WITH NEW NOVELS by Peter Carey and David Mitchell due on the shelves and collections from Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami and Martin Amis, 2006 looks set to be another vintage year for fiction (and a Harry Potter-free zone). The biggest event comes in September with the release of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code sequel, The Solomon Key - which is likely to be one of the most hyped books in history. Will it live up to its billing? Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, which sold more than a million authorised copies in the mainland, arrives in December, Penguin having paid a record fee for the translation rights. As well, there are much-anticipated debuts by newcomers Gautam Malkani and Michael Cox.
A rich vein of non-fiction runs though the year. Biographies range from Hollywood bad girl Ava Gardner to gentleman explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger. There's a memoir from Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, and A Night at the Majestic recalls an extraordinary dinner party one May evening in Paris in 1922. In April, Seamus Heaney lifts the spirits with a new poetry volume. You can catch the Nobel laureate in person at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival in March. Julia Lovell gives us the authoritative history of the Great Wall, and Melvyn Bragg has something to chew on with his selection of 12 books that changed the world.
Here are the Sunday Morning Post's 50 books to watch out for in 2006:
GENERAL
Civilisation: A New History of the Western World
By Roger Osborne
Jonathan Cape (January)
