book reviews and features
Andrew O'Hagan: The Secret Life review – troubling tales from the online undergroundSunday, 18 June 2017
Imagine that you come across a story by a journalist who, writing for the Daily Mail or The Sun, steals the identity of a real young man from a poor neighbourhood of south-east... Read more... |
Elif Batuman: The Idiot review - memories of student life and travels meanderSunday, 11 June 2017
University, anyone? Student days? If you were ever an undergraduate, who does not remember the simultaneous sense of dislocation and excitement, the feeling of the familiar combined with a heady... Read more... |
Peter Ackroyd: Queer City - London's gay life over two millenniaSunday, 04 June 2017
2017 is proving the year of celebrating queer. To mark 50 years of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, we... Read more... |
Evgeny Kissin: Memoirs and Reflections review - Russian education, European conviction, Jewish heritageSunday, 04 June 2017
"Generally speaking," writes Evgeny Kissin in one of the many generous tributes to those whose artistry he most admires, "the mastery of [Carlo Maria] Giulini is exactly what is dearest of all to... Read more... |
Hanif Kureishi, Brighton Festival review - a combative, funny and moving talkMonday, 29 May 2017
Hanif Kureishi and his interviewer Mark Lawson are both wearing black Nike trainers, and long professional acquaintance makes them as comfortable with each other as... Read more... |
Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness review - brilliant fragments of divided IndiaSunday, 28 May 2017
Just as in the United States, the quest among Indian authors in English to deliver the single, knock-out... Read more... |
Billy Bragg: Roots, Radicals and Rockers review - riffing on skiffle, and more besidesSunday, 28 May 2017
Wow! An unconventional opening for a book review maybe, but ‘“wow!” nonetheless. Subtitled "How Skiffle Changed the World", this is an... Read more... |
Muhsin Al-Ramli: 'During Saddam’s regime at least we knew who the enemy was' - interviewSunday, 28 May 2017
Saddam Hussein’s name is never mentioned in The President’s Gardens, even though he haunts every page. The one time that the reader encounters him directly, he is referred to simply by... Read more... |
Colm Tóibín: House of Names review - bleakly beautiful twilight of the godsSunday, 21 May 2017
The news that Colm Tóibín has written a novel about Orestes, Clytemnestra, Electra and the whole accursed... Read more... |
Haruki Murakami: Men Without Women review - a bit too abstract and post-modernSunday, 14 May 2017
“I was a lamprey eel in a former life,” says a woman in “Scheherazade”, one of the most intriguing of the seven stories in Men without Women - it was previously published in the New... Read more... |
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