Three for the summer

SPEAKING VOLUMES

There's always the flavour-of-the-month books: the new Secret, which was the old Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; the new Stephen King, not so different from the old Margery Allingham. But if you're interested in really challenging, interesting new writing, here are three picks for the summer.

Junot Diaz: When his collection of short stories, Drown, came out in 1996, he was declared one of the top 20 writers to watch in the 21st century. This is a worn, hyperbolic claim, applied in different forms by enthusiastic publicity departments to a hundred new writers a year. But in Diaz's case, you got the sense that he'd whipped his publicity people into a state of genuine awe, that they genuflected when he passed by.

Then he disappeared, and eleven years later, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao came out. This is technically a 2007 release, though it's only been available in India recently, and it has sharp pointers for any Indian writer who wants to connect to his home (read: dismal royalties) audience while not alienating his international (read: dismal respect) readers.

Diaz tells the history of the Dominican Republic in a series of bitter, sharp and hilarious footnotes: "For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history: Trujillo, one of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961 with an implacable ruthless brutality.