book reviews and features
10 Questions for novelist Mieko KawakamiTuesday, 27 July 2021
Mieko Kawakami sits firmly amongst the Japanese literati for her sharp and pensive depictions of life in... Read more... |
Samantha Walton: Everybody Needs Beauty review - the well of the worldTuesday, 20 July 2021
In the opening poem of Samantha Walton's 2018 collection, Self Heal, the speaker is on the tube, that evergreen metaphor of capital's specific barrelling momentum. The tube "will... Read more... |
Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing review – core writing from England's regionsFriday, 16 July 2021
“On the Ordinance Survey map, it has no name”, writes Andrew Michael Hurley, of the wood that nevertheless gives its name to his essay. “Clavicle Wood” provides the first chapter in the ... Read more... |
Adam Mars-Jones: Batlava Lake review - pride and prejudice in the Kosovo WarFriday, 16 July 2021
For a slim book of some 100 pages, Batlava Lake by Adam Mars-Jones is deceptively meandering. The novella is narrated by Barry Ashton, an engineer attached to the British Army troops... Read more... |
Danielle Evans: The Office of Historical Corrections review - what happens when history comes knockingWednesday, 16 June 2021
There’s something refreshing about fiction you can easily trace back to the question “what if... Read more... |
Anna Neima: The Utopians review – after horror, six quests for the good lifeTuesday, 15 June 2021
Not long after the Nazis came to power, Eberhard Arnold sent a manifesto to Adolf Hitler. The Protestant preacher urged the dictator to “embrace universal love”. With his wife Emmy, Eberhard had... Read more... |
Victoria Mas: The Mad Women's Ball review - compelling plot meets disquieting historyTuesday, 15 June 2021
To this day, if you take a stroll down Paris’ Boulevard de l’Hôpital, you’ll come across an imposing building: the... Read more... |
Extract: David Lan's As If By ChanceMonday, 14 June 2021
In June 2001 the London Festival of International Theatre brought Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Alive from ... Read more... |
Elinor Cleghorn: Unwell Women review – misunderstanding and misdiagnosisMonday, 14 June 2021
I’m one of the women in the pages of Elinor Cleghorn’s new history of the female body, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World. I’ve dealt with strange... Read more... |
Ed Miliband: Go Big - How to Fix Our World review - reasons to hopeMonday, 07 June 2021
Almost alone among my friends, I liked and admired Ed Miliband, renewing my on-off relationship with the Labour... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
Why do production companies think the world needs yet another reconstituted TV drama involving famous people in infamous situations? Newspapers...
The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of...
Life can be unfair, and Katy Perry can’t be alone in finding herself having to take the rough with the smooth. Still, anyone would have thought...
“Let the train take the strain”, as the old advertising slogan urged us. The train in this...
Orla Barry laughed when she was advised to take up sheep farming, and not just because she had no experience. “Orla with the sheep eyes,” she...
If you like a body-horror movie to retain a semblance of logic in its plot line, then The Substance – grotesque, gory and finally...
Sometimes a gig suddenly and completely elevates. Such is the case tonight when Moby, on his first UK tour in 12 years, plays “Extreme Ways”, his...
“Are you a serial killer?” asks a woman sitting in a pick up truck with a man she just met at a bar. The neon sign from the motel...
It’s a bold move to give a UK cinema release to this fierce courtroom drama about a French left-wing intellectual who was assassinated in1979....
You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoe Coombs Marr, which she...