book reviews and features
Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today review - can America avoid the fire this time?
Tuesday, 26 January 2021
I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that familiar to readers in Britain, perhaps not even to... Read more... |
Olivia Sudjic: Asylum Road review - trauma, barely suppressed
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
In Asylum Road, Olivia Sudjic's third book, everything is purposeful, each loaded gun introduced... Read more... |
Raven Leilani: Luster - portrait of the artist as a black millennial woman
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
One of the finer episodes in Raven Leilani’s startling debut (which contains an embarrassment of fine episodes)... Read more... |
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures is a collection of transcripts, recording weekly group lectures... Read more... |
Julia Bell: Radical Attention review - a clear rendering of our withering attention spans
Monday, 11 January 2021
You go out for a walk and leave your devices at home; your head feels a little bit clearer. But when you get back and plonk yourself... Read more... |
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
Wednesday, 06 January 2021
Before he published fiction, George Saunders trained as an engineer and wrote technical reports. The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo,... Read more... |
Courttia Newland: A River Called Time review - an ethereality check
Tuesday, 05 January 2021
It is near impossible to imagine what the world would look like today if slavery and colonialism had... Read more... |
Best of 2020: Books
Thursday, 31 December 2020
Stuck in our homes for most of this year, we found comfort and escape from books in ways unprecedented in 2019. The chance to dwell in alternative spaces, or inhabit different rhythms of living.... Read more... |
Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the... Read more... |
Goran Vojnović: The Fig Tree review - falling apart together as Yugoslavia splits
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
Seven years ago, at a literary festival in the Croatian port of Pula, I heard Goran Vojnović talk about... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Marcella, Series 3, ITV review - Anna Friel returns as the d...
Anna Friel’s unstable detective Marcella Backland has been on...
Album: Steve Hackett - Under A Mediterranean Sky
Never have the early months of the year felt more cruel. Escape is what we all yearn for - from home, from ourselves and our shrunken lives. Never...
Christian Blackshaw, Wigmore Hall online review - pure as th...
From a distance, the pianist Christian Blackshaw bears an uncanny resemblance to Franz Liszt, silver hair swept back à la 19th...
Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's Americ...
I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that...
Romances on British Poetry / The Poet's Echo, English T...
A darkened stage; a pool of light; a solitary figure. And then, flooding the whole thing with meaning, music – even it’s just a soft chord on a...
theartsdesk Q&A: actor Polly Walker on 'Bridgerton...
Polly Walker's character in Netflix's sumptuous new ...
It's a Sin, Channel 4 review - poignant, funny, vibrant...
Finally, it seems, the time is right for a major British TV drama about how the AIDS crisis hit the early 1980s London...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Destin...
"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying...