sat 05/07/2025

book reviews and features

Mieko Kawakami: All the Lovers in the Night review - the raw relatability of loneliness

Izzy Smith

Mieko Kawakami is the champion of the loner. Since achieving immense success in the UK with her translated works, she has become an indie fiction icon for her modern, visceral depictions of...

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Philip Ball: The Book of Minds review - thinking about the box

Jon Turney

Years ago, one of the leading mathematicians in the country tried to explain to me what his real work was like. When he was on the case, he said, he could be doing a range of other things – having...

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10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë Ashby

Hannah Hutching

“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut...

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Kim Hye-jin: Concerning My Daughter review - room for complication

Rojbîn Arjen Yigit

In this best-selling Korean novella, recently translated into English by Jamie Chang, Kim Hye-jin offers us the perspective of a Korean...

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Alyn Shipton: On Jazz - A Personal Journey - digging jazz deeply and musically

Sebastian Scotney

“I suppose you’re going to ask all the usual questions...?” When Keith Jarrett was interviewed by Alyn...

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Joanna Walsh: Girl Online - A User Manual review - how 'beatifoul' it is to be online

Hannah Hutching

Scrolling to the top of my Twitter DMs, most of which are from close friends or acquaintances, I notice the message request section flash “1”. It’s a signal I usually ignore, having learnt from...

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Laura Beatty: Looking for Theophrastus review - adventures in psychobiography

Hugh Barnes

Laura Beatty is a kind of Shirley Valentine figure in contemporary English literature. A decade and a half ago she published an astonishing debut novel entitled Pollard about female...

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Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility review - time travel, pandemics and the simulation hypothesis

Markie Robson-Scott

Emily St John Mandel’s wonderful novel of 2020, The Glass Hotel, featured people and places from her...

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Scholastique Mukasonga: The Barefoot Woman review - remembering Rwanda before 1994

Hannah Hutching

To read Scholastique Mukasonga’s memoir, The Barefoot Woman, beautifully translated from the French by...

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Extract: Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn

Daniel Hahn

Daniel Hahn began his translation of Jamás el fuego nunca, a novel by experimental Chilean artist Diamela Eltit, in January 2021. Considering the careful, difficult but not impossible “...

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