Book shelf

Book shelf

Explore a selection of publications by alumni and academics, and books with a link to the University or Cambridge

To have your book considered for inclusion, please submit your publication's details

Please note: to have your book considered for inclusion, its publication date must be either upcoming or it must have been published during the last 12 months. Unfortunately, we cannot include any details of books published prior to this time.

CAMCard discounts

Get up to 20% off when you use your CAMCard in selected book shops!

Time and the Generations

Time and the Generations

Partha Dasgupta (John's 1962)

How should we evaluate the ethics of procreation, especially the environmental consequences of reproductive decisions on future generations, in a resource-constrained world? While demographers, moral philosophers, and environmental scientists have separately discussed the implications of population size for sustainability, no one has attempted to synthesize the concerns and values of these approaches.

A Book of Secrets

A Book of Secrets

Kate Morrison (Murray Edwards 1998)

A Book of Secrets tells the story of a West African girl hunting for her lost brother through an Elizabethan underworld of spies, plots and secret Catholic printing presses. Susan Charlewood is taken from Ghana (then known as Guinea) as a baby. Brought to England, she grows up as maidservant in a wealthy Catholic household. Living under a Protestant Queen in late 16th Century England, the family risk imprisonment or death unless they keep their faith hidden. When her mistress dies Susan is married off to a London printer who is deeply involved in the Catholic resistance.

Miracle in Kigali, The Rwandan Genocide - a survivor's journey 2019 edition

Miracle in Kigali, The Rwandan Genocide - a survivor's journey 2019 edition

Paul Dickson (Selwyn 1976) and Illuminée Nganemariya

Miracle in Kigali tells the amazing story of Illuminée Nganemariya and her baby son Roger Nsengiyumva's survival in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, during the 1994 Genocide and subsequent life in Norwich. First published in 2007 by the Tagman Press, this new edition, which updates Illuminée and Roger's story, including Roger's developing film and TV acting career, has been published to mark the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide.

The Mountbattens

The Mountbattens

Andrew Lownie (Magdalene 1981)

A major figure behind his nephew Philip's marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and instrumental in the royal family taking the Mountbatten name, Dickie Mountbatten's career included being Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia during World War Two and the last Viceroy of India. Once the richest woman in Britain and a playgirl who enjoyed numerous affairs, Edwina Mountbatten emerged from World War Two as a magnetic and talented charity worker loved around the world.

The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age

The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age

John Woolf (Downing 2008)

A radical new history of the Victorian age: discover the truth behind The Greatest Showman and meet the forgotten and extraordinary freak performers whose talents and disabilities helped define an era. On 23rd March, 1844, General Tom Thumb, at 25 inches tall, entered the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and bowed low to Queen Victoria. On both sides of the Atlantic, this event marked a tipping point in the nineteenth century - the age of the freak was born.

Reading Fragments and Fragmentation in Modernist Literature

Reading Fragments and Fragmentation in Modernist Literature

Rebecca Varley-Winter (Clare 2005)

This book begins with the question: How are literary fragments defined as such? As a critical term, ‘fragment’ is more of a starting-point than a definition: Is part of the manuscript missing? Is it grammatically incomplete, using unfinished sentences? Is it made to look unfinished? ‘Fragment’ and ‘fragmentation’ have been used to describe damaged manuscripts; drafts; notes; subverted grammatical structures; the emergence of vers libre from formal verse; texts without linear plots; translations; quotations; and works titled ‘Fragment’ regardless of how formally complete they might appear.

Writing the Prison in African Literature

Writing the Prison in African Literature

Rachel Knighton (Girton 2013)

This book examines a selection of prison memoirs by five renowned African writers: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ruth First, Wole Soyinka, Nawal El Saadawi and Jack Mapanje. Detained across the continent from the 1960’s onwards due to their writing and political engagement, each writer’s memoir forms a crucial yet often overlooked part of their wider literary work. The author analyses the varied and unique narrative strategies used to portray the prison, formulating a theory of prison memoir as genre that reads the texts alongside postcolonial, trauma, life-writing and prison theory.

The Great Game in West Asia

The Great Game in West Asia

Mehran Kamrava (King's 1984)

The Great Game in West Asia examines the strategic competition between Iran and Turkey for power and influence in the South Caucasus. As much of the world's attention has been diverted to conflicts and flashpoints near and far, a new great game has been unravelling between Iran and Turkey in the South Caucasus.

Inside the Arab State

Inside the Arab State

Mehran Kamrava (King's 1984)

 The 2011 Arab uprisings and their subsequent aftermath have thrown into question some of our long-held assumptions about the foundational aspects of the Arab state. While the regional and international consequences of the uprisings continue to unfold with great unpredictability, their ramifications for the internal lives of the states in which they unfolded are just as dramatic and consequential. States historically viewed as models of strength and stability have been shaken to their foundations.

Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf

Troubled Waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf

Mehran Kamrava (King's 1984)

The book’s primary research question explores the causes of chronic insecurity in the Persian Gulf? The Persian Gulf remains one of the most heavily militarized and insecure regions in the world.

The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead

The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography, and the Road Ahead

Mehran Kamrava (King's 1984)

This book tells the story of Palestine. This is a story that has been told many times before. But while the story itself is not new, its retelling and its conclusions are. Palestine, this book maintains, is neither viable nor possible any more. This lack of viability is due to developments that go beyond its mere physical and territorial dismemberment. It is on this issue, namely the growing noncontiguity of the West Bank because of Israeli settlements, that most existing conclusions of Palestine’s lack of viability are based.

Gateways to the World: Port Cities in the Persian Gulf

Gateways to the World: Port Cities in the Persian Gulf

Mehran Kamrava (King's 1984)

The Persian Gulf region has become home to some of the world's fastest growing, most impressive cities, many of them with global aspirations. Gateways to the World presents an in-depth, systematic, and multi-disciplinary approach to the study of these cities. It begins with a broader look at how the emergence and significance of cities along the Persian Gulf waterway should be contextualized.

"St. Clive:" An Eastern Orthodox Author Looks Back at C.S. Lewis

"St. Clive:" An Eastern Orthodox Author Looks Back at C.S. Lewis

Christos Hayward (St Edmund's)

“St. Clive:” An Eastern Orthodox Author Looks Back at C.S. Lewis, adopts an unusual perspective because most examinations of the spirituality of C.S. Lewis come from Western spiritual perspectives, and few adopt the approach of C.J.S. Hayward, who opens his book with a Lewis-type series of letters to a guardian angel, “The Angelic Letters: a Heavenly analogue to The Screwtape Letters.” The book is even more distinctive in reflecting back on Lewis from a perspective meant to be thoroughly Orthodox.

Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerrillas

Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerrillas

Alpa Shah (Newnham 1994)

Shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.

Shortlisted for the 2019 New India Foundation Book Prize.

A first-hand account of India’s widespread leftist insurgency, and the state’s brutal response.

City of Beasts: How animals shaped Georgian London

City of Beasts: How animals shaped Georgian London

Thomas Almeroth-Williams

By the early 1800s, an estimated 31,000 horses were at work in and around London, while around the same number of sheep and cattle were driven through the city’s streets every week. No other settlement in Europe or North America had ever accommodated so many large four-legged animals, or felt their influence so profoundly.

Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK

Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK

Arzu Merali (King's 1989) and Saied Reza Ameli

Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK provides shocking insight into the UK as an ever developing ‘Stasi state’ rife with hatred for the ‘suspect’ Muslim community. With analysis at every level – from grassroots to institutions – the authors examine the construction of an environment where Muslims are feared and loathed.

Wise and Foolish Love in the Song of Songs

Wise and Foolish Love in the Song of Songs

Jennifer Andruska (Hughes Hall 2018)

For some time scholars have debated whether the Song of Songs, a small book of love poetry in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, has connections to the wisdom genre and how this changes our understanding of it.  Wisdom literature in the ancient world was particularly concerned with how to live a successful life, in all areas, and this book shows that this included one love life.  It demonstrates that the Song of Songs has combined elements of the ancient Near Eastern love song and wisdom genres to produce a wisdom literature about romantic love, inspiring readers to pursue a particular type of

The Walrus's Handbook

The Walrus's Handbook

Hazel Skelsey Guest (Newnham 1946)

How to understand ourselves and our interactions with others, including a new take on an old theory (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) and research not previously published in book form (Marshall's Scale of Responses). Written in an easy-to-read style in order to be accessible to the intelligent layperson, but also of value to professionals.

Earth's Still Centre

Earth's Still Centre

Malcolm Prue (Peterhouse1968)

Most of the poems in this collection have their origins in the countryside of Norfolk where the author lives. The collection takes the form of a cycle of the twelvemonth.

The Price of Paradise

The Price of Paradise

Iain Overton (Downing 1992)

We live in the age of the suicide bomber. The suicide bomb itself takes more lives than any other type of explosive weapon. Moreover, in the last 5 years more people have been killed by suicide attacks than at any other time in history.

How has this descent deep into the heart of terror escalated in such a way? What drives people to blow themselves up and what are the consequences? More importantly perhaps, what can be done to combat the rising spread of this form of violence?

Pages

Want to see your book here?

Submit your book's details for consideration using our webform.

Submit your book