William Boyd, Cold Sunset

 

- This new novel by the excellent William Boyd is the third in his Gabriel Dax series. I very positively reviewed the second last year: here 

- Cold Sunset is just as good. In fact in a number of ways it's better. Gabriel is a very popular travel writer who gets approached every now and then by Faith Green, an MI6 secret service agent working to uncover Russian spies. It's the mid 1960's at the peak of the Cold War. The traitors Philby, Maclean and Burgess have been uncovered. And there must be more. 

- Gabriel is a handsome unmarried man in his mid-thirties. He and Faith, also single and attractive, indulge in frequent sex. And he has other attractive partners too. In fact there is far more sex in this novel than in the previous two combined. It adds a spark!

- The plot thickens considerably as the novel proceeds. Spies are uncovered and they need to be eliminated. Gabriel is sucked in and he becomes hunted. Yet he does the job. He spends time in Russia, Norway, and the Greek Islands, and his gun is always at the ready. 

- The plot gets complicated as it proceeds but it remains logical and credible. Boyd knows how to enrich the drama and colour it with glorious details on art, architecture, and literature. 

- Hopefully he is working on a fourth in the series. 

Rachel Cusk, Life of M

- This new novel by Rachel Cusk is both brilliant and sort of annoying. As a reader who loved many of her previous books I was constantly befuddled by the lack of clarity in this one. Who is the narrator - a woman or a man? Who is 'we' - one person or a couple? We are thrust into confusing and unreal worlds.   

- Cusk wrestles with the concept of 'reality' and its distortions. Of course movie scenes are fake, and acting is fake. The narrator and the actress are both constructing fictional worlds. 

- Cusk has no doubt based the character 'M' on the celebrated actress Natalie Portman. The unnamed films she refers to are Portman classics: Leon: The Professional (1994) and Black Swan (2010) for which she won an Oscar. Portman has apparently complained about how M was portrayed by Cusk, which is a little unfair as M in the novel is highly likeable, generous, grounded and approachable. 'She is unable to see selfishness as anything other than the product of stupidity'. 

- Cusk may be examining unreality but she also details the real world in numerous chapters. 'We’ describe the city and countryside they walk in (unnamed but Paris and its surrounds no doubt) and visit a museum and a bakery. They reflect on garbage collectors, bodies, tourists, the river and its bridges, the homeless and their strewn rubbish, dogs, pigeons, their parents’ house, and their domestic staff. 

- M's real world is luxurious: her mansion and its furniture, the spa, sauna and pool on top of a tall building, the principal actors room in a theatre, the fashion cocktail event which will be filmed. (Portman represents Dior in real life). M feels like an alien in this terrestrial scene. She avoids the city's famous and elaborate restaurants. 

- As the book proceeds M is seen as mature and wise. She understands stuff and can manage her career's ups and downs. 

- An excellent chapter towards the end describes M’s interview with a respected journalist. She finds him very attractive. At one point they discuss sex scenes in movies old and new. She feels lost. 

- And the final chapter is a sort of reckoning. The author visits M who tells her she doesn’t like the way the author's portrayed her. ‘Actually, it’s hurtful’, she says, and then she asks 'Are you a guy or a girl?' They are the last words in the novel. And they are quite meaningful given all her experiences of male behaviour, both good and bad, in her career. 

- So is this novel worth reading? Absolutely. 

Toby Walsh, God AI

 

 

- This new book by Australian AI expert Professor Toby Walsh is a must read. It's remarkably good, full of detail and wisdom. I've read a few books on AI and many articles over the years, but this exploration of the future of human society dominated by AI over the next five or fifty years is extraordinary. 

- Walsh has dotted his thesis with quotes over the decades from visionaries like Arthur C Clarke, Stephen Hawking, Geoffrey Hinton, Alan Turing and Albert Einstein - all confronting a possible AI’s potential and destructive inevitability. And he includes the views of today's AI leaders like Open AI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei. We are facing Boom or Doom. 

- The big question is when will artificial intelligence exceed human intelligence? Within the next five or fifty years? Most experts predict five. 'The AI revolution now promises to automate much of our cognitive work'. Sure, many jobs will disappear, but there will be plenty of shortages of jobs in critical areas, particularly the services sector. And many of us will work only four days a week. 'All in all, we might live healthier, wealthier and worthier lives'. 

- Walsh's final chapter 'Machines of Loving Grace' opts for optimism not pessimism. Although he admits he could be wrong. 'There is something unmistakably theological about the way many AI researchers speak of AI. It often sounds less like an engineering project and more like a religious movement. Baldur Bjarnason, author of The Intelligence Illusion, a critical examination of the tech industry, described it well: 'They like to think they're sensible people making sage comments, but they sound more like monks in the year 1000 talking about the Rapture. It's a bit frightening.' 

- Dario Amodei has it both ways: 'I like to think most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be....just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be'. (Only his first sentence is in bold). 

- Walsh ends his book with this piece of wisdom: 'If we train AI systems on data that reflects historical inequities and biases, we will amplify injustice on an unprecedented scale. It we allow a small number of corporations or nations to monopolise AI development, we will embed dangerous concentrations of power into the fabric of our future. The lesson I believe we should take from this is simple, and straight out of Frankenstein. Only wise choices made today will ensure that the gods we build tomorrow don't become monsters beyond our control.' 

  

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Yeganeh Torbati, Stolen Revolution

 - This superbly written book is a fascinating and detailed dissection of the current Iranian religious regime and the suppression of its reformers. It's thoroughly enlightening on every level.

- It focuses on the incredible stories of six principal activists and dissenters. Their stories are ones of sheer bravery and heroism. The regime is utterly brutal, murderous, and misogynistic on every level. 

- I can do no better than provide this excellent summary of the book inside the cover:

'The moving, riveting and immersive story of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history: the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by the Islamic mafia state and a people’s undying spirit of resistance. 

Fuelled by Iranians’ dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah's ailing repressive monarchy. But in its place the revolution's leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes built a system that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah. Award-winning journalists Bozorgmeh Sharafedin and Yeganah Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran’s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope as crises engulf the country.

MEDHI KARROUBI: a devotee of Khomeini, he rose to the heights of power on the wave of the revolution, before being casted out of its inner circle.

HILA SEDIGHI: a young activist, who gave voice through her poetry to her peers' hopes during the reform years and ultimately immortalised their shattered dreams.

AMIR MOGHADAM: an ambitious government bureaucrat, who witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth.

SAID RAHMANI: a successful global tech entrepreneur who returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country, and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself.

ROZHIN YOUSEFZADEH and KOSAR EFTEKHARI: both born in the 1990s, they escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran, where they joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price.

Through vivid and original reporting, Stolen Revolution offers a compulsively readable new story of Iran, centering ordinary Iranians' lives, whilst providing a visceral understanding of how life is actually lived under a modern authoritarian state. This is a harrowing story of power, corruption and greed - and those brave individuals who fought back.'

- Both authors are highly experienced, award-winning journalists who spent five years working on this book, interviewing hundreds of Iranians, many in fear for their lives.