You couldn't make it up

Stephanie Merritt takes a look at the latest publishing trend - intelligent non-fiction

While most agents and publishers will probably have spent December scouting for the next Lynne Truss after the unexpected success of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, her quirky little book about punctuation, a glance at the forthcoming books for the spring confirms that the appetite for intelligent, accessible non-fiction aimed at the layperson is growing. In particular, the history of modern social trends is increasingly popular (Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point is often credited with popularising the genre), and both Philip Ball's Critical Mass (Heinemann, January) and James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds (Little, Brown, May) offer analyses of human behaviour that blend contemporary economics, sociology and psychology, while Ethan Watters's Urban Tribes (Bloomsbury, March) is a Sex-and-the-City style study of how the increasing number of singles is changing the structure of society away from the traditional family. And the idea of the classless society is well and truly dead; two new studies on the importance we accord to status and the attendant anxiety it causes suggest it is one of the fastest-growing modern diseases. Status Anxiety by urbane philosopher Alain de Botton (Hamish Hamilton, April) will tie in with a television series on the same theme, while Michael Marmot's Status Syndrome is based on 25 years' worth of research and argues that status has far-reaching effects on health and longevity.

The memoir genre is one that shows no sign of flagging, though it is perhaps heartening to see publishers taking an interest in the life stories of those who have struggled in environments we can barely imagine, rather than the slew of poor-old-me confessionals that have been so prevalent in recent years. In the former category appears Slave by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis (Virago, January), which tells of a 12-year-old Sudanese girl's experience of slavery and subsequent escape; Samira and Samir by Siba Shakib (Century, May), the story of an Afghan girl raised as a boy, who must choose whether to give up the independence of her male identity so that she can marry her lover; The Diary of Ma Yan (Virago, June), a Chinese peasant girl's true account of how she fought to become educated, and The Bone Woman by Clea Koff (Atlantic Books, March), a foren sic anthropologist's account of the Rwandan genocide.

Also publishing memoirs, though of a very different kind, are Joan Didion, George Carey and Janet Street-Porter, all of whom look back on intriguing careers in, respectively, Where I Was From (Flamingo, March), Know The Truth (Flamingo, April) and My Childhood Memoir (Headline, May).

Fiction publishing this year will miss the flurry of publicity it enjoyed with the announcement of the Granta list of Best Young British Novelists last year, particularly in terms of the attention drawn to new writers such as Monica Ali and Adam Thirlwell, but there are plenty of new novels and collections to look forward to, both from newcomers and established names.

Colm Tóibín, Iain Sinclair, James Kelman, Hari Kunzru, Alan Hollinghurst and Jeanette Winterson all have new novels coming out this spring and - although it seems depressingly early to start speculating - all have a good chance of appearing - or, in most of the above cases, reappearing - on a major prize shortlist. Meanwhile, multicultural Britain remains fertile ground for fiction writers; Nadeem Aslam's Maps For Lost Lovers (Faber, June) is set in a Pakistani community in an English city and is being compared to Brick Lane. Translated literature also appears to be gathering popularity; aside from the wealth of European writers championed by Harvill Press, there are three acclaimed novels by Chinese writers - Ma Jian's The Noodle Maker (Chatto, January), Xialuo Guo's The Village of Stone (Chatto, April) and Su Tong's My Life As Emperor (Faber, June) - as well as bestsellers from Italy (Alessandro Baricco's Without Blood , Canongate, April), Spain (Pablo Tusset's The Best Thing That Can Happen To A Croissant , Canongate, January) and Turkey (Impac prize-winner Orhan Pamuk's Snow , Faber, April).

The short story is never the most successful form in this country, but two excellent practitioners of the art, Julian Barnes and American ZZ Packer, both have collections due (respectively, The Lemon Tree, Cape, March and Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Canongate, February) that may yet defy that trend.

Finally, it remains de rigueur for well-known comedians to produce novels, and Jo Brand brings out her first, Sorting Out Billy (Headline) in May, while David Baddiel has a third, The Secret Purposes (Little Brown) due in July, though they should take care not to become complacent; 23-year-old stand-up comic Mark Watson publishes his accomplished first novel, Bullet Points (Chatto), this month.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/04/features.review2
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