book reviews and features
Olivia Laing: Funny Weather review - essays on art, framed as antidote
Sunday, 12 April 2020
Olivia Laing’s non-fiction has become well-known for the way it moves by means of allusive shifts, hybridity, and pooling ideas, making a roaming, discursive inspection of one broad primary... Read more... |
Souvankham Thammavongsa: How to Pronounce Knife review - neat finishes with loose ends
Sunday, 12 April 2020
There’s a sort of enduring mystery about short stories. They rarely have the reassuring arithmetic of poetry or – with apologies to Murakami – novelistic sweep of longer fiction. They don’t... Read more... |
Valerie Hansen: The Year 1000 review - the first globe-trotting age
Sunday, 12 April 2020
In 1018, the Princess of Chen – a member of the Liao dynasty that ruled northern China – was buried in a treasure-filled tomb in Inner Mongolia. Excavated in the 1980s, her grave contained luxury... Read more... |
Mark Townsend: No Return review - a masterclass in journalism
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
When Amer Deghayes departed for Syria in a truck leaving from Birmingham, a worker from a youth arts organisation in Brighton had been trying to get in touch with him. She wanted to inform Amer,... Read more... |
Oliver Craske: Indian Sun, The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar review - a master receives masterly treatment
Thursday, 02 April 2020
Ravi Shankar was one of the giants of 20th century music. A... Read more... |
Fitzcarraldo Editions wins Republic of Consciousness Prize
Tuesday, 31 March 2020
South London-based publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions has once more been awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize,... Read more... |
Sam Bourne: To Kill a Man review – the woman who fought back
Sunday, 29 March 2020
Assassinate the President! Obliterate history by torching libraries and murdering historians! Crazy leaders and fake news are just a few of the subjects tackled by political journalist and... Read more... |
Nathalie Léger: The White Dress review – masterfully introverted
Sunday, 22 March 2020
Nathalie Léger’s The White Dress brings personal and public tragedy together in a narrative as absorbingly melancholic as its subject is shocking. The story described by Léger’s narrator... Read more... |
Samuel Beckett: Dream of Fair to Middling Women review – the literary titan laid bare
Sunday, 22 March 2020
That any writer “struggling to make ends meet” would apply themselves to the making of Dream of Fair to Middling Women is something of a complexity. Written in ... Read more... |
Brendan Cleary, Great Eastern, Brighton review – last orders
Thursday, 19 March 2020
St. Patrick’s Day, and socialising itself, has been all but cancelled. But... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...
Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...
It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...