fri 15/08/2025

book reviews and features

Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go back

Jon Turney

For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual...

Read more...

Hugo Rifkind: Rabbits review - 31 wild parties and a funeral

Bernard Hughes

In some ways I’m an appropriate person to review Hugo Rifkind’s new novel Rabbits, a coming-of-age comedy set in the early...

Read more...

Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and Seventies, alongisde the likes of Ed Dorn and J. H....

Read more...

Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review - a view from the boundaries

Bernard Hughes

In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world – and makes from it a diverting and informative read...

Read more...

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world

Jon Turney

Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also suns a little while back, cosmically speaking, or a...

Read more...

Heather McCalden: The Observable Universe review - reflections from a damaged life

India Lewis

Artist and writer, Heather McCalden, has produced her first book-length work. The Observable Universe examines, variously, her familial history, the death of her parents to AIDS, and the...

Read more...

Dorian Lynskey: Everything Must Go review - it's the end of the world as we know it

Bernard Hughes

According to REM in 1987, “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. And while they sang about topical preoccupations – hurricanes, wildfires and plane crashes – they were really just varying a...

Read more...

Andrew O'Hagan: Caledonian Road review - London's Dickensian return

India Lewis

Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel, Caledonian Road, feels very much intended to be an epic, or at the very...

Read more...

Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War: A Scenario review - on the inconceivable

Jack Barron

"[A]n unimaginably beautiful day": this was how Kikue Shiota described the morning of the 6th of August, 1945, in Hiroshima. The day was soon to change, unimaginably, as the city was blitzed by...

Read more...

Anna Reid: A Nasty Little War - The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution review - home truths

Hugh Barnes

During the Cold War, US presidents often claimed that the West and the Soviet Union had never fought one another directly. This observation...

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?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £49,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Alien: Earth, Disney+ review - was this interstellar journey...

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels and spin-offs...

Unmoored review - atmospheric Swedish noir set on Exmoor

“When have you ever gone off alone?” scoffs Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) when his wife, Maria (Mirja Turestedt), expresses the wish to go to...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Kinder / Shunga Alert / Clean...

Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★...

Album: Tom Grennan - Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Did...

Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely...

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC, Stratford review - not qui...

I have two guilty secrets about the theatre – okay, two I’m prepared to own up to right here, right now. I quite enjoy some...

Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh Intern...

There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Eric Rushton / Bella Hull

Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel ...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: The Horse of Jenin / Nowhere

The Horse of Jenin, Pleasance Dome ...

Beating Hearts review - kiss kiss, slam slam

Andrew Garfield was 29 when he played the teenage Spiderman and Jennifer Grey was 27 when she took on a decade-younger-than-her character called “...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters