A Better Death: The Case for Assisted Dying by Jonathan Romain (Reaktion Books, 136pp, £12.99)
“Future generations will look back and wonder why it took so long to achieve,” concludes this short argument for assisted dying. Different from suicide and euthanasia, assisted dying is available to 300 million people in Europe and elsewhere, but opposed by all the world’s main religions. Dáil Éireann voted in October 2024 “to note” a report from a special Oireachtas Joint Committee to legalise assisted dying in certain restricted circumstances. Similar legislation approved by Britain’s House of Commons is delayed in its upper house. Rabbi and broadcaster Romain describes it as “one of the most pressing moral issues of the moment” and “one of the last great social reforms”. Ray Burke
Wilderness of Mirrors by Olufemi Terry (Les Fugitives, 256pp, £14.99)
Olufemi Terry won the Caine Prize for his short story, Stickfighting Days. Wilderness of Mirrors is his debut novel, set in a parallel South Africa. Emil, a young Creole man goes to Cabo (Cape Town), a place his father disdains as a “caste society”. Quite the contrast for someone from eGeld (Johannesburg), “where it is difficult, over the telephone, to tell Black from White or Creole”. Emil comes under the spell of Haitian-German Lukas Bolling, a “jet-set provocateur with money and amoral instincts”. There’s Braeem Shaka, whose agitation for Creole reparations puts him in the crosshairs of government. Emil, an aspiring neurosurgeon, must find own path as tension builds. Beguiling in its specificity, Terry’s novel is a granular exploration of race in South Africa. Molara Wood
The Throats of Birds by Aoife Feeney (Transat Books, 274pp,€15)
Ireland, in an undetermined, but not too distant future: a private oligarch is head of state, a disruptive podcaster influences the masses, and the dictator’s wife Elizabeth turns Lady Macbeth in an attempt to save the nation. The Throats of Birds presents a dense, surrealist dystopia that will draw some readers avidly into the multiple layers of its world and send others flying for a beach read. Like the Yeats poem that inspired the title, the book is savage, dark and fiercely intellectual. The fragmented narrative is witty and sometimes raucously sexual, making frequent references to political and philosophical concepts or texts. It captures, too, the contemporary zeitgeist, exploring how our grasp on truth has become increasingly fragile as a result of online manipulation. Admirers of Feeney’s much-acclaimed debut, The Rule of Law will delight in this sortie into a compelling Irish Pynchonistan. Helena Mulkerns
