book reviews and features
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incomplete![]()
As much as we would like it to, writing can never fully recapture someone who is gone. This we learn all too effectively in A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, arguably one of... Read more... |
Zaina Arafat: You Exist Too Much review - second-generation love addiction![]()
Zaina Arafat’s debut details the trials and tribulations of its first generation American-... Read more... |
Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC review - we won't know what we've got until it's gone![]()
When in June 2019 the BBC announced plans to restrict free TV licences to households with at least one person aged over... Read more... |
Extract: 'On Loneliness' by Fatimah Asghar, from 'The Good Immigrant USA'![]()
The infamous border wall. Prolonged detention. Children in cages. Even as Biden's election promises a sea change in... Read more... |
Nicole Krauss: To Be a Man review - first short-story collection from the award-winning novelist![]()
Tamar, a character in “The Husband”, one of the most appealing, joyful stories in Nicole Krauss’s new collection... Read more... |
Andrey Kurkov: Grey Bees review - light Ukrainian odyssey, with bite![]()
This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour,... Read more... |
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise BourgeoisMonday, 16 November 2020
How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to... Read more... |
Ben Wilson: Metropolis - A History of Humankind's Greatest Invention review - urban resilience throughout the ages![]()
Like the novel, painting and God, the city has long been pronounced dead – along with a few other things, like civil politics, society and the art of conversation that were said to have thrived... Read more... |
Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology review - wild writing to stimulate the senses![]()
Among the French composer Claude Debussy’s greatest and characteristically subtle innovations was to put the titles at the end of his pieces. He did this in his piano collection Preludes... Read more... |
Judith Herrin: Ravenna review - flashes of order and beauty in a chaotic world
Anyone mesmerized by the mosaics in seven of Ravenna’s eight Unesco world heritage sites may be surprised by the... 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
![Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium, Saturday 22nd June 2024](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/tay%20header.jpeg?itok=X6Ly0O0S)
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive...
![Martin James Bartlett watched with delight by Fantasia Orchestra leader Millie Ashton](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Fantasia%201.jpg?itok=v4fqQDvE)
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the...
![It’s all relative: Theo Ogundipe and Tiwa Lade in ‘My Father’s Fable’.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/fable1.jpg?itok=2S4sJgVz)
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the...
![Ruthlessly organised: Simone Signoret in 'Army of Shadows'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/L--Armee-des-ombres-Photos-022PHOTO-jpgiii.jpg?itok=obTJMiE7)
One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des...
![Ideal lovers: Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Cesare and Louise Alder as Cleopatra](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Cesare%201.jpeg?itok=3JdC7eMC)
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio...
![Kelly Clancy](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/kelly%20portrait.jpg?itok=Oe1dXxId)
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up,...
![Chillin' with them old blues](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Peyroux_LetsWalk_Cover_03_3600x3600%20%281%29.jpg?itok=F2jUDM0f)
Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered...
![The Cryin’ Shames, c. September 1966 in their final incarnation as Paul & Ritchie & The Crying Shames](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Cryin%E2%80%99%20Shames%20Do%20The%20Strum_the%20cryin%20shames_Header_1000.jpg?itok=Y75fI_xH)
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...
![The statue of Smetana, born 200 years ago, presides over the main square of his native Litomyšl](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/1000021319.jpg?itok=j5ytrfbY)
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...