book reviews and features

Camille Laurens: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen review - the story of a sculpture

Charlie Stone Sunday, 05 July 2020

Edgar Degas is famous for his depictions of ballet dancers. His drawings, paintings and sculptures of young...

Tahar Ben Jelloun: The Punishment review - triumph over torture

Katherine Waters Sunday, 28 June 2020

In July 1966, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s life changed. As punishment for participating in a peaceful student demonstration against the authoritarian King Hassan II of...

A. Kendra Greene: The Museum of Whales You Will Never See review - a thoughtful museum piece

India Lewis Saturday, 27 June 2020

The Museum of Whales is an unfolding: a slow process of describing a country, its people, and its past through its esoteric and bizarre museums. The book is structured into galleries...

Joseph Mazur: The Clock Mirage review – brief histories of time

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 21 June 2020

The Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxes, which have plagued thinkers for around 2500 years, tell us that super-speedy Achilles can never outrun the tortoise and that an arrow in flight must always...

Margarita García Robayo: Holiday Heart review – understated and acute

Jessica Payn Sunday, 14 June 2020

The epigraph chosen for Holiday Heart locates the book within the tense of an “afterwards”: not passion, but what follows, the wakeful lull and wide-eyed studying of another, in which...

Yuri Herrera: A Silent Fury review – the fire last time

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 14 June 2020

History, as protestors around the world currently insist, can be the art of forgetting – and erasure – as much as of memory. Although it explores a single incident from a century ago, Yuri Herrera...

Book extract: Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo translated by Charlotte Coombe

theartsdesk Sunday, 07 June 2020

Holiday heart, instead of sentimental love discovered on vacation, describes a faltering organ, overloaded from excess consumption: a heart at risk. In Margarita Garcia Robayo’s brilliantly...

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

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 31 May 2020

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...