book reviews and features
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain SinclairFriday, 03 May 2024
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and Seventies, alongisde the likes of Ed Dorn and J. H.... Read more... |
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review - a view from the boundariesTuesday, 23 April 2024
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world – and makes from it a diverting and informative read... Read more... |
Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new worldThursday, 18 April 2024
Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also suns a little while back, cosmically speaking, or a... Read more... |
Heather McCalden: The Observable Universe review - reflections from a damaged lifeTuesday, 16 April 2024
Artist and writer, Heather McCalden, has produced her first book-length work. The Observable Universe examines, variously, her familial history, the death of her parents to AIDS, and the... Read more... |
Dorian Lynskey: Everything Must Go review - it's the end of the world as we know itWednesday, 10 April 2024
According to REM in 1987, “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. And while they sang about topical preoccupations – hurricanes, wildfires and plane crashes – they were really just varying a... Read more... |
Andrew O'Hagan: Caledonian Road review - London's Dickensian returnTuesday, 02 April 2024
Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel, Caledonian Road, feels very much intended to be an epic, or at the very... Read more... |
Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War: A Scenario review - on the inconceivableFriday, 29 March 2024
"[A]n unimaginably beautiful day": this was how Kikue Shiota described the morning of the 6th of August, 1945, in Hiroshima. The day was soon to change, unimaginably, as the city was blitzed by... Read more... |
Anna Reid: A Nasty Little War - The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution review - home truthsFriday, 01 March 2024
During the Cold War, US presidents often claimed that the West and the Soviet Union had never fought one another directly. This observation... Read more... |
Tom Chatfield: Wise Animals review - on the changing worldThursday, 22 February 2024
Consider a chimp peeling a stick which it will poke into a termite nest. It strikes us as a human gesture. Our primate cousin is fashioning a tool. Just as important, the peeled stick implies a... Read more... |
Sheila Heti: Alphabetical Diaries review - an A-Z of inner lifeTuesday, 20 February 2024
After a first read of the blurb for Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, you might be forgiven for assuming that this is merely a gimmick. The book does what it says on the tin: each... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often...
If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the...
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was...
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly...
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many...
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok,...
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who...
The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We...