Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Books

Top 5 books about looking the other way

Author Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel, Remote Sympathy, tackles looking the other way. Here are some books about doing just that

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is out now (Europa Books, £16.99)

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is out now (Europa Books, £16.99)

Author Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel, Remote Sympathy, shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, tackles domestic drama and human connection.

Set in and around a concentration camp in Germany during the second world war and its aftermath, it asks us to question our ability to look the other way.

Here, Chidgey gives us her top five books about doing just that.

Support The Big Issue and our vendors by signing up for a subscription.

30808726095

Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

Through Frame’s luminous prose, this exposes the nightmarish realities of life in a psychiatric hospital in mid-20th century New Zealand. Given our enduring ability to ignore the distress of our most vulnerable, it remains achingly current.  

B07SZ5DKX2.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX500_

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

This wonderful debut is narrated by Jai, a nine-year-old Indian boy who teams up with friends to find a classmate missing from their shanty town neighbourhood. Drawing on real events, the search illuminates the fact that hundreds of children vanish in India every month while authorities and mainstream society stand idly by.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
71YjGO-AN7L

Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention by Donna Freitas

An unflinching account of the writer’s stalking at the hands of her graduate school mentor – a senior professor who was also a priest. Most galling, perhaps, is that when she finally felt courageous enough to speak up about it, her college silenced her.

61PlKiwE2nL

The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H Winthrop

Using a polyphonic structure that cycles through nine different narrators, Winthrop pulls off a stunning high-wire act. Centred around the looming execution of a young black man in Louisiana in 1943, multiple perspectives throw small-town apathy and wilful blindness into sharp relief.

716qHj8vH7L

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This devastating novel is one that…well, has never let me go. Both horrifying and tender, its singular dystopian vision of breathtaking indifference to suffering is only gradually revealed to both readers and characters. Unforgettable. 

1459_Books Top5
Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is out now (Europa Books, £16.99)

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is out now (Europa Books, £16.99)

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

View all
Top 5 seafaring books, chosen by award-winning writer Carolyn Kirby
Books

Top 5 seafaring books, chosen by award-winning writer Carolyn Kirby

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk review – mushrooming magic
Books

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk review – mushrooming magic

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy review – words of wisdom
Books

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy review – words of wisdom

Queer history goes back centuries – even the Georgians questioned their gender and sexuality
LGBTQ+

Queer history goes back centuries – even the Georgians questioned their gender and sexuality