Bookfinder

Simone Lia's follow-up to Fluffy is another humourous take on the sense of identity that comes with a quest for a place to belong. Taking on the idea of Lia's quest for a husband leading her on a voyage of religion and an exploration of her Catholicism.

The Drowned and the Saved was written towards the end of Primo Levi's life, and unlike his earlier memoirs If This is a Man and The Truce, it doesn't explicitly narrate his experiences in Auschwitz and after liberation.

This is the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe.

This is the oral history of Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the Sudan genocide and now a political speaker and activist on the future of Sudan.

Shakespeare and genocide, football and third-world exile, joke Nazis and real Nazis, the most unimaginable fears of a parent and David Bowie in the tropical clouds. It's all here.     

Packed with hilarious and embarrassing anecdotes about some of the greatest cricketers of the last 20 years.

Bechdel's moving 'graphic autobiography' beautifully tells the story of her strange childhood and adolescence in the funeral home run by her father.

This is a compelling new avenue in the tell-all memoir arena

Tina Fey, the creator of 30 Rock, one of Saturday Night Live’s best stalwarts and she of the uncanny Sarah Palin impressions in the run-up to the 2008 USA elections, may not be as widely known here as she should be

Stand up poet Tim Clare's memoir of trying to write and publish the perfect book, mired by peer-jealousy and depression, is the best tool for any budding writer wanting an insight into the creative process.

Dave Eggers' second book in as many months is another oral history of unspoken Americans, this time dealing with survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

One of the greatest Holocaust memoirs, Night records Elie Wiesel's childhood in Transylvania, his deportation, his separation from his family and his journey with his dying father through the inferno of the concentration camps.

As well as being a highly personal account of a fascinating historical period, The Summer My Father Died is a tender elegy to the father the author loved.

Shields draws together his own experiences, his observations of his ageing father, the wisdom of great thinkers, and the bulging research of medical science to trace a narrative of life, from painful birth, through the extraordinary vigour and potential of youth, through slow, long years of decline to the ultimate destination - the 'D' word.  

This loving and beautifully constructed autobiography tells the story of the mind that created Bagpuss, The Clangers and Noggin the Nog.

Big Ray is a true accomplishment: sparse, beautiful and heartwrenching.

This breakout memoir by comedienne Shappi Khorsandi documents her arrival and early to teen years in the UK trying to fit in. More poignant than laugh-out-loud funny, more tragic and beautiful than punchline-fodder.

Comedy legend Richard Herring compiles years of diaries, blogs and Edinburgh shows in this handy instructional guide on how to turn forty and fight every impulse to lead a normal life, find a girl, settle down…

Joe Sacco is one of the most unique graphic novelists of his time. I wonder if he would even be satisfied with the label, graphic novelist. His works encompass so much more. He tells oral histories of our times. He writes journalism.

I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitchhike round the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month'.

The first volume of Wole Soyinka's acclaimed series of autobiographical works. This vivid, exuberant book is the author's account of his childhood in colonial Nigeria.

There is something fitting about the fact that the author of a novel about Victorian soldier, explorer, linguist and polymath Richard Francis Burton is a Bulgarian whose family fled to West Germany to escape persecution before he emigrated to Kenya and later lived in India and South Africa.

An astonishing and fantastical autobiographical novel, reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Laurence Sterne, The System of Vienna details Jonke's travels through Vienna by streetcar.

Rideau's unflinchingly honest account gives us a unique insight into prison life in the infamously violent Angola jail.

Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death In The Family is an experiment that has paid off handsomely in his native Norway, where the author has emerged as one of the leaders of his country's new generation of literary talent.

This graphic novel tells two stories: that of the childhood of Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joyce scholar James Atherton (and now respected academic in her own right), and that of Lucia, daughter of James Joyce himself.

Nigel Slater has brought comfort, relief and delight to my tastebuds and stomach for years with his soothing, warming recipes. It is a surprise, then, to discover that his childhood was far from soothing or warming.

The German Democratic Republic existed for a mere 40 years, but in that time managed to become one of the most sinister and self-serving regimes of the modern world.

Miranda July is a complex character and an immensely talented one; a writer, filmmaker, recording artist and performance artist, she charts the development of her latest project in It Chooses You. Initially intended as a screenplay, the work travels instead through the intricate inner worlds of San Fransiscans via the most unlikely of forums: Pennysaver ads.

Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the 1920s are deeply personal, warmly affectionate and full of wit.

This graphic novel presents Cash as we know him: dangerous, possessed and full of music.

Jonathan Barrow was not famous. But in his brother, Andrew’s, eyes, he was on a path to greatness before his life was cut short by a car accident when he was just 22. Nearly 40 years later Andrew Barrow has written this homage to his younger brother, which entwines his memories of their life together around the text of an unpublished nove.

I don't mean to frame this like an advert but, simply, the book is a breezy, funny read, filled with anecdotes and humility. And that's the type of 'celebrity' I want to read about.

Persepolis is Satrapi's history of Iran and her life in Iran and France as she tries to retain her Iranian culture but also grow up and become independent.

Few people will have heard of Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a violent, anti-Semitic fanatic who took over Mongolia in 1919, but few will forget him after reading James Palmer’s full-blooded biography.

The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life- making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles.

Stewart Lee is one of the country's most respected comedians, a tireless generator of new material and the inspiration for 'national treasure' Ricky Gervais, which is the cue for the start of this part-memoir/part-show transcript.

Slight as Self-Portrait Abroad is, it comes highly recommended for all would-be cosmopolitans and world travellers - as long as you don't mind laughing out loud in front of your fellow passengers.

Babi Yar is the name of a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, where between 1941 and 1943 the Nazis murdered untold numbers of Jews, Roma, the disabled, Ukrainian resisters and hostages.

Filled with intimate photographs, incredible musical stories and a powerful ecological message, this is a enchanting celebration of bike riding.

In January 1952, two young men from Buenos Aires set out to explore South America on 'La Poderosa', the Powerful One: a 500cc Norton motorcycle. One of them was the twenty-three-year-old Che Guevara.

The 2006 Nobel Prize winner has signed up with Faber for this work of non-fiction - subtitled 'Writings on Life, Art, Books and Cities' - and a novel.

Masters salutes the painful, schizophrenic life of Stuart Shorter, but this is also an angry book about the way society treats those who have been horribly abused and abandoned. It was a long time in the writing, but A Life Backwards is a labour of love that demands to be read.

Gil Scott-Heron’s memoir is a brilliant affair. Like Miles Davis, he has the nature cadence of a poet when describing his addictions and demons that make this a compelling read. You never feel sorry for Gil and you never judge him. Instead you’re there, with him, in Jackson, with his grandma, all the way through the 41-date tour of America with Stevie Wonder trying to get a national holiday declared for Martin Luther King, that forms the backbone of the book, right up until the end.

So much has been written about London, from Dickens to Ackroyd to Monica Ali to Patrick Hamilton and on and on and more and more. Craig Taylor, the brilliantly funny author of A Million Tiny Plays About Britain has taken on the task of the definitive state of the nation (city). He has interviewed people from all walks of life, from economic migrants to middle-class poshos to refugees to tourists to artists, and everyone you can think of, in order to write Londoners, one of the most authentic books about London.

In this frank, tender and beautifully written true story, Austrian author Johanna Adorján explores the lives and deaths of her eccentric Jewish-Hungarian grandparents.

Lawrence Osborne’s new book of travel writing, The Wet and the Dry, begins and ends at ten past six in the evening. This is the precise hour which Osborne – novelist, travel writer, bon viveur, expat and permanent exile – believes to be the perfect moment for the night’s first drink.

This grandiose manifesto was written by one of archaeology's lesser known heroes, a tactiturn man, who - as Kitty Hauser shows in this remarkable book - devoted most of his life both to his work and a twentieth-century political ideal, but ended his days disillusioned by the rapidly changing world around him.

...a dazzling brilliant book that is subtly political, never heavy-handed and always cast with a fair eye.

In 1943, two Gestapo officers in possession a deportation order arrived at the home of the Strauss family in Essen, Germany.