Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction by Jerry Brotton
North, south, east and west, says the always informative Jerry Brotton, are “established markers of not just where we are in the world, but who we are”. The cardinal directions had a firm hold on human consciousness at an extraordinarily early date: the first known record of them is a clay tablet made in what is now Iraq and dating from around 2300 BC, which marks them as the direction of winds. It was with the discovery of the compass in China in the second century BC that these signifiers became more tangible entities.
Brotton’s fascinating global history takes in science, meteorology and cultural perceptions. He notes, for example, that east was privileged by many societies because that was where the sun rose, while for Christianity it was the site of creation. For the ancient Egyptians, south held special meaning because the Nile flowed from there. For Zoroastrians north was the domain of hell. West meanwhile is a paradox: the place where the sun sets but a place of new beginnings too. The cardinal points, he says, no longer seem quite so fixed – the dominance of the west and north is under pressure from the east.
By Michael Prodger
Allen Lane, 208pp, £20
My Roman Year by André Aciman
André Aciman revisits the familiar setting of Rome in this memoir. Yet this time it’s not the romanticised, love-tinted place found in his novels Call Me by Your Name or Find Me. Instead, it’s the working-class 1960s city where the Aciman family lived after they were expelled from Alexandria, his hometown, for being Jewish.
Aciman’s characteristic roman d’analyse style of writing allows the memoir to read like a novel with carefully recorded conversations, minute descriptions and analyses of the behaviours of those around him, be it his deaf mother’s eruptions of anger or the almost comical comportment of his great-uncle, Claude.
Though the story is at times amusing, just below the surface lies generational trauma and displacement, which has been masterfully woven into the narrative. Aciman’s ancestors have been ostracised and faced recurring expulsion: he cannot place himself as Turkish, French, Egyptian or Italian; he “didn’t belong to this planet, its people, its time”, and describes his and his Aunt Flora’s inability to fit in with those around them as being like “aliens among earthlings”. Compelling and witty, My Roman Year gives a touching insight into the influences of André Aciman’s well-loved literary world.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Faber & Faber, 368pp, £22
The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality by Hanno Sauer
Ever since humans started roaming the Earth, every advancement has come at a cost. Being able to communicate and cooperate is objectively an invaluable commodity, though how we leverage that – to action good or evil – is at the discretion of the individual. The cold truth is that the history of humanity is a panopticon of brutality and pain that is often strategically advantageous but ethically deplorable.
Our morality, the professor and philosopher Hanno Sauer posits, is a palimpsest: a mere half-torn piece of paper that’s been scribbled on (and over) time and again. It’s often illegible and difficult to decipher. But in his attempt to chronicle its genealogy, Sauer traces humankind’s most fundamental moral transformations from our earliest ancestors in East Africa adopting punitive behaviour to punish wrongdoers to today, where egalitarianism has been replaced with hierarchism in response to governing our ever-sprawling societies. Sauer’s ability to withhold condemnation of the innate reprehensibility of man is a testament to his capacity to show that there are two sides to everything.
By Zoë Huxford
Simon & Schuster, 416pp, £23
Neverland: The Pleasures and Perils of Fandom by Vanessa Kisuule
This may be the most clichéd and tawdry question of the 21st century: how should we feel about good art made by bad people? One of the biggest films last year – Tár – considered the topic. Picasso, Philip Roth, WB Yeats have all been treated to the interrogation. And now, a new book has come along to reheat these familiar lines, but this time with Michael Jackson as the subject.
Neverland at least aspires to a mode of originality that cannot be found in its subject matter. It is part memoir, part fiction, written in a way that clearly cares little for formal convention. The author, Vanessa Kisuule, is a spoken-word poet, and it shows. Her prose is lively but can veer into the nonsensical (“his eyes are shiny with fervour” and “Michael Jackson’s music isn’t a meal” might work on a stage but certainly don’t in paperback).
Neverland shines in its simplest moments, as a straightforward love letter to music. It is frustrating that so much cultural criticism feels compelled to address the good art/bad people moral quandary. Sometimes, just writing about the songs is enough.
By Finn McRedmond
Canongate, 272pp, £18.99
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This article appears in the 04 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Starmer under fire