The SLMan Culture List – April

David Thulstrup: A Sense of Place is the first monograph on the award-winning Danish architect and designer. The book traces Thulstrup’s life and influences – from his childhood and education in Denmark right up to the present day – and reveals his unique approach to design in a series of case studies. Thulstrup is one of the most talented and prolific Danish designers of his generation. Today, his studio designs everything from residential architecture to restaurants, retail spaces, hotels, furniture and lighting for brands including Georg Hensen, HAY, VIPP and Royal Copenhagen. Thulstrup is particularly celebrated for designing the interior and bespoke furniture for the new home of Noma restaurant in Copenhagen. More recently, his design for Ikoyi in London was voted Best Restaurant at the Wallpaper 2023 Design Awards.

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From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism. October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option – a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants – but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found. In this gripping and shocking novel, Éric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France’s prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. As well as bringing scenes from the battlefields to life, Vuillard looks to the cold calculations of a boardroom elite with the power to turn a military win or loss to their financial gain.

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This is the final novel Javier Marías completed before his death last year. Spain in the 1990s is beset by a simmering campaign of terror from Basque separatists ETA, with periodic atrocities shattering an illusory calm. Against this backdrop, retired British Secret Service member Tomás Nevinson – now living a quiet life in his hometown Madrid – is approached by his sinister former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold, for one last assignment. His mission: to go back undercover, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is an ETA terrorist, on loan from the IRA, now on the run and living there incognito. Everything about the assignment is shadowy – from who exactly Nevinson will be working for to the question of what 'justice' he may need to mete out if he is somehow able to unmask one of the three women. But, still in his 40s and lured by the appeal of being on the inside once more, he accepts the job…

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From the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, this is a novel about guilt, rage, imagination and boyhood. It’s the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. He is wandering into the night, listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him. He is escaping Last Chance, a home for ‘very disturbed young men’, and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future. Like Max Porter’s previous novels, this is a heavy read, but one you won’t forget.

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Sean's brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids, their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can't say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony's drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos. Close to Home witnesses the aftermath of that night, as Sean attempts to make sense of who he has become, and to reckon with the relationships that have shaped him, for better and worse.

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This is a hugely entertaining romp through the beautiful city of Lviv, by the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, who is now reporting widely on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his home country. Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv. A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv cemetery – among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the “anomalies”. Meanwhile, Taras – who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra – is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money. They young lovers don’t know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait of one of the world’s most intriguing cities.

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From the international bestselling author of Killers Of The Flower Moon (soon to be a Martin Scorsese-directed film) and The Lost City Of Z, this is a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were 30 emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a treasure-filled Spanish galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than 100 days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. Then, six months later, another even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The 30 sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers.

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