book reviews and features
Best of 2020: Books
Thursday, 31 December 2020
Stuck in our homes for most of this year, we found comfort and escape from books in ways unprecedented in 2020. The chance to dwell in alternative spaces, or inhabit different rhythms of living.... Read more... |
Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the... Read more... |
Goran Vojnović: The Fig Tree review - falling apart together as Yugoslavia splits
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
Seven years ago, at a literary festival in the Croatian port of Pula, I heard Goran Vojnović talk about... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelands
Thursday, 10 December 2020
Simon Armitage is a poet at the top of his game: in his second year as poet laureate, he has given voice to the... Read more... |
Don DeLillo: The Silence review - when the lights of technology go out
Tuesday, 08 December 2020
Don DeLillo’s latest novella, The Silence, has been marketed with an emphasis on its prescience, describing the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incomplete
Tuesday, 01 December 2020
As much as we would like it to, writing can never fully recapture someone who is gone. This we learn all too effectively in A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, arguably one of... Read more... |
Zaina Arafat: You Exist Too Much review - second-generation love addiction
Monday, 30 November 2020
Zaina Arafat’s debut details the trials and tribulations of its first generation American-... Read more... |
Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC review - we won't know what we've got until it's gone
Monday, 30 November 2020
When in June 2019 the BBC announced plans to restrict free TV licences to households with at least one person aged over... Read more... |
Extract: 'On Loneliness' by Fatimah Asghar, from 'The Good Immigrant USA'
Tuesday, 24 November 2020
The infamous border wall. Prolonged detention. Children in cages. Even as Biden's election promises a sea change in... Read more... |
Nicole Krauss: To Be a Man review - first short-story collection from the award-winning novelist
Thursday, 19 November 2020
Tamar, a character in “The Husband”, one of the most appealing, joyful stories in Nicole Krauss’s new collection... 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.
It followed some...
Krapp's Last Tape, Barbican review - playing with the l...
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Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music drama
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Georgia Mancio, Alan Broadbent, Pizza Express Dean Street re...
Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist...
The Extraordinary Miss Flower review - odd mashup of music,...
The makers of The Extraordinary Miss Flower are billing it as a “performance film”, a subspecies of the concert-movie...
Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade review - how the gr...
Purporting to be a documentary about John Lennon in the 1970s, Borrowed Time is no such thing....
Album: PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs?
PUP’s Who Will Look After The Dogs? is a raw and emotionally charged album that captures the band’s chaotic spirit while showing clear...