Books of the month: From Salman Rushdie to Blake Morrison

Martin Chilton reviews February’s biggest new books for our monthly column

The best of February’s book releases (iStock/The Independent)

Torture, espionage and mind experiments are just three of the edgy subjects featuring in some of the engrossing non-fiction out this month.

Given that it is still taboo for Chinese officials to admit fully the brutality of Chairman Mao’s reign, Tania Branigan’s Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Faber) offers an important reminder of the grisly nature of what took place there during the 1960s and 70s. In one disturbing quote, a teacher, who was later to be killed in a frenzied attack by Mao fanatics, foretells her own murder with the words: “Beating someone like me to death is just like killing a dog.” Branigan’s book demonstrates that some stains of history will never be wiped away.

In Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage (Icon), Nathalia Holt pays tribute to the female secret agents of the Cold War era. “Women were much better at detecting surveillants on foot,” admits one officer from the time, putting this skill down to the necessity in general life for women to be vigilant about their own physical protection. The pioneering spies were smart and strong, but things did not always end well in their personal lives. When Elizabeth Sudmeier retired, after ground-breaking work as a spy in Iraq in the 1950s, she found it hard to cope without the excitement of her clandestine work. “The isolation pressed in on her and her drinking worsened,” notes Holt.