THE CARTEL is the sequel to the novel THE POWER OF THE DOG, which I talked about here a couple of weeks ago. I tore through THE CARTEL in a little over a week. And it’s a big bloody book. But Winslow’s drug-war epic just sinks its teeth in and drags me along, every time. It’s got that vast, powerful flow of constant Events, big things happening all the time, as you’d find in, say, the novels of Tom Clancy or others of that style — the difference here is that Don Winslow is such a good writer that everything that happens genuinely matters, there is honest investment in the characters, and the threat level is never less than Oh Shit Everybody Is Actually Going To Die He’s Not Screwing Around Here. For pure entertainment vice, there’s been nothing to beat THE CARTEL this year.

THE CARTEL, Don Winslow: (UK) (US)

 

ZONE by Mathias Enard. It’s 500 pages long and, so far, appears to be one long single sentence. A stream-of-consciousness meditation on the Mediterranean, war and crime. The language, in translation by Charlotte Mandell, is quite magnificent. It’s a train ride through hell inside the head of a stoned and horror-addled madman, exhilarating in its ambition and conception, and I’m having a great time with it right now.

ZONE, Mathias Enard: (UK) (US)

NEO-NIHILISM by Peter Sjöstedt-H, a short tract intended to reframe nihilism as a sane and kind response to the external world. It’s short, but extremely careful in its language, very compressed and focused. It does start from an atheist perspective, as it’s largely about finding the edges of the layered power structures in the world, so buyer beware. I thought it was a marvellous statement.

NEO-NIHILISM, Peter Sjöstedt-H (UK) (US)

 

A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO DERRIDA is good. Very comfortable prose, arranged with both character and clarity. I’m one of those people who kind of bounced off much of Derrida at some point, never read him deeply, and decided recently it was time for another shot. And then this book crossed my radar, and thought that it might be a useful tool for the purpose. And it’s very enjoyable, combining theory with biography and anecdote to create what feels like a well-rounded read while being exhaustively argued.

A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO DERRIDA, Simon Glendinning (UK) (US)