Irish Times writers review the latest paperbacks
Slow Man By JM Coetzee Vintage, £7.99
With the collapse of apartheid, JM Coetzee, long revered in his homeland, lost favour with the ANC through his truthful depiction in Disgrace of the new South Africa - and moved to Australia. He was then awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. Coetzee is one of the world's finest writers. This deceptively simple narrative concerns an ageing, self-contained, divorced man who loses his leg in a freak accident. His loss opens his mind and heart to learning to live and feel, before it is too late. Coetzee's daring handling of an everyday story of personal disaster is never less than pitch perfect, relentlessly human and often very funny. Not only does he explore the inner turmoil of the newly vulnerable central character but also evokes the ordinary, complex lives of his Croatian home nurse - with whom he becomes infatuated - and her teenage son and daughter. Eileen Battersby
James Connolly by Donal Nevin Gill and Macmillan, 16.99
What an extraordinary generation of young men emerged at the end of the 19th century to lead the Irish independence movement - and none more so than James Connolly. This is a breathtaking work of scholarship. The great themes of Connolly's life are thoroughly explored, especially the tension between nationalism and socialism that existed throughout his public life and became especially acute near the end. And one gains insight into the multi-faceted personality of the man who has too often been treated by biographers as an icon. How shattering it was for him to witness his beloved proletariat all over Europe willingly submerge themselves in the bloodbath of the first World War. The book is based on Connolly's own writings. Nevin presents the evidence and allows readers to judge for themselves. Brian Maye
Under Arrest: A History of the Twentieth Century in Mugshots By Giacomo Papi Granta, £10
The 20th century is over, but it's obsession with fame, infamy and the image grows stronger at every turn, from warts-and-all celebrity magazines to news images of captured dictators and torture victims. Italian journalist Giacomo Papi understands this compulsion, and in this wonderful book lays it bare via a series of mugshots that freeze their subjects in time, representatives of their own history and of a wider one. Beginning with a mesmerising portrait of Martin Luther King, the sequence winds back and forth across 150 years, from assassins to serial killers and mass murderers, from Victorian-era prostitutes to rock stars and gangsters, from Hollywood icons to Holocaust victims. Snapped at the nadir of their humiliation and fear, or the zenith of their pride or defiance, each face stares back with vitality, and comes further to life when illuminated by Papi's sparse, enlightening prose. A coffee-table gem, and much more besides. John Lane
Dancing in the Dark By Caryl Phillips Vintage Books, £7.99
In this touching and eloquent novel, Caryl Phillips resurrects the life of Bert Williams, one of the US's most popular entertainers of the early 1900s. Born in the Bahamas, Williams moves to the US with his family, where he takes to the stage to "play the coon". Applying black face make-up, the quiet, dignified Williams becomes a childish, clumsy character on stage, playing "the white man's idea of a nigger". Despite thunderous applause each night, Williams knows his white audience will never give him respect. Using shifting points of view, excerpts from reviews and other historical material, Phillips builds a fascinating, tragic picture of the struggles faced by Williams and his partner, George Walker. Their tomfoolery act is up against their white, racist counterparts in the theatre world, and is derided by many in the black community. Phillips brilliantly recreates the world of this solitary, troubled character. Sorcha Hamilton
Well-Remembered Friends: Eulogies on Celebrated Lives Collected by Angela Huth John Murray, £8.99
In our occasionally dispiriting culture we sometimes seem to wallow in the worst of each other, which makes this fabulous collection of eulogies particularly satisfying. In her introduction, Angela Huth quotes the late Lord Longford's eulogy for a friend he once teased as a shameless name-dropper, only to be told: "Funny you should say that, the Queen Mother has just said the same thing." And given that the Lord was not widely known for his humour, consider that Auberon Waugh and Peter Cook are among the 110 celebrated lives remembered here. There's Laurence Olivier by Alec Guinness, WH Auden by Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney on Ted Hughes, and the occasional lesser-known mortal. If death is the leveller, here it is the reveller and the very last word in name-dropping. John Moran
Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of a Conscience By Richard Francis Harper Perennial, £8.99
Samuel Sewall was a public man - printer, politician, anti-slavery campaigner and vivid diarist. As a judge, he was implicated in the hysteria that gripped second-generation New England in 1692, when the people of Salem became convinced that the Devil had been "making war in our Plantations by Witchcrafts". Sewall was later the only one of nine judges to "take the Blame & Shame of it, Asking pardon of Men". Francis argues that Sewall's life represents the creation of a modern individual, taking responsibility for his actions, from a society which saw life as an allegorical battle between good and evil. The judge's diaries support this view. But equally, the digressive nature of Sewall's diaries resists any strict structure. This is a history of the Salem trials, and also a rich, insightful and enjoyable biography. Ralph Benson