book reviews and features
Selva Almada: Brickmakers review – men dying for love
Monday, 01 November 2021
To make bricks you torment the soft, moist and fluid material of clay and sand in a prison of fire until it becomes dry, hard and unyielding. In Selva Almada’s rural... Read more... |
Mary Wellesley: Hidden Hands review - passion in the parchment
Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Outside Wales – even, perhaps, within it – few students will have run across the verse of Gwerful Mechain. The free-... Read more... |
Marcin Wicha: Things I Didn’t Throw Out review - the stories told by stacks of stuff
Tuesday, 12 October 2021
Marcin Wicha’s mother Joanna never talked about her death. A Jewish counsellor based in an office built on top of the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto, her days were consumed by work and her passion... Read more... |
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads review - can goodness ever be its own reward?
Monday, 11 October 2021
It’s Christmas 1971 in New Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, and pastor Russ Hildebrandt has plans for... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Burntcoat review - love after the end of the world
Saturday, 09 October 2021
Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat is one of those new books with the unsettling quality of describing or... Read more... |
First Person: Andrea Levy's husband recalls her path toward becoming a novelist
Thursday, 07 October 2021
The opening sentence of Andrea’s 2010 historical novel The Long Song ... Read more... |
Wole Soyinka: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth review – sprawling satire of modern-day Nigeria
Thursday, 07 October 2021
Eight-years passed between the publication of Wole Soyinka’s debut novel, The Interpreters (1965), and his second, Season of Anomy (1973). A lot happened in... Read more... |
Extract: The Breaks by Julietta Singh
Wednesday, 06 October 2021
How do we mother “at the end of the world”? Among the ruins of late capitalism, climate catastrophe, and entrenched white state violence? Julietta Singh “admit[s]... Read more... |
Ananyo Bhattacharya: The Man from the Future review - the man, the maths, the brain
Tuesday, 05 October 2021
Suppose I’m a novelist plotting a panoramic narrative through world-shaping moments of the first half of the 20th century. I’ll need a character who can visit a bunch of key sites. Göttingen in... Read more... |
Ruby Tandoh: Cook As You Are review - truly a trailblazer
Monday, 04 October 2021
Ever since her appearance on The Great British Bake Off in 2013, Ruby Tandoh has been a breath of fresh air to the food... Read more... |
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