sat 12/07/2025

book reviews and features

Disbelief - 100 Russian Anti-War Poems (ed. Julia Nemirovskaya) review - writing battle-lines

Hugh Barnes

On 24th February 2022, when Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation”, life in Ukraine changed abruptly and in a brutal fashion. Soon the impact of the war was felt around the world...

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Sally Adee: We Are Electric review - currents that run through us all

Jon Turney

All the things going on with me as I type this – fingers moving keys, eye and brain registering characters on my screen, thoughts that will (I hope) generate the next lot of characters – rely on...

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Extract: The Northern Silence - Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture by Andrew Mellor

Andrew Mellor

“Silence,” Andrew Mellor contends, “is more prominent in the northernmost reaches of Europe.” Yet it is more like a texture or an apprehension of vacancy than a state of true soundlessness:...

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'I let it emerge': an interview with Fiona Benson on the cusp of the TS Eliot Prize announcement

Jack Barron

Fiona Benson’s new collection of poems, Ephemeron (Jonathan Cape, 2022), tries to capture those things that are always moving out of grasp. It does this through four sections: the first...

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Jaan Kross: A Book of Falsehoods review - plague, power and deception in 16th century Tallinn

David Nice

When the first volume of Estonian master Jaan Kross’s peerless historical trilogy first appeared in an English...

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Best of 2022: Books

theartsdesk

From Kafka’s spry sketches to Derek Owusu’s novel-poem, and Jaan Kross’s Estonian Wolf Hall to Katherine Rundell’s spirited biography of John Donne, our reviewers take the time to share...

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10 Questions for writer and translator Saskia Vogel

Hannah Hutching

Johanne Lykke Holm’s spellbinding novel Strega recounts one teen’s journey into womanhood....

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Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song review - a book that contains multitudes

mark Kidel

Some years after Chronicles (2004) a book that broke moulds and delighted with its originality, and as with albums...

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Kelefa Sanneh: Major Labels review - diary of an omnivorous musicophile

India Lewis

Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres is American critic Kelefa Sanneh’s ambitious survey of musical history. As such, it risks remaining only a...

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10 Questions for Bruce Lindsay, biographer of Ivor Cutler

Sebastian Scotney

Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room by Bruce Lindsay, is the first full-length...

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