In the aftermath of a small plane crash that forced him to make a wrenching life-and-death choice, zoologist Daniel Kennedy confronts the fate of his great-grandfather during World War I and struggles to both prove himself and earn forgiveness. By the short-listed Whitbread Prize nominee of Hee-Haw.

The Infuriating Tale Of A Young Palestinian Punished For Exercising His Freedom Of Speech. Like many of his generation, Waleed Al-Husseini began a blog in his twenties. However, unlike many, Waleed also had the misfortune of having been a blogger in Palestine; worse yet, he often criticized Islam and its adherents—and declared himself an apostate—in his writings. The Palestinian Authority did not take well to this and eventually put Waleed in jail without a trial or even a wisp of legal justification. As if this was not bad enough, they placed Waleed in solitary confinement. This state of affairs continued for 11 months. Over the course of this time, Waleed was tortured and suffered innumerable indignities and deprivations simply for having the audacity to speak his mind. Eventually his unjust imprisonment began to draw international attention from foreign governments and human rights organizations, which pressured the Palestinian Authority and finally forced it to provide him a trial and parole. After being paroled, Waleed fled Palestine, first to Jordan and then to France, where he has become an outspoken advocate for freedom of speech and a critic of the state of contemporary Islam. The Blasphemer is a sobering, impassioned recounting of this Kafkaesque experience as well as a searing polemic against the corruption and hypocrisy that define contemporary Palestine.

An astonishing, ambitious and masterful new novel, with echoes of Birdsong, that reads at the pace of a thriller. On its way to the Galápagos Islands, a light aircraft crashes into the sea. Zoologist Daniel Kennedy is confronted with a stark Darwinian choice. Should he save himself, or Nancy, the woman he loves? But how can one moment of betrayal ever be forgiven? And after he escapes the plane and swims for help, who is the elusive figure who guides him away from certain death? Back in London, Daniel thinks he finds the answer; it is connected with his great grandfather and the first horrific day of Passchendaele. But as the past collapses into the present, the fissures in his relationship with Nancy show through. Until he is given a second chance to prove his courage and earn her forgiveness. The Blasphemer is a novel that speaks to the head as well as the heart of the reader.

David Nash's new study focuses on the development of blasphemy in the Christian world. Tracing the subject from the Middle Ages to the present, he outlines the history of blasphemy as a concept, from a species of heresy to modern understandings of it as a crime against the sacred and individual religious identity. Investigating its appearance in speech, literature, popular publishing and the cinema, he disinters the likely motives and agendas of blasphemers themselves, as well as offering a glimpse of blasphemy's victims. In particular, he seeks to understand why this seemingly medieval offence has reappeared to become a distinctly modern presence in the West.

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