book reviews and features
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir: Magma review - love burns in debut novel from Iceland![]()
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s Magma is certainly not an easy read. It describes, in short chapters... Read more... |
10 Questions for novelist Mieko Kawakami![]()
Mieko Kawakami sits firmly amongst the Japanese literati for her sharp and pensive depictions of life in... Read more... |
Samantha Walton: Everybody Needs Beauty review - the well of the world![]()
In the opening poem of Samantha Walton's 2018 collection, Self Heal, the speaker is on the tube, that evergreen metaphor of capital's specific barrelling momentum. The tube "will... Read more... |
Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing review – core writing from England's regions![]()
“On the Ordinance Survey map, it has no name”, writes Andrew Michael Hurley, of the wood that nevertheless gives its name to his essay. “Clavicle Wood” provides the first chapter in the ... Read more... |
Adam Mars-Jones: Batlava Lake review - pride and prejudice in the Kosovo War![]()
For a slim book of some 100 pages, Batlava Lake by Adam Mars-Jones is deceptively meandering. The novella is narrated by Barry Ashton, an engineer attached to the British Army troops... Read more... |
Danielle Evans: The Office of Historical Corrections review - what happens when history comes knocking![]()
There’s something refreshing about fiction you can easily trace back to the question “what if... Read more... |
Anna Neima: The Utopians review – after horror, six quests for the good life![]()
Not long after the Nazis came to power, Eberhard Arnold sent a manifesto to Adolf Hitler. The Protestant preacher urged the dictator to “embrace universal love”. With his wife Emmy, Eberhard had... Read more... |
Victoria Mas: The Mad Women's Ball review - compelling plot meets disquieting history![]()
To this day, if you take a stroll down Paris’ Boulevard de l’Hôpital, you’ll come across an imposing building: the... Read more... |
Extract: David Lan's As If By Chance![]()
In June 2001 the London Festival of International Theatre brought Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Alive from ... Read more... |
Elinor Cleghorn: Unwell Women review – misunderstanding and misdiagnosis![]()
I’m one of the women in the pages of Elinor Cleghorn’s new history of the female body, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World. I’ve dealt with strange... Read more... |
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