tue 08/07/2025

book reviews and features

Caroline Maclean: Circles and Squares review - adventurous art, progressive living and a good gossip

Marina Vaizey

There was a moment in the 1930s when it seemed that contemporary art, as practised in Britain, might join the...

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Rutger Bregman: Humankind, a Hopeful History review – nice guys finish first

Boyd Tonkin

In retrospect, we will surely see that British battles over the Covid-19 lockdown harboured within them a bitter but half-hidden war of ideas. On one side, the behavioural scientists who first...

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Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - III of III

theartsdesk

At the end of an exhausting day's driving punctuated by disappointments and false leads, the narrator finds herself back at the Israeli town of Nirim where she spends the night. Slipping off...

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Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - II of III

theartsdesk

The second half of Minor Detail is narrated in the first person by a young Palestinian woman who reads an article about the rape and murder of the captured girl. When she finds out...

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Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

theartsdesk

The first half of Minor Detail is set in an Israeli military camp in the Negev desert in August 1949, during the conflict celebrated as the War of Independence in Israel and a year...

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Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: The Discomfort of Evening review - lovelessness, loneliness, bodies and their limits

Jessica Payn

“I was ten and stopped taking off my coat.” This bare beginning marks the opening of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s startling and lyrical novel, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison: an...

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Alex George: The Paris Hours review - captivating yet frustrating

Charlie Stone

A century on, the années folles of Paris between the wars do not cease to excite readers and writers of all varieties. Alex George’s latest...

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Catherine Belton: Putin’s People review - an instant classic

James Dowsett

In October 1991, Russian prosecutors gained access to the Communist Party Central Committee’s headquarters in Moscow’s Old Square. The offices had been sealed after President Boris Yeltsin ordered...

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Elizabeth Kay: Seven Lies review - can big-money debut match the hype?

Jasper Rees

Seven Lies is the debut novel of Elizabeth Kay, who under another name works as a commissioning editor...

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Don Winslow: Broken review - a staggering crash course in the possibilities of crime

Marina Vaizey

One of the masters of both mystery and thriller, Don Winslow’s latest volume is a reading bonanza: a collection of six crime-focused short novels (‘novellas’ feels too fancy for a writer so...

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When he was a callow youth of 18, German artist Anselm Keifer got a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh. Some...

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