• The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books - Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder
  • The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books - Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
  • The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books - Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  • The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books - Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books - City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence

The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books, recommended by Samira Shackle

Narrative nonfiction is a style of writing that takes the facts and dramatises them to create novelistic retellings of real life events. Samira Shackle, author of Karachi Vice, a book that offers vivid insight into the lives of five of the city’s residents, recommends five books that have inspired her—and explains how a writer might begin to carve ‘plot’ and ‘characters’ from reams of research material.

  • The Best Literary Letter Collections - Letters to a Young Painter by Rainer Maria Rilke
  • The Best Literary Letter Collections - The Death and Letters of Alice James: Selected Correspondence by Alice James
  • The Best Literary Letter Collections - Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka
  • The Best Literary Letter Collections - Letters: 1925-1975 by Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger
  • The Best Literary Letter Collections - Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence by Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell

The Best Literary Letter Collections, recommended by Lucas Zwirner

The next release in the ekphrasis series from David Zwirner Books is Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, including an introduction by Michael Bracewell and a colour portrait of Wilde by Marlene Dumas. Head of Content Lucas Zwirner talks to Five Books about the inspiration he’s drawn from literary letters and how they inform the editorial direction of the publishing house.