book reviews and features
Hiromi Kawakami: The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino review - Don Juan as a salaryman
Sunday, 26 May 2019
My first, beguiling taste of Hiromi Kawakami’s fiction came when, in 2014, I and my fellow-judges shortlisted Strange Weather in Tokyo for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. That... Read more... |
Thomas Harris: Cari Mora review – mayhem in Miami
Sunday, 19 May 2019
This March, a real-estate office in Miami Beach, Florida, put a parcel of prime seafront land on the market. A vacant estate with plans filed for a luxury mansion, the plot at 5860 North Bay Road... Read more... |
Mike Jay: Mescaline - A Global History of the First Psychedelic review - multiple perspectives
Sunday, 12 May 2019
Humans have been consuming mescaline for millennia. The hallucinogenic alkaloid occurs naturally in a variety of cacti native to... Read more... |
Ben Okri, Brighton Festival 2019 review - adventures in writing
Wednesday, 08 May 2019
If there’s one thing to learn from Ben Okri in this evening of conversation at Brighton Festival... Read more... |
Leah Hazard: Hard Pushed review - a midwife's tales
Sunday, 05 May 2019
This layered medical memoir by practicing midwife Leah Hazard unpacks riveting tales of all kinds of deliveries and is... Read more... |
Clare Carlisle: Philosopher of the Heart review – how to be human
Sunday, 28 April 2019
How close should a biographer come to her subject? Clare Carlisle stays by the side, and looks through the eyes, of Søren Kierkegaard at almost every step on his maverick journey. Philosopher... Read more... |
Banine: Days in the Caucasus review - revolutions, pogroms and love
Sunday, 21 April 2019
By fifteen Ummulbanu Asadullayeva — or Banine, to call her by the name under which she wrote and translated — had already lived more than most of us will in a lifetime. She’d experienced great... Read more... |
Frans de Waal: Mama's Last Hug review - animal feelings
Sunday, 14 April 2019
Primatologist, ethologist, zoologist, biologist, social psychologist, behaviourist – how may ‘ists’ can one person have? Dutch-American... Read more... |
My Enemy's Cherry Tree: Wang Ting-Kuo review - a masterpiece from Taiwan
Sunday, 07 April 2019
Early every evening, Miss Baixiu comes to sit in an isolated café. She is the daughter of Luo Yiming, the respected employee of a successful commercial bank in charge of loans throughout central... Read more... |
Ali Smith: Spring review – green shoots, dark fears
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Stopped in the street for a vox pop by a BBC interviewer keen to “fill your air” with strife and bile, a character in Spring retorts that “there’s a world out there bigger than Brexit,... Read more... |
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