Best books of 2022: FT critics’ picks

Roula Khalaf

Editor of the FT

Don’t expect great new scoops about Donald Trump in Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man but the voluminous account by this celebrated New York Times reporter is no less revealing. Haberman has closely tracked Trump since his rise to fame in New York in the 1980s and captures him brilliantly as the “narcissistic, drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and . . . took American democracy to the brink”. Trump has been fixated on Haberman and gave her several interviews for the book, declaring in one that “she’s like my psychiatrist”. Prepare to be alarmed by this book. In fiction, I loved The Magician, Colm Tóibín’s fictionalised biography of the great German novelist Thomas Mann and arguably his best book yet.

Frederick Studemann

FT literary editor

The friend who alerted me to Trust did so with the recommendation that Hernan Diaz’s exploration of money, power and reputation management would be “perfect” for the FT. Having raced through it, I can see why. Diaz’s account of the life and work of a vaguely Gatsbyesque 1920s Wall Street mogul and his wife is told from multiple perspectives, raising questions about who gets to tell “the story” and, indeed, how stories are created and laid down for posterity. In a time of evermore bizarre billionaire behaviour it feels very relevant.

I also enjoyed Magnificent Rebels, Andrea Wulf’s account of the “Jena Set”, a group of German Romantics who gathered in a small university town at the turn of the 19th century in the wake of the French Revolution. Wulf assembles an impressive cast of writers, philosophers, and scientists — including Schiller, Goethe, Hegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Caroline Schlegel — who sought to challenge intellectual and social orthodoxies and reunite the natural and intellectual worlds. Wulf makes a strong case for the enduring impact — bad and good — of the Jena set’s obsession with self.

Enuma Okoro

FT Life & Arts columnist

In a world overloaded with facts and information, I encountered Norwegian writer Hanne Ørstavik’s Ti Amo. In 120 pages of poetic, honest and heart-searing reflection, translated by Martin Aitken, an unnamed woman charts the experience of caring for her dying husband as he refuses to acknowledge his terminal diagnosis. It is a book about intimacy, and the beauty and deep challenge of loving another human being — and how our connections to one another can be both rock solid and as fragile as glass.

Rana Foroohar

FT global business columnist

Many people today think perfection is both possible, and desirable. In The Good-Enough Life (Princeton, £20/$24.95) Avram Alpert argues that it’s the opposite. Our effort to maximise everything is making us anxious, narcissistic and horrible to ourselves and others. It’s also making it harder to tackle the world’s biggest problems, from climate change to inequality. Read this book, breathe a sigh of relief, and then go take a nap.

Stephen Bush

FT columnist and associate editor

Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility continues the author’s use of tropes from science fiction and fantasy, which illuminated her breakout 2014 novel Station Eleven and her haunting meditation on the Madoff scandal, The Glass Hotel, while blending it with the human focus that made her first novels a pleasure to read.

Books of the Year 2022

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Saturday: Critics’ choice

Camilla Cavendish

FT columnist

Robert Hardman’s The Queen of Our Times is an enthralling and definitive portrait by the veteran royal chronicler. The sweep of history is leavened with witty anecdotes, including Barack Obama shrugging off the lack of an en-suite bathroom. Hardman’s book puts The Crown TV series firmly in its place, showing Her Majesty still relishing the job even during the pandemic.

Tim Harford

FT columnist

We’re all used to complaining about the Big Tech monopolies, but Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow shows how widespread the problem now is, and how smarter rules could defang much of this monopoly power even if we pull back from breaking up the monopolists. Nerdy, sharp, radical and readable.

Katie Martin

FT markets editor

The book that really blew me away this year was Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I knew to expect a caustic, emotional ride with this novel after Stuart’s Booker winner Shuggie Bain, and in a way, it covered similar ground: family, alcoholism, poverty, sexuality. But when I finished Young Mungo in a queue at an airport with my family, I was barely able to string a sentence together. Bleak but truly beautiful, powerful stuff.

Kana Inagaki

FT Tokyo bureau chief

After giving birth to my second child last year, I bought Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void out of sheer curiosity. What I found, though, in this novel was far more than an account of a Japanese woman pretending to be pregnant to find her way out of her office misery. It is a book that reflects on life, solitude and what it means to be a woman.

Janan Ganesh

After a string of books that addressed without illuminating the issues of the day — climate change, Brexit, AI — Ian McEwan turns inwards with Lessons, a story of a disappointing life. He captures youthful lust and late-age regret with equal power. As with all good fiction, the “lessons” aren’t too clear and didactic.

Nilanjana Roy

FT columnist

Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand is in part the story of an elderly woman who arises from her bed to make a journey across frontiers, into a damaged past, but it is also a patchwork of voices and unforgettable characters, chattering among themselves, elbowing one another off the page. Heart-wrenching but brimming with life, Tomb of Sand won the International Booker Prize, and is a lasting joy.

Ivan Krastev

FT contributing editor

Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter is a novel-reflection on the perils of nostalgia. It is the story of Europe torn between the belief that the world was better yesterday and the fear that the times of war are coming back. Published in Bulgarian two years prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the novel ends with the warning: “Tomorrow was September 1, 1939”.

For further recommendations, see Summer Books 2022

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café