Autumn 2021 Catalogue

HAUS PUBLISHING NEW BOOKS JULY–DECEMBER 2021

Our highlights this autumn include the first biography of Ahmad Shah Massoud in English, by the legendary broadcaster Sandy Gall. As the Taliban once again become the dominant force in Afghan politics, the life of their avowed opponent is especially pertinent. Reading Afghan Napoleon, you cannot help but believe that the devastating recent history of Afghanistan could have been very different had Massoud not been assassinated days before 9/11.

We’re proud to be publishing the latest book by German writer Jens Mühling.

His new travelogue, Troubled Water, is a fascinating account of a journey around the Black Sea coast. Mühling’s insight and his gift for the seemingly fortuitous encounter saw his Journey into Russia shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Prize in 2015, and this new work does not disappoint.

If you're a walker, the chances are you’ll have followed a route first plotted

by Christopher Somerville. For years, his walks in national newspapers and elsewhere – so full of evocative descriptions of the British landscape – have been avidly followed by a legion of fans. The View from the Hill collects his best writing in a single volume for the first time.

Taking the Battle of Navarino of 1827 as his starting point, former foreign secretary David Owen explores two centuries of British–Russian relations in Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma. This eventful history, never before written with such ambitious scope, is a story of mutual suspicion, geopolitical rivalry, uneasy alliance, competing ideologies, and imperial decline.

These are just a few of our new books this autumn – you'll find many more in the following pages. We hope you enjoy reading them and thank you for your continued support.

AFGHAN NAPOLEON The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud

Sandy Gall Introduction by Rory Stewart £25.00 September 2021 Biography / Afghan History Hbk | 346 pages 38 colour illustrations, 2 maps p: 978-1-913368-22-7 e: 978-1-913368-23-4

‘A remarkable and emotionally affecting portrait of one of the most successful and brilliant soldiers of the modern world and a magnificent statesman.’ — John Simpson When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the poorly equipped and organised resistance groups were no competition for the superpower. The exception was Ahmad Shah Massoud. This now-legendary military strategist and resistance leader unified the mujahideen forces in north-eastern Afghanistan and led a series of decisive victories against the Russian army.

Sandy Gall reported from Afghanistan at length, spending weeks at a time with Massoud during key moments in the conflict. He now draws on his own memories, exclusive excerpts from Massoud’s diaries, and interviews with the commander’s closest allies to provide an intimate portrait of the charismatic guerrilla leader.

Gall’s insights cast fascinating new light on Massoud’s personal and military struggles. This authoritative biography consolidates Massoud’s reputation as a national hero of Afghanistan.

Sandy Gall is a British journalist, author, and former ITN newscaster. His journalism career includes Aberdeen’s Press and Journal, Reuters, and ITN, for whom he covered wars and revolutions around the world. He has written four books about Afghanistan and made three documentaries about the Soviet occupation, two of which were nominated for BAFTA awards.

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TROUBLED WATER A Journey Around the Black Sea

Jens Mühling Translated by Simon Pare £16.99 October 2021 Travel Hbk | 308 pages p: 978-1-913368-26-5 e: 978-1-909961-77-7

‘In this brilliant and humane journey, Jens Mühling explores the nations, societies, and minorities jostling passionately around the Black Sea.’ — Neal Ascherson Dramatic conflicts, migrating populations, changing fortunes. Decades of political and cultural pressure under communism. The encroachment of climate change and globalisation. For centuries, the Black Sea has been at the centre of a shifting kaleidoscope of stories.

Visiting every country around the coast, Jens Mühling explores nations both ancient and nascent, connecting with local people and landscapes, following their stories, and discovering the startling sights of this multifaceted region. He portrays minority populations who vie proudly for respect and autonomy, and depicts a region of never-ending social and ecological transformation – from gradual evolutions to the stark shockwaves of displacements and invasions. Ultimately, Mühling shows the peoples and places of this region are much like the sea around which they converge: restless, enigmatic, underestimated, and captivating.

Jens Mühling has worked as a foreign reporter for German newspapers and magazines for two decades. His features and essays on Eastern Europe have won him several awards, and his travelogue A Journey into Russia was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award in 2015.

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THE VIEW FROM THE HILL Four Seasons in a Walkerʼs Britain

Christopher Somerville £16.99 September 2021 Walking / Nature Hbk | 408 pages p: 978-1-909961-76-0 e: 978-1-909961-79-1

‘Somerville is a walker’s writer. The countryside has never been more inviting and this is the book to make you reach for your rambling shoes.’ — Nicholas Crane During the enforced idleness of the Covid-19 pandemic, Christopher Somerville revisited the 450 notebooks whose pages contain the accumulated thoughts and experiences of a career spent exploring Britain on foot over four decades.

The View from the Hill pulls together the cream of this unique crop, following the cycle of the seasons from a freezing January to a Christmas sunrise. In between are hundreds of walks that take in magnificent flora and fauna, ancient traditions and folklore, and geological peculiarities and wonders – all narrated with moving and humorous sensitivity.

There’s no need to move from your chair to go walking in Christopher’s company. Just stir up the fire, fill your glass, and let these spirited tales take you out of here and far away.

Christopher Somerville is the walking correspondent of The Times. He is one of Britain’s most respected and prolific travel writers, with forty-two books, hundreds of newspaper articles, and many TV and radio appearances to his name. He lives in Bristol.

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CONTESTED LANDS A History of the Middle East since the First World War

T.G. Fraser £20.00 August 2021 History / Middle East Hbk | 246 pages p: 978-1-913368-24-1 e: 978-1-913368-25-8

‘A brisk and accessible account of the political and diplomatic developments that continue to shape the Middle East and the world.’ — Jonathan Conlin Until the First World War, the Ottoman Empire dominated the Middle East for four centuries.

But its collapse, coupled with the subsequent clash of European imperial policies, unleashed a surge in political feeling among the people as they vied for national self-determination. Over the century that followed, the region has become almost synonymous with unrest and conflict. Why? In an accessible survey of the last century, Contested Lands tells the story of the Middle East: what happened, why, and what it all means today. With a focus on the many conflicts in the region over the last 100 years, Fraser analyses the fault lines of the tension: the damaging legacies of imperialism; the creation of the State of Israel; the competition between secular, autocratic rulers and emerging democratic and theocratic forces; and the rise – and fall – of Arab Nationalism in the face of fraying regional alliances and the Islamic revival.

T.G. Fraser is an emeritus professor at Ulster University and the author of Chaim Weizmann: The Zionist Dream (2009) and, with Andrew Mango and Robert McNamara, The Makers of the Modern Middle East (2015).

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RIDDLE, MYSTERY AND ENIGMA Two Hundred Years of British–Russian Relations

David Owen £20.00 October 2021 History / Russia Hbk | 408 pages p: 978-1-1913368-39-5 e: 978-1-913368-40-1

Exploring military, geopolitical, and diplomatic history, Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma is the first full account of the historical relationship between Britain and Russia.

The pragmatic alliance that saw Britain and Russia ally themselves at Navarino in 1827 was overwhelmingly the work of the British prime minister George Canning. His death brought about a volte-face that would see the countries fighting on opposite sides in the Crimean War and jostling for power during the Great Game. It was not until the 1917 revolution that another statesman had a defining impact on relations between the two states: Winston Churchill opposed Bolshevism, yet he never stopped advocating diplomatic and military engagement. He recognised earlier than most the necessity of allying with the Soviets against the menace of Nazi Germany – as well as the post-war threat to freedom posed by the Soviets themselves.

Bringing us into the twenty-first century, Owen chronicles how both countries have responded to their geopolitical decline. Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency, and outright necessity.

David Owen served as foreign secretary under James Callaghan from 1977 until 1979, and later cofounded and went on to lead the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He is the author of The Hidden Perspective (2014) and Cabinet’s Finest Hour (2016).

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BISMARCK The Iron Chancellor

Volker Ullrich £9.99 September 2021 Biography / German History Pbk | 198 pages p: 978-1-913368-37-1 e: 978-1-913368-38-8

‘Volker Ullrich’s eminently readable biography of Otto von Bismarck is just delightful.’ — Katja Hoyer Otto von Bismarck has gone down in history as the ‘Iron Chancellor’, a reactionary militarist whose 1871 unification of Germany set Europe down the path of disaster to the First World War. But, as this new edition of his accessible biography shows, the real Bismarck was far more complicated.

Volker Ullrich demonstrates that the ‘Founder of the Reich’ was in fact an opponent of liberal German nationalism. After Germany's wars of 1866 and 1870, Bismarck spent the rest of his career working to preserve peace in Europe and protect the empire he had created. Despite his reputation as an enemy of socialism, he introduced comprehensive health and unemployment insurance for German workers and, far from being a ‘man of iron and blood’, this complex statesman was concerned with maintaining stability and harmony far beyond Germany’s newly unified borders.

Volcker Ullrich is the author of several major historical works, including a three-volume biography of Hitler that was among the Time top-ten non-fiction books and was selected as a Book of the Year by the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, and The Times.

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION

TITO

Neil Barnett £12.99 November 2021 Biography / European History Pbk | 198 pages p: 978-1-913368-41-8 e: 978-1-913368-38-8

‘Entertaining and timely.’ — Financial Times

The charismatic, near-mythological figure of Josip Broz Tito was many things: an inspirational partisan leader and scourge of the Germans during their occupation of Yugoslavia in the Second World War; a doctrinaire communist but an ever-present thorn in Moscow’s side; an oppressor; a dictator; a reformer; and a playboy. He managed Yugoslavia’s internal tensions through personality, force of will, and political oppression.

It was only after Titoʼs death in 1980 that the true scale of this feat was understood; the country’s institutions and politicians were then revealed as rudderless, and the country created by Tito – a Croat-turned-Yugoslav – collapsed into a bloody and at times genocidal civil war. These ethnic conflicts were Tito’s nightmare, yet, as Neil Barnett shows in this short but engaging biography, they were in many ways the result of his own myopic egomania.

Neil Barnett was a journalist specialising in the Balkans, and he wrote extensively on the region for The Guardian and The Spectator.

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION

SHOSTAKOVICH

Brian Morton £9.99 December 2021 Biography / Music Pbk | 198 pages p: 978-1-913368-43-2 e: 978-1-913368-44-9

‘Brian Morton has composed a model biographical sketch buttressed by a sympathetic exegeses of the most important thing: the work.’ — Guardian Internationally esteemed and the most popular Soviet composer of his generation, Dmitri Shostakovich is widely considered to have been the last great classical symphonist. His reputation has continued to grow since his death in 1975. Shostakovich wrote his first symphony aged only nineteen and soon embarked on a dual career as concert pianist and composer. His early avantgardism was to result in the triumph of his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. At first highly praised by Stalin, Shostakovich would later suffer from a complex and brutalising relationship with the Soviet dictator and the governments that followed him.

Though his later years were marked by ill health, his rate of composition remained prolific. His music became increasingly popular with audiences as he established himself as the most popular composer of serious art music in the middle years of the twentieth century.

Brian Morton was the literary editor of Times Higher Education, is an opinion columnist for The Observer (Scotland) and writes on jazz and literature.

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION

SELF AND SOCIETY Are Communal Solidarity and Individual Freedom Allies or Antagonists?

Michael Amherst, Tara McEvoy, David Crane Nick Inman, Beninio McDonough-Tranza Foreword by Michael D. Higgins £7.99 July 2021 Essays / Society Pbk | 98 pages p: 978-1-913368-32-6 e: 978-1-913368-33-3

Series: Haus Curiosities

With a foreword by Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins.

Bringing together the winning and shortlisted essays from the 2020 Hubert Butler Essay Prize, Self and Society gives five fresh perspectives on the tension between individual freedom and communal solidarity, asking what we owe our communities and why it matters.

Winner Michael Amherst addresses identity politics, asking whether the stratification of society in the name of social justice is helpful or harmful in the pursuit of equality.

Self and Society examines themes that are more pressing than ever in the age of Covid-19 and Brexit, invoking the spirit of the Irish essayist Hubert Butler to investigate whether collective and personal aims can be synergistic or are destined to remain ever in conflict.

Michael Amherst is the author of Go the Way Your Blood Beats. Tara McEvoy is a press officer with Pushkin Press in London. David Crane is an international development consultant. Nick Inman is an author, translator, and journalist who writes mainly about Spain and France. Beninio McDonough-Tranza is a researcher focused on the intellectual history of European imperialism.

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LAND OF COCKAIGNE Jeffrey Lewis £14.99 September 2021 Literary Fiction Hbk | 194 pages p: 978-1-913368-16-6 e: 978-1-913368-17-3

‘The story is riveting, the prose hypnotic.’

—Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys The Land of Cockaigne was an old medieval peasants’ dream of a sensual paradise on earth.

In Jeffrey Lewis’s novel, it is a plot on the coast of Maine, where Walter Rath and Catherine Gray are trying to assuage their grief and make meaningful their deceased son’s life, building what they hope will be a fleeting version of paradise for a group of young men from the Bronx.

But the town of Sneeds Harbor is not amused. Well-meaning doubts lead to well-hidden threats.

The Raths’ marriage unravels as fatefully as Walter’s faith in democracy. Boys who’ve only ever known the city find themselves in a land that may as well be the moon.

A parable of American society today, Land of Cockaigne is by turns furious, funny, subversive, tragic, and horrifying.

Jeffrey Lewis has won a string of awards for his novels including the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Literary Fiction, the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for General Fiction, and the ForeWord Silver Medal for Fiction. His most recent book, Bealport: A Novel of a Town, was a 2019 Maine Literary Awards finalist.

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LILY WHITE Jelena Volic´ Christian Schünemann Translated by Baida Dar £12.99 October 2021 Crime Fiction Pbk | 220 pages p: 978-1-912208-65-4 e: 978-1-912208-66-1

All these years on, bouquets of white lily of the valley are laid on a Belgrade street, where a small Romani boy was beaten to death by two youths. One of the attackers was apprehended and imprisoned. The other was allowed to flee and, after twenty-five years on the run, he returns to Belgrade to confront his past; days later, his corpse is found floating in the Danube.

After a cursory investigation, the police declare it to have been suicide and close the case. But the dead man’s lawyer and the criminologist Milena Lukin begin an investigation of their own. Soon, they stumble upon a clue that leads them into the darkest recesses of Serbian politics, and to the root of a murder that shaped the fate of a country.

Set in Belgrade, a city of flux between East and West, Lily White is a complex and riveting new case for Milena Lukin that will once again take her to the dark sinister of Serbia’s past.

Christian Schünemann is a journalist who has worked in Moscow and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He received the Helmut Stegmann Prize for Journalism in 2001. Jelena Volić is an academic, lecturing in modern German literature. She divides her time between Belgrade and Berlin.

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WALKING PEPYS'S LONDON Jacky Colliss Harvey £12.99 April 2021 Walking, Biography Hbk | 208 pages 5 maps p: 978-1-913368-28-9 e: 978-1-913368-29-6

‘… Jacky Colliss Harvey invites us to step into Pepys’s shoes’ — The Telegraph ‘...it is as good a book of its kind as one could hope for, and I urge anyone with a fondness for Pepys to buy it.’ — Times Literary Supplement Samuel Pepys walked round London for miles. The 2½ miles to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London was accomplished on an almost-daily basis, and so many of his professional conversations took place whilst walking that the streets became for him an alternative to his office.

With Walking Pepys’s London, the reader will come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist as Jacky Colliss Harvey reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of the past, bringing geography, biography, and history into one. Full of fascinating details and written with extraordinary sensitivity, this is an unmissable exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.

Jacky Colliss Harvey is a writer and editor. She is the author of the bestseller Red: A History of the Redhead and most recently The Animal’s Companion.

RECENT BESTSELLERS

PARTITION How and Why Ireland was Divided

Ivan Gibbons £12.99 November 2020 History Hbk | 174 pages p: 978-1-913368-01-2 e: 978-1-913368-02-9

‘Notable for [its] sobriety and attention to detail.’ — Financial Times ‘Excellent expositions of how the border came into existence [… ]a short, very readable and clear overview.’ — Times Literary Supplement ‘An accessible, well-written concise history of partition.’ — History Ireland The passion and emotion felt about the partition of Ireland has not dissipated in the 100 years since and, as the disoders occured in Northern Ireland in the Spring 2021 show, it is as controversial now as it was then.

To mark the centenary of partition, this much-acclaimed concise introductory history explains clearly and objectively why and how two states were created on the island.

Ivan Gibbons is a lecturer in modern Irish and British history specialising in the relationship between the British Labour Party and Ireland.

RECENT BESTSELLERS

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