Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over the latest batch of paperbacks.
The Gate
François Bizot, translated by Euan Cameron
Vintage, £7.99
In 1971, French ethnologist Bizot was captured and imprisoned for three months by the Khmer Rouge in a remote camp in Cambodia. Four years later, he faced his captors again in his role as intermediary between those seeking sanctuary in the French embassy in Phnom Penh and the conquering revolutionaries. Bizot's rich and detailed memoir strikes deep into the heart of a nation torn apart by its own people, ripped to shreds by its intelligentsia following their ideological principles to the bitter, savage end. Through his the gripping exchanges with his main interrogator, Douch, Bizot enables us to see the eventual tragedy that was to befall Cambodia as a human one, caused not by some innate evil but by misguided ideals and foreign influence. His story is haunted by the desperate calls of those stuck outside the embassy gates, victims of the Khmer Rouge's terrible vision. He writes to inform, to condemn and to make sense of the "hellish call" which "fuels the memory".
Tom Cooney
Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
Atlantic Books, £7.99
It has become quite the fashion to have survived an outrageously dysfunctional upbringing, but Augusten Burroughs's stands out from the heap of memoirs. It begins with the quick, violent disintegration of his parents' marriage; which, as he points out, makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf a kind of Burroughs home movie. His mother has a breakdown, so she hands Augusten over to her therapist, who is head of a household of shocking squalor, in which extreme levels of personal responsibility are bolstered by extreme levels of medication, and where the teenage Burroughs ends up in a sexual relationship with the doctor's 33-year-old adopted son. Horrible and unsettling as the story is, Burroughs describes it all with breathless humour and marvellous prose.
Shane Hegarty
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig,
John Gimlette
Arrow Books, £7.99
In this part travelogue, part history of Paraguay, the author visits sites where Indian tribes made war on each other; Spanish conquistadors made war - and love - on Indians; the progeny of both made suicidal wars on powerful neighbours, once - led by magnificent Irish courtesan Eliza Lynch - against an alliance of Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, in which Paraguay lost 80 per cent of its menfolk. Gimlette tells of chronic political instability, diabolical dictators such as Alfredo Stroessner, and endemic lawlessness, which made Paraguay the bolthole of choice for A-list fugitives such as Dr Josef Mengele and Anastasio Somoza. All of this is "far removed from the fish-ponds of Runymede", notes the talented, first-time author, who tells a ripping yarn. An over-jokey touch, however, sometimes makes a lead balloon of the Inflatable Pig.
John Moran
Reefer Madness and Other Tales from the American Underground
Eric Schlosser
Penguin £7.99
In an investigative journey through the labyrinth of the American underworld, Schlosser (the author of Fast Food Nation) delves behind the nebulous undergrowth of myth, government press release and judicial spin, in search of the rising skies of marijuana production, exploited migrant workers and the consumerism of the burgeoning porn industry. A fascinating exploration of the role and ideology of the American state, trying to balance the limits and excesses of a free market economy with the individual's constitutional rights and society's right to prosecute. In a world of overwhelming commercialism Schlosser questions the lack of consistency that undermines the integrity of legislative, governmental and public intervention, while arguing for fewer laws, strictly enforced.
Paul O'Doherty
20:21 Vision
Bill Emmott
Penguin, £7.99
Here, the editor of The Economist reviews the 20th century and what possible lessons or direction it contains for the 21st. Fusing an encyclopaedic knowledge of politics, economics and history, Emmott gives an essential overview of the contemporary world. His chapter on China explains how the West is salivating at the thought of such an immense unexploited market, but calmly points out that the majority of the country's people are poor; he sees the notion of a worldwide population explosion as misguided, with UN statistics showing a drop in fertility rates and AIDS ravaging the population centres of Africa. On Africa, there is no hand-wringing; rather, he points to the fact that in the 1950s, the area with the gloomiest economic outlook was Asia, and its phenomenal growth can be replicated. This is profound, inspired and optimistic discourse.
Laurence Mackin
Atatürk
Andrew Mango
John Murray, £12.99
It is difficult to disentangle fact and legend in the story of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, but Andrew Mango makes a pretty good attempt. An intensely shy boy, Mustafa Kemal took with gusto to the new westernising ways penetrating his native Salonica. Long military training strengthened tendencies towards independence and dominance in his character. He served in Libya against the Italians, in Gallipoli and the Caucasus during the first World War, but was still comparatively unknown when he emerged in 1919 to lead the Turkish war of independence. He abolished the monarchy and established a republic in which he had supreme power. But he sought to use that power to turn Turkey into a western state. He deserves his fame as the hero of women's emancipation in Turkey, although change was inevitably gradual and limited.
Brian Maye