mon 23/06/2025

book reviews and features

'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022

Jasper Rees

Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won...

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Ken Auletta: Hollywood Ending - Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence review - if the tide had turned in 2002...

Sebastian Scotney

It was not until October 2017 that The New York Times ran a...

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Olivier Guez: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele review - the Nazi who was never found

India Lewis

Bringing Olivier Guez’s novel The Disappearance of Josef Mengele on a beach holiday may seem like an odd choice (such is the lot of a reviewer). This incongruity transformed into...

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Amalie Smith: Thread Ripper review - the tangled web we weave

Hannah Hutching

Sitting in the park on a hot summer’s day, life began to imitate art. I had been soaking up the sun’s now overpowering rays for over an hour and was beginning to feel its radiating effects.

...

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Phoebe Power: Book of Days review - the clack of walking poles, the clink of scallop shell

Harriet Mercer

The word “shrine” somersaults me back to the path of the Camino de Santiago. I have lost count of the faces that smiled up from photos positioned in the hollow of trees, some with little plastic...

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Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensitive sequel

India Lewis

A sequel is always a hard thing to write, especially if the book that precedes it is a bestseller, adapted for television and read by more than a million people. Yet Jessie Burton’s The House...

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Katya Adaui: Here Be Icebergs review - odd relations

India Lewis

The title of Katya Adaui’s debut collection in English is taken from one of the 12 short stories it contains: an...

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Stanislav Aseyev: In Isolation - Dispatches from Occupied Donbas review - journeys through space and time in Ukraine

Hugh Barnes

Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer who came in from the cold. Until the spring of 2014, he was an aspiring...

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Mieko Kawakami: All the Lovers in the Night review - the raw relatability of loneliness

Izzy Smith

Mieko Kawakami is the champion of the loner. Since achieving immense success in the UK with her translated works, she has become an indie fiction icon for her modern, visceral depictions of...

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Philip Ball: The Book of Minds review - thinking about the box

Jon Turney

Years ago, one of the leading mathematicians in the country tried to explain to me what his real work was like. When he was on the case, he said, he could be doing a range of other things – having...

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