book reviews and features
Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium review - paranoid prose
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
In his first of a series of meditations on the sickness that was consuming him, John Donne reflected... Read more... |
Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did – and there’s nothing we can do about it. In fact, Faber &... Read more... |
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
Friday, 19 July 2024
How do you give voice to a history that is intimate to your own in one sense, whilst being the story of others whom you never knew? This is a... Read more... |
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
Thursday, 18 July 2024
Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History is personal: a novel, that is, strangely inflected by autobiography, a history that is... Read more... |
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Saturday, 06 July 2024
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure. In this fine, clear-eyed... Read more... |
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go back
Monday, 24 June 2024
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual... Read more... |
Hugo Rifkind: Rabbits review - 31 wild parties and a funeral
Monday, 10 June 2024
In some ways I’m an appropriate person to review Hugo Rifkind’s new novel Rabbits, a coming-of-age comedy set in the early... Read more... |
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
Friday, 03 May 2024
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and Seventies, alongisde the likes of Ed Dorn and J. H.... Read more... |
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review - a view from the boundaries
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world – and makes from it a diverting and informative read... Read more... |
Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also suns a little while back, cosmically speaking, or a... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
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Flight Risk review - the sky's the limit for Michelle D...
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Presence review – Soderbergh’s haunted camera
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Cymbeline, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - pagan women figh...
There’s not much point in having three hours worth of Shakespearean text to craft and the gorgeous Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as a...
An Interrogation, Hampstead Theatre review - police procedur...
In a dingy room with dilapidated furniture on a dismal Sunday evening, two detectives prepare for an interview. The old hand walks...
Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave Immortal
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far...
The Lonely Londoners, Kiln Theatre review - Windrush Generat...
As something of an immigrant to the capital myself in the long hot summer of 1984, I gobbled up Absolute Beginners, Colin...
Gigashvili, Hallé, Cox, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review...
There was excellent music making in the Hallé concert in Manchester last night, and there was self-admitted “noise”. Briefly, the two coincided in...
Album: Ludovico Einaudi - The Summer Portraits
Nine billion streams a year. That’s the sheer scale on which the music of Ludovico Einaudi reaches audiences. The Italian, who will be 70 this...
Prime Target, Apple TV+ review - the appliance of science
An opening sequence of a drone flying over a busy street in Baghdad, followed by a huge explosion that leaves many casualties and a gaping hole...