mon 03/11/2025

book reviews and features

Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche

Daniel Baksi

Roughly two years since ...

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Selva Almada: Dead Girls review – the stark proximity of women to violence

Katie Da Cunha Lewin

Selva Almada’s newly translated work has a stark title in both English and the original Spanish: Dead Girls, or Chicas Muertas. That apparent bluntness belies the hybrid...

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theartsdesk Q&A: author Katharina Volckmer

Charlie Stone

Katharina Volckmer’s début novel The Appointment follows one woman as she vents her frustrations, confusions and regrets to her doctor during a lengthy appointment in London. Ranging...

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A. Naji Bakti: Between Beirut and the Moon review - a seriously comical coming of age

Gaby Frost

What stands between Beirut and the moon? Between Lebanon’s capital and the limitless possibility beyond? It is a question as complex and immense as the nation itself. In the wake of the...

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Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: The Mountains Sing review - a lyrical account of Việt Nam’s brutal past

Lucy Popescu

“The challenges of the Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains. If you stand too close, you won’t be able to see their peaks. Once you step away from the currents...

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CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - Peradam

Tim Cumming

"The gateway to the invisible must be visible." So intones Patti Smith on the third and final journey in sound with Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, AKA Soundwalk Collective, musical...

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Elena Ferrante: The Lying Life of Adults review - a universal Neapolitan adolescence

David Nice

The protagonist is a Neapolitan teenage girl; the settings move between the upper and lower parts, from the Vomero...

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Helen Macdonald: Vesper Flights review - nature lovingly described, nearly lost

India Lewis

Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald’s first book following her incredibly successful memoir H is for Hawk in 2014, is an excellent collection of short pieces focused on the...

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Zalika Reid-Benta: Frying Plantain review - tales of growing up young, black and female in Toronto

Daniel Lewis

It is as unsurprising as it is vital that a spotlight has been thrown on writing by people of colour this year. It is unsurprising, too – looking at bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic...

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Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass review – a leap over England's walls

Boyd Tonkin

Since snobbery and deference have a big part to play in Nick Hayes’s exhilarating book, let’s start with the obligatory name-drop. I have lunched – twice, in different country piles, and most...

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