thu 19/06/2025

book reviews and features

Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - III of III

theartsdesk

At the end of an exhausting day's driving punctuated by disappointments and false leads, the narrator finds herself back at the Israeli town of Nirim where she spends the night. Slipping off...

Read more...

Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli - II of III

theartsdesk

The second half of Minor Detail is narrated in the first person by a young Palestinian woman who reads an article about the rape and murder of the captured girl. When she finds out...

Read more...

Book extract: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

theartsdesk

The first half of Minor Detail is set in an Israeli military camp in the Negev desert in August 1949, during the conflict celebrated as the War of Independence in Israel and a year...

Read more...

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: The Discomfort of Evening review - lovelessness, loneliness, bodies and their limits

Jessica Payn

“I was ten and stopped taking off my coat.” This bare beginning marks the opening of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s startling and lyrical novel, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison: an...

Read more...

Alex George: The Paris Hours review - captivating yet frustrating

Charlie Stone

A century on, the années folles of Paris between the wars do not cease to excite readers and writers of all varieties. Alex George’s latest...

Read more...

Catherine Belton: Putin’s People review - an instant classic

James Dowsett

In October 1991, Russian prosecutors gained access to the Communist Party Central Committee’s headquarters in Moscow’s Old Square. The offices had been sealed after President Boris Yeltsin ordered...

Read more...

Elizabeth Kay: Seven Lies review - can big-money debut match the hype?

Jasper Rees

Seven Lies is the debut novel of Elizabeth Kay, who under another name works as a commissioning editor...

Read more...

Don Winslow: Broken review - a staggering crash course in the possibilities of crime

Marina Vaizey

One of the masters of both mystery and thriller, Don Winslow’s latest volume is a reading bonanza: a collection of six crime-focused short novels (‘novellas’ feels too fancy for a writer so...

Read more...

Garth Greenwell: Cleanness review - pornography and high art

Markie Robson-Scott

Both Cleanness and Garth Greenwell’s award-winning first novel, What Belongs to You, are set in Bulgaria, with a gay American teacher as the anonymous first-person narrator (...

Read more...

Helen McCarthy: Double Lives - A History of Working Motherhood review – doing it for themselves

Gaby Frost

Want to enact mass social change? Make it about children. About their health, their prosperity, their future. Make it about men; their security, their wellbeing. Make it about society. What...

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... ...
The Midnight Bell, Sadler's Wells review - a first repr...

Rarely has a revival given a firmer thumbs-up for the future of dance-theatre. Yet Matthew Bourne’s latest show, first aired at the tail-end of...

Album: HAIM - I Quit

Haim’s profile just grows and grows. Since their last album, youngest sibling Alana’s starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s whimsical Seventies...

Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 1 review - dance to the music of...

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival – the 76th – takes as its motto a line from Shelley‘s Prometheus Unbound. The poet speaks of despair “...

Bonnie Raitt, Brighton Dome review - a top night with a char...

If you walked into a bar in the US, say in one of the southern states, and Bonnie Raitt and her band were playing, you’d have the best night of...

Hidden Door Festival 2025 review - the transformative Edinbu...

"When I was your age, I worked in a corrugated cardboard factory!" is a phrase my father was fond of telling me as a teenager, presumably in an...

Edward Burra, Tate Britain review - watercolour made mainstr...

It’s unusual to leave an exhibition liking an artist’s work less than when you went in, but...

Joyceana around Bloomsday, Dublin review - flawless adaptati...

It amuses me that Dubliners dress up in Edwardian finery on 16 June. After all, this was the date in 1904 when James Joyce first walked out with...

Stereophonic, Duke of York's Theatre review - rich slic...

The tag “the most Tony-nominated play of all time” may mean less to London theatregoers than it does to New Yorkers, but Stereophonic,...

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