Faber & Faber

A clutch of hackneyed jingles about how marvellous the author is is de rigueur on book covers – but do they really serve any useful role?There's a lot of received wisdom in the publishing world – for instance, if you write non-fiction, your book needs a subtitle. Never mind that fiction doesn't require that extra bit of explication (Crime & Punishment: Murder and Redemption in the Empire of the Tsars anyone?) if you write non-fiction you simply must spell out ...

Historically spurious and spiritually confused, Emomalii Rahmon's presidential history of Tajikistan plays fast and loose with notions of national identiity, but it could have been far, far worse ...The third instalment in an occasional series on books written by some of the world's most notorious dictators. The author's goal is to subject himself to as much tyrant prose as he can bear, reporting back on his findings until the will to live deserts him.The collapse of the USSR brought catastrophe ...

Spare me the 'Brit abroad' travelogues. For once, I want to see other cultures through foreign eyesAh, the modern travel book. You just can't get enough stories about happy chappies tootling about in novelty vehicles to demonstrate how jolly nice we all are, can you? Actually, you can. I reached my novelty vehicle limit years ago, when I read one of those Around Eastern Europe in a Trabant books that was so cloying I had to kick it about the ...

If you get a free book, and don't disclose this 'vested interest' if you blog about it, you are now liable to five-figure fines. Does this make any kind of sense to anybody?Back in February I wrote about some legislation excreted by the US Congress regarding the potentially lethal amount of lead in old copies of The Cat in the Hat. Amazingly, my blistering broadside in the Guardian books blog did not stop the madness, and the legislation remains in ...

The memoirs of Leonid Brezhnev, the hairy-eyebrowed Soviet premier, have been deservedly forgottenSecond instalment in an occasional series on books written by some of the world's most notorious dictators. The author's goal is to subject himself to as much tyrant prose as he can bear, reporting back on his findings until the will to live deserts him.Master of the USSR in his lifetime, Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) is best remembered today for his exceedingly hairy eyebrows and descent into senility while ...

Abebooks has done a great service to connoisseurs of the bizarreEvery now and then someone comes up with an idea so good you wonder why nobody has thought of it before: tetrapak containers; ketchup bottles that you store standing on their caps; hand-held machine pistols using a telescoping bolt design which allows the magazine to be housed in the pistol grip - that sort of thing. Well, a new one can be added to the list. Internet book emporium extraordinaire ...

Two of Europe's most malignant egos converge in the Albanian dictator's fond memoir of the Soviet despotThis is the first in an occasional series on books written by some of the world's most notorious dictators. The author's goal is to subject himself to as much tyrant prose as he can bear, reporting back on his findings in this space, until the will to live deserts him.Even by the standards of psychotic 20th-century communist dictators, Albania's Enver Hoxha (1908-1985) stands out ...

Country singer/author Kinky Friedman should take note. Writers who enter politics have an inauspicious history, with almost no exceptionsIn 2006, Kinky Friedman, the wise-cracking, cigar-chomping country singer turned author ran for governor of Texas against the impeccably coiffed CEO of the state, Rick Perry. Comparing the traditional Republicans v Democrats Punch and Judy show to a gang war between the equally corrupt Crips and Bloods, Friedman ran as an independent. The campaign was amusing, colourful, provocative – and a failure. ...

Marks in library books are usually moronic scrawlings or tedious displays of ego, but just occasionally you come across something fascinatingLast year I joined the library at the University of Texas, Austin, and rediscovered a literary form I hadn't encountered much since my student days: readers' inscriptions in the margins of library books. The conventions of the genre are simple: you state something obvious in a fragmentary/declaratory style, adding a question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis according to the degree ...

Turkmenistan's Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov is only the latest despot to commandeer the printed pageAmong his many claims to fame, Saparmurat Niyazov, aka Turkmenbashi, the demented and now deceased dictator of Turkmenistan, was celebrated for his Ruhnama or "book of the soul", two volumes of disjointed historical, biographical and cod-philosophical ramblings which he forced his subjects to study at educational establishments and in the workplace. Ultimately this masterpiece/confection of platitudinous banalities was translated into 41 languages including Zulu, and even launched into ...