thu 03/04/2025

book reviews and features

Tony Williams: Cole the Magnificent - fantastical tale blends myth, poetry and comedy

Bernard Hughes

Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following...

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Masha Karp: George Orwell and Russia review - dystopia's reality

Hugh Barnes

The war in Ukraine, which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists on calling a “special military operation”, may have given fresh urgency to...

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Henry Hoke: Open Throat review - if a lion could speak

India Lewis

I approached Henry Hoke’s fifth book, Open Throat, with some trepidation. A slim novel (156 pages), it...

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First Person: Marc Burrows on getting to know Sir Terry Pratchett

Marc Burrows

In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s.

My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest...

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Lorrie Moore: I am Homeless If This is Not My Home review - between this world and the next

India Lewis

Lorrie Moore’s brief but haunting I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a bizarre, unsettling read. At times it’s a road trip, at others a romance, then supernatural horror, Greek...

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Nick Laird: Up Late review - attention lapses

Alice Brewer

A few pages before the titular poem of Up Late, Nick Laird describes a haircut in a bathroom mirror, and finds a possible art form reflected back: "something like a poem / glances back /...

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Extract: Bacon in Moscow by James Birch

James Birch

In 1988, James Birch – curator, art dealer, and gallery owner – took Francis Bacon to Moscow. It was, as he writes, "an unimaginable intrusion of Western Culture into the heart of the Soviet...

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Fiona Maddocks: Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in Exile review - an affectionate biographical portrait

Bernard Hughes

In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent...

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Jacqueline Rose: The Plague review - tracing our response to tragedy

Lia Rockey

In The Plague: Living Death in Our Times, Jacqueline Rose makes a surprising pivot from her usual topics – Sylvia Plath, children’s fiction, Zionism, to name a few – to throw a spotlight...

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Caleb Azumah Nelson: Small Worlds review - Ghana and London dance together

India Lewis

Small Worlds, the second novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, is a delight: a book with a real feeling for sound and dance, and a sense of place from London to Ghana and back again. It’s a...

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