fri 20/06/2025

book reviews and features

Hanif Kureishi, Brighton Festival review - a combative, funny and moving talk

Nick Hasted

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...

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Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness review - brilliant fragments of divided India

Boyd Tonkin

Just as in the United States, the quest among Indian authors in English to deliver the single, knock-out...

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Billy Bragg: Roots, Radicals and Rockers review - riffing on skiffle, and more besides

Liz Thomson

Wow! An unconventional opening for a book review maybe, but ‘“wow!” nonetheless. Subtitled "How Skiffle Changed the World", this is an...

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Muhsin Al-Ramli: 'During Saddam’s regime at least we knew who the enemy was' - interview

Rachel Halliburton

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...

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Colm Tóibín: House of Names review - bleakly beautiful twilight of the gods

Boyd Tonkin

The news that Colm Tóibín has written a novel about Orestes, Clytemnestra, Electra and the whole accursed...

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Haruki Murakami: Men Without Women review - a bit too abstract and post-modern

Markie Robson-Scott

“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...

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Hanif Kureishi: The Nothing review - a glittering chamber of ice

Matthew Wright

Kureishi is mostly loved for his bittersweet panoramas of suburban London, ribald and piquant with satire. The Nothing discards that broad canvas and creeps into a glittering...

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Bella Bathurst: Sound, review - an illuminating book on deafness

Liz Thomson

Shelve with Oliver Sacks. In Sound: Stories of Hearing Lost and Found Bella Bathurst has written a fascinating and illuminating book on deafness. Of what it’s like to lose your hearing –...

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Sunday Book: Henry Marsh - Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Marina Vaizey

Is it true that the blob of jelly resembling convoluted grey matter that we carry around in our skulls is really what we are? And how we are, and why? This is the profound question that is...

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theartsdesk at The Hospital Club

theartsdesk

The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in...

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