book reviews and features
Keggie Carew: Beastly review - the history of animals and us
Monday, 15 May 2023
There’s been an avalanche of books about animals and trees. The more species disappear and forests are felled, the more titles are published: laments, celebrations, extinction alarms and rhapsodic... Read more... |
Noreen Masud: A Flat Place - reflective landscapes
Tuesday, 09 May 2023
On the front cover of Noreen Masud’s startling memoir, A Flat Place, a green square of sky is scored... Read more... |
A. Anatoli: Babi Yar - The Story of Ukraine's Holocaust review - a masterpiece uncensored
Friday, 05 May 2023
The great Russian novelists of the 19th century wrote what Henry James called "large, loose, baggy monsters" out of belief that "truth" was... Read more... |
Max Porter: Shy review - an ode to boyhood and rage
Wednesday, 03 May 2023
Max Porter continues his fascination with the struggles of youth in his newest release, Shy: his most beautifully-wrought... Read more... |
Solmaz Sharif: Customs review - a poetics of exile and return
Monday, 01 May 2023
The language of poetic technique is perhaps weighted towards rupture, rather than reparation: lines end and break, we count beats and stress, experience caesurae (literally ‘cuttings’), and mark... Read more... |
First Person: Sophie Haydock on going beyond the grave
Thursday, 27 April 2023
It was a cold day in Vienna when Egon Schiele was buried in the Ober-Sankt-Veit cemetery. He was just 28 years old. The controversial... Read more... |
Lydia Sandgren: Collected Works review - the mysteries that surround us all
Tuesday, 18 April 2023
Lydia Sandgren’s debut novel, Collected Works, a bestseller in her native Sweden, has now been translated by Agnes Broomé into English, in all its 733-page glory. An epic family saga, it... Read more... |
Jonathan Kennedy: Pathogenesis - How Germs Made History review - a return to the infections that formed us
Friday, 14 April 2023
The Cayapo tribe, a shade under 10,000 strong, lived in South America unacquainted with humans in the wider world until 1903. That year, they accepted a missionary who, along with news of... Read more... |
Loving Highsmith review - documentary focused on the writer's lighter side
Thursday, 13 April 2023
Since her death in 1995, Patricia Highsmith has prompted three biographies, screeds of often conflicting psychological analysis and now this... Read more... |
Diana Evans: A House for Alice review - lyrical sequel to Ordinary People
Tuesday, 04 April 2023
Diana Evans specialises in houses, their baleful quirks and the meaning of home. In her acclaimed third novel, Ordinary People (2018), formerly happy, black couple Melissa and Michael... 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...
Prime Target, Apple TV+ review - the appliance of science
An opening sequence of a drone flying over a busy street in Baghdad, followed by a huge explosion that leaves many casualties and a gaping hole...
Out There, ITV1 review - drugs and thugs disfigure the Welsh...
If nothing else, ITV’s new thriller Out There is a fabulous advertisement for the Welsh countryside. Many scenes were shot in Brecon and...
William Tell review - stirring action adventure with silly d...
Despite Rossini’s banger of an overture and a Looney Tunes cartoon starring Daffy Duck as William Tell, I’ll wager that few non-German-speakers...
Album: Tunng - Love You All Over Again
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Tiffin Youth Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus...
When Vladimir Jurowski planned this typically unorthodox programme, he could not have known that a disaster even greater, long-term, than 9/11 was...
Celtic Connections: Orchestral Qawwali Project, GRIT Orchest...
Once again, Glasgow’s annual winter festival of traditional...
David Lynch: In Dreams (1946-2025)
David Lynch’s final two features mapped a haunted Hollywood of curdled innocence and back-alley eeriness. Mulholland Drive (2001) seemed...
Kyoto, Soho Place Theatre - blistering, darkly witty play ra...
It took a while for journalists to identify the chain-smoking, Machiavellian figure who was a permanent presence at early international gatherings...