Across the literary pages | 12 September 2011

After a short break in service, normal posting will now resume on the books blog. The Booker shortlist has been announced and there is no room for Alan Hollinghurst, Sebastian Barry, D.J. Taylor or Patrick McGuiness. Here are the books that superseded them:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie 

Patrick de Witt, The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

A D Miller, Snowdrops

Christopher Hitchens ponders writing and language in the ten years after 9/11.

‘Especially over the course of the last 10 years, the word “martyr” has been utterly degraded by the wolfish image of Mohammed Atta: a cold and loveless zombie – a suicide murderer – who took as many innocents with him as he could manage. The organisations that find and train men like Atta have since been responsible for unutterable crimes in many countries and societies, from England to Iraq, in their attempt to create a system where the cold and loveless zombie would be the norm, and culture would be dead.