fri 07/11/2025

book reviews and features

Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche

Daniel Baksi

Roughly two years since ...

Read more...

Selva Almada: Dead Girls review – the stark proximity of women to violence

Katie Da Cunha Lewin

Selva Almada’s newly translated work has a stark title in both English and the original Spanish: Dead Girls, or Chicas Muertas. That apparent bluntness belies the hybrid...

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: author Katharina Volckmer

Charlie Stone

Katharina Volckmer’s début novel The Appointment follows one woman as she vents her frustrations, confusions and regrets to her doctor during a lengthy appointment in London. Ranging...

Read more...

A. Naji Bakti: Between Beirut and the Moon review - a seriously comical coming of age

Gaby Frost

What stands between Beirut and the moon? Between Lebanon’s capital and the limitless possibility beyond? It is a question as complex and immense as the nation itself. In the wake of the...

Read more...

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: The Mountains Sing review - a lyrical account of Việt Nam’s brutal past

Lucy Popescu

“The challenges of the Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains. If you stand too close, you won’t be able to see their peaks. Once you step away from the currents...

Read more...

CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - Peradam

Tim Cumming

"The gateway to the invisible must be visible." So intones Patti Smith on the third and final journey in sound with Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, AKA Soundwalk Collective, musical...

Read more...

Elena Ferrante: The Lying Life of Adults review - a universal Neapolitan adolescence

David Nice

The protagonist is a Neapolitan teenage girl; the settings move between the upper and lower parts, from the Vomero...

Read more...

Helen Macdonald: Vesper Flights review - nature lovingly described, nearly lost

India Lewis

Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald’s first book following her incredibly successful memoir H is for Hawk in 2014, is an excellent collection of short pieces focused on the...

Read more...

Zalika Reid-Benta: Frying Plantain review - tales of growing up young, black and female in Toronto

Daniel Lewis

It is as unsurprising as it is vital that a spotlight has been thrown on writing by people of colour this year. It is unsurprising, too – looking at bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic...

Read more...

Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass review – a leap over England's walls

Boyd Tonkin

Since snobbery and deference have a big part to play in Nick Hayes’s exhilarating book, let’s start with the obligatory name-drop. I have lunched – twice, in different country piles, and most...

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... ...
Anemone review - searching for Daniel Day-Lewis
Given that the film industry is a fairly vain business, it follows that every movie is to some extent a vanity project.
 
...
Sad and Beautiful World: Mavis Staples offers words of wisdo...

Mavis Staples, the woman to whom a young Bob Dylan proposed marriage when they met at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival and whose voice he has...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 93: Led Zeppelin, Blawan, Sylvester, Za...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Martel Zaire (Evil Ideas)

...

Suzanne Vega and Katherine Priddy, Royal Albert Hall review...

Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed...

Train Dreams review - one man's odyssey into the Americ...

What defines a life? Money and success? Happiness? Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams employs a narrator, much as Terrence Malick’s...

Kali Malone and Drew McDowell generate 'Magnetism'...

It’s weird, right? We’ve somehow stumbled into a world where, for all we’re told that algorithms homogenise music, actually more people than ever...

Palestine 36 review - memories of a nation

“Rebellion begins with a breath,” an opening aphorism declares in this first film recounting Palestine’s 1936-39 Arab Revolt, long historically...

Relay review - the method man

Ash (Riz Ahmed) is one of cinema’s capable men, the kind of monastically devoted pro made to be a hitman or getaway driver. David Fincher’s ...

The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera - pointless feminist compli...

Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad...

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