Books features
Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - III of IIIFriday, 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 early in the morning, she first fills her eyes with the... Read more... |
Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - II of IIIWednesday, 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 the crime took place exactly 25 years before her birth, she... Read more... |
Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania ShibliMonday, 04 May 2020
The first half of Minor Detail is set in an Israeli military camp in the Negev desert in August 1949, during the conflict celebrated as the War of Independence in Israel and a year after the mass expulsion mourned as the Nakba in Arabic in which... Read more... |
'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'Monday, 24 February 2020
It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was Jewish. As I left one of the orientation talks, I was approached by a slight young man with short brown hair and intense eyes. He... Read more... |
Book extract: Insurrecto by Gina ApostolWednesday, 09 October 2019
She had clutched the envelope given by the shy messenger, but she had never opened it. The Intended.True. The message from the director was for her.A joke between them—a bond.Though in her view he was no Kurtz: all he wanted was to finish his film.... Read more... |
Al Alvarez: 'If I drop dead this minute, I’ve had a terrific time'Monday, 23 September 2019
We like to think of ourselves as a nation of eccentrics, but some take their patriotic duties more seriously than others. Al Alvarez – poet, critic, poker player, rock climber, old-school literary mensch, who has died at the age of 90 – took his... Read more... |
Best of 2018: BooksMonday, 31 December 2018
Reasons to be cheerful? A fortissimo blast of anguish and foreboding currently sounds from both those end-of-year round-ups that look back over the past twelve months, and the doomy previews that dwell on the travails of our immediate future. So, in... Read more... |
h 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - other stories, other voicesMonday, 20 August 2018
If history repeats itself, better hope that it corrects its mistakes as well. This year’s nominations for the h100 awards in publishing and writing reflect the welcome drive towards diversity and inclusion among Britain’s wordsmiths and the various... Read more... |
Barbara Ehrenreich: Natural Causes review - counterintuitive wisdom on the big issuesSunday, 15 April 2018
“Wham bam, thank you, ma’am” might be one response to this polemical, wry, hilarious and affecting series of counterintuitive essays by one of the most original and unexpected thinkers around. Barbara Ehrenreich has described herself as a “myth-... Read more... |
Listed: The 10 Best Biblical NovelsSunday, 25 March 2018
From the myths of the Old Testament to the miracles of the New, the Bible has been as much a source of inspiration to writers, artists and composers as it has to theologians and priests. One of the most infamous yet influential of all Old Testament... Read more... |
Lynne Murphy: The Prodigal Tongue review - two nations divided by a common language?Sunday, 25 March 2018
For as long as I can remember, and long before I set foot in America for the first time at age 24, I have been intrigued by America – the “idea” of it, conjured up through music, and, as it turned out, the reality – and the common language which (... Read more... |
Richard Sennett: Building and Dwelling - Ethics for the City reviewSunday, 18 March 2018
All the great sociologists, in the tradition of Georg Simmel, Max Weber and others, are on a mission. They cannot help wishing to change the world. Science should be value-free, but the social sciences have never come close to that questionable... Read more... |
