thu 30/10/2025

book reviews and features

Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims review – adventures on the road to Rome

Boyd Tonkin

Some things really never change. After a blatant cheat perpetrated by a well-connected lout, one of the humblest pilgrims in Matthew Kneale’s band reminds us that “rich folks’ justice is a penny...

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Moyra Davey: Index Cards review – fragments of the artist

Daniel Baksi

Moyra Davey’s biographical note, included in Fitzcarraldo Editions’ copy of Index Cards, describes “a New...

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Keiichiro Hirano: A Man review - the best kind of thriller

Charlie Stone

Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man has all the trappings of a gripping detective story: a bereaved wife, a...

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John Grisham: Camino Winds review - morality tale with a light touch

Marina Vaizey

John Grisham is a brand, in the sense that the reader relies on some sense of what the product is going to be. He is well up in the millions of sales, along with other writers under the “...

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Maria Reva: Good Citizens Need Not Fear review - tales of gloomy humour and absurdist charm

Jessica Payn

Maria Reva’s humorously gloomy debut collection, centring on the inhabitants of a block of stuffy apartments in Soviet (and...

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Khaled Nurul Hakim: The Book of Naseeb review – a bold debut

Daniel Baksi

A small-time heroin dealer harbours idealistic dreams of building a hospital “to help da limmless in Peshawar and Kabul”. This is the premise of The Book of Naseeb, the debut novel from...

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'What Grandma said (Grandma’s Corona)': sonnets by Claudia Daventry

Claudia Daventry

A year plagued by Coronavirus is surely a time to dust off a seldom-aired...

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Caroline Maclean: Circles and Squares review - adventurous art, progressive living and a good gossip

Marina Vaizey

There was a moment in the 1930s when it seemed that contemporary art, as practised in Britain, might join the...

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Rutger Bregman: Humankind, a Hopeful History review – nice guys finish first

Boyd Tonkin

In retrospect, we will surely see that British battles over the Covid-19 lockdown harboured within them a bitter but half-hidden war of ideas. On one side, the behavioural scientists who first...

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Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - III of III

theartsdesk

At the end of an exhausting day's driving punctuated by disappointments and false leads, the narrator finds herself back at the Israeli town of Nirim where she spends the night. Slipping off...

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