Martin Ash's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I relish fiction that leads me beyond genre into unanticipated regions while enquiring into the great questions. In this regard, this book excels.

It opens as a noir mystery thriller involving a missing passenger on a submerged jet, then follows salvage diver Robert Western’s attempts to unravel the threads of his life as he is shadowed by government agents and haunted by the loss of his psychotic, demon-plagued sister, Alicia.

There are allusions to an illicit love, memories of a deceased father involved in the creation of the atomic bomb, of mysterious deaths… Solving the mystery is never the point. Rather, we travel with Western on a frequently mystifying, sometimes dark and profound journey across America into Europe and deep into his mind as, it may be, a passenger of life. Reality can fracture; uncertainty, reflection, grief and estrangement are the most constant companions.

McCarthy’s prose is elegant, brooding, quite often mesmerizing. His scenic descriptions are unsurpassed. I have read the novel twice and will do so again. It’s a modern masterpiece.    

World myths have intrigued me since my teenage years and in various forms have underscored much of my fiction. The exclusion of the goddess from modern religion and culture and its many ramifications is something I have explored in my novels, albeit set in an imagined world.

Returning to the topic recently, certainly one of the most comprehensive books on the topic I’ve read is The Myth of the Goddess. It’s a painstakingly researched, scholarly but highly accessible exploration and deep investigation into the many (yet essentially one) goddess figures of ancient cultures. It carries us from the Paleolithic age through the emerging cultures of Crete, Sumeria, Egypt, Babylon, Greece and more, to the advent of Judaeo-Christian monotheism, the assembling of the patriarchal superstructure, the Gnostic Sophia, the Catholic cult of Mary and western civilization’s consequent disconnection from the natural world.

It’s a hefty tome but is engagingly and enjoyably written and includes multiple illustrations and an extensive bibliography and appendices. A crucial reading for anyone interested in the evolution of culture, consciousness, archaeology, history, religion, and belief.

I love to travel and am fascinated by the world we live in and its astonishing diversity of cultures. Iran is a country I’ve yet to visit, and this book is a powerful, at times heart-wrenching account of life in the capital under a harsh, repressive, and unforgiving theocracy.

Through collected accounts of real citizens (names and details changed), Navai explores the extraordinary nature of everyday existence in Tehran as people navigate the hypocrisies, treacheries, taboos, fatwas, the morality police, the ever-watching and interfering government, and more. It is life in a world gone horribly wrong, covering varied tiers of society, where in order to survive one has little choice but to lie, evade, conceal, pretend, never sure who to trust and ever aware that you or your loved ones may be jailed, flogged, raped or executed for what may be, to us, quite minor misdemeanors, if that.

The freedoms we in the West take for granted are non-existent. Nonetheless, despite the brutality, the injustice, bleakness and disillusionment, there is a glimmer of hope and, in the vividness of the writing, a profound and illuminating sense of love and future dreams for a remarkable, vibrant city and its people.