Julian Evans has written a biography of Norman Lewis (Semi-Invisible Man) and recounted his own travels in the Pacific in Transit of Venus. His latest book was summarised in The Observer yesterday as “a stylish love letter to the Ukrainian port of Odesa [that] charts its transformation from exotic mafia capital to beacon of freedom and, now, battered Russian target”. Reviewing Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War (Scotland Street Press, £24.99), Luke Harding says Evans is “a wonderful writer and observer, a stylist as elegant and gloriously free-wheeling as the late Jonathan Raban”.