book reviews and features
Moyra Davey: Index Cards review – fragments of the artist
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Moyra Davey’s biographical note, included in Fitzcarraldo Editions’ copy of Index Cards, describes “a New... Read more... |
Keiichiro Hirano: A Man review - the best kind of thriller
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man has all the trappings of a gripping detective story: a bereaved wife, a... Read more... |
John Grisham: Camino Winds review - morality tale with a light touch
Sunday, 24 May 2020
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 “... Read more... |
Maria Reva: Good Citizens Need Not Fear review - tales of gloomy humour and absurdist charm
Tuesday, 19 May 2020
Maria Reva’s humorously gloomy debut collection, centring on the inhabitants of a block of stuffy apartments in Soviet (and... Read more... |
Khaled Nurul Hakim: The Book of Naseeb review – a bold debut
Sunday, 17 May 2020
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... Read more... |
'What Grandma said (Grandma’s Corona)': sonnets by Claudia Daventry
Sunday, 17 May 2020
A year plagued by Coronavirus is surely a time to dust off a seldom-aired... Read more... |
Caroline Maclean: Circles and Squares review - adventurous art, progressive living and a good gossip
Monday, 11 May 2020
There was a moment in the 1930s when it seemed that contemporary art, as practised in Britain, might join the... Read more... |
Rutger Bregman: Humankind, a Hopeful History review – nice guys finish first
Sunday, 10 May 2020
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... Read more... |
Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - III of III
Friday, 08 May 2020
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... Read more... |
Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - II of III
Wednesday, 06 May 2020
The second half of Minor Detail is narrated in the first person by a young Palestinian woman who reads an article about the rape and murder of the captured girl. When she finds out... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Album: Róisín Murphy - Róisín Machine
This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going...
Finley, LPO, Gardner, Royal Festival Hall (p)review - specia...
There was a rainbow over the Royal Festival Hall...
Monsoon review - like something almost being said
Building very promisingly on the achievement of his ...
Album: Corey Taylor - CMFT
The graveyard of tedious musical vanity projects – and the bargain bins of many record shops – is filled with solo albums by the lead vocalists of...
The Cheeky Chappie, The Warren Outdoors review - entertainin...
It’s fitting that there’s another run of Dave Simpson’s terrific play...
theartsdesk Q&A: musician Kevin Rowland - 'it was p...
“Whoargh! Steady lads!” Under that headline, NME reported that Kevin Rowland had “announced his return to the music scene with a bizarre...
The Movies: The Seventies review - a mirror on malaise
Sky’s 12-part documentary series The Movies...
Album: Public Enemy – What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes D...
It will come as a surprise to nobody that the esteemed elders of rap ...
Gillam, Miloš, Wigmore Hall review – charismatic performers,...
My first time back in a concert hall since March...