failed marriages because of his affairs. He has had affairs with his students throughout his tenure as a professor.

But that's not really what the book is about. You’re getting set up by this character, who then has an affair which comes back at him and he gets fired because he won't apologise for what he's done, so his job is untenable for him and he goes off to visit his daughter who lives in the countryside on the Eastern Cape in the middle of nowhere. She has chosen this life of hippiedom living on a small-holding, but she's in a dangerous place and then something happens, an awful, awful incident that focuses you.

It’s a proper page-turner. You can read it in two days. You can read it in a single day with a good old sit-down.”

The cover says: Sent back to his birthplace - Lahore’s notorious red-light district - to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past.

Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore’s walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl.

Nina says: “It’s set in the Red Light District in Lahore in Pakistan and Aamina Ahmad brings it to life, she is a very vivid writer. One of the main protagonists is this lovely woman, who is the sister of Faraz Ali. She was an actress for a while, but then the work didn't work out so she ended up having to work in the ‘dance halls’ in Pakistan and then of course you're handed out to the men.

You can actually see the world so quickly within the first few pages that you go, ‘Okay, now who's Faraz? When's he coming back? And what's happening?’ You just want to know. It's one of those books where the pages just turn and you flip through.

I knew about the dance halls because of the movies I used to watch when I was younger, but to see it written down, it's so much more real to you. You fall in love with this woman because you realise there is no escape for these women. It's either this life and her even slightly breaking out of it as an actress, you know, to have that opportunity and then it's all taken away again. I kind of related to her a bit as well, and just all these moments of her just feeling like she had so much to give but then was so degraded.”