Towards the end of my undergraduate degree, I became entirely fascinated by the ways that the children of Nazi perpetrators reacted to their parents' crimes. So it was with something between excitement and jealousy that I later learned that Philippe Sands was making an (excellent) film about exactly the same topic. As part of that film, he got to know Horst von Wächter, the son of Otto von Wächter, Nazi Governor in Galicia during the war. This stunning book (there is also a podcast) not only tells the story of the elder von Wächter's escape from justice at the end of the War - a story which twists and turns like a John le Carre novel (Mr le Carre does in fact feature!) - but also the story of his son's deeply problematic views on his own father. The younger Wächter, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, refuses to accept his father was a major criminal and Sands's great achievement here is to explore that alongside the gripping tale of the so-called Nazi ratlines.

Last week I told a colleague about reading a book about Amazon and his immediate question was, "is it very scary?" So let me just clarify right away, that I fully excpect this to be the scariest book I will read this year. For booksellers, Amazon is clearly never far from our thoughts and I make a point of reading books about the - not to put to fine a point on it - "enemy". The same seems to be true for Alec McGillis whose book about the far-reaching consequences the rise of Amazon has had on American society and economy is siffused with years of deep thinking and research. His focus in this is not so much the actual company but more the repercussions that could be felt in all strata of American society. Told through the lives of several individuals, he looks at topics like data centers, concentration of wealth in a small number of cities and the declining dignity of this new class of jobs. While I sometimes wanted more clarity, it remains a chilling masterpiece.

It's not always easy to praise Nobel Prize juries but in bringing Svetlana Alexievich to global attention, they have (by contrast to giving a gong to a guy with a guitar) done great service to global literature. This is her first book and not only one of the best books on World War Two I have read but also a superb advertisement for oral history as a historical and literary form. Even today, it feels fresh and somewhat revolutionary for giving a voice to the huge range of women who fought in the Red Army nearly 40 years after its first publication. What makes the narrative so compelling that it shows which Soviet narratives were widely adopted by ordinary soldiers but also clearly demonstrates this was not a perfect process. And while the horror of war is its central theme, it also shows how fighting could for some (but again not all) female Soviet soldier be emancipatory. A stunning book which is set the stone for her subsequent entirely Nobel-worthy corpus of work.

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Prashad, Vijay

Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World, and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His most recent book is Red Star Over the Third World. He writes regularly for Frontline, The Hindu, Alternet, and BirGun. He is Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.

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