book reviews and features
Book extract: Fat by Hanne BlankWednesday, 23 December 2020
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the... Read more... |
Goran Vojnović: The Fig Tree review - falling apart together as Yugoslavia splitsTuesday, 15 December 2020
Seven years ago, at a literary festival in the Croatian port of Pula, I heard Goran Vojnović talk about... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelandsThursday, 10 December 2020
Simon Armitage is a poet at the top of his game: in his second year as poet laureate, he has given voice to the... Read more... |
Don DeLillo: The Silence review - when the lights of technology go outTuesday, 08 December 2020
Don DeLillo’s latest novella, The Silence, has been marketed with an emphasis on its prescience, describing the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incompleteTuesday, 01 December 2020
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 addictionMonday, 30 November 2020
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 goneMonday, 30 November 2020
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'Tuesday, 24 November 2020
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 novelistThursday, 19 November 2020
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 biteWednesday, 18 November 2020
This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour,... Read more... |
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