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Scenes from an open marriage: Luster, by Raven Leilani, reviewed
One of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2020, Raven Leilani’s debut comes acclaimed by a literary Who’s Who that includes…
Exotic and endangered: Madagascar in peril
Madagascar. There are so many delightful incongruities about the island. Despite being off the coast of Africa, because of the…
The burden of guilt: The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, by Richard Flanagan, reviewed
Thanks to the Booker Prize, Richard Flanagan is probably the only Tasmanian novelist British readers are likely to have heard…
House of horrors: Girl A, by Abigail Dean, reviewed
If the last quarter of 2020 saw a glut of novels published, of which there were winners (Richard Osman) and…
The plight of the evacuee: Asylum Road, by Olivia Sudjic, reviewed
Olivia Sudjic’s second novel, Asylum Road, is a smart and sensitively layered story that’s told through niggling memories, unspoken thoughts,…
Whitewashing Bismarck just won’t wash
The reviewer’s first duty is to declare any skin he may have in the game, so here goes: I write…
‘Mother Volga’ has always been Russia’s lifeblood
‘Without this river the Russians could not live,’ remarked Robert Bremner in his work, Excursions in the Interior of Russia.…
Paradise regained: how the world’s wastelands are regenerating
Ignoring the padlocked gate, my six-year-old son Nicholas and I climbed through a break in the metal fence and pushed…
‘There were no rules then’: Dana Gillespie’s 1960s childhood
Although I can understand why Dana Gillespie might choose to call her memoir after her most famous album, for the…
Born out of suffering: the inspiration of Dostoevsky’s great novels
A death sentence, prison in Siberia, and chronic epilepsy. The death of his young children, a gambling addiction, and possible…
Murder most casual: why Patricia Highsmith’s thrillers are so chilling
Patricia Highsmith’s life was filled with more eccentric, disturbing brilliance than most readers can normally handle; and so the chief…
Family secrets: Life Sentences, by Billy O’Callaghan, reviewed
Despite innovative work by younger writers, there remains a prominent strain in Irish literature of what we might call the…
The problem with pills: The Octopus Man, by Jasper Gibson, reviewed
Having a breakdown? Try this pill, or that — or these? Built on the 1950s myth of a chemical imbalance…
Dreading demobilisation: The Autumn of the Ace, by Louis de Bernières, reviewed
The Autumn of the Ace begins in 1945, as the second world war ends, but both Louis de Bernières and…
Old men remember: reliving the horror of Tobruk
‘Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,/ But he’ll remember, with advantages,/ What feats he did that day.’ Peter…
The criminal code of Rotwelsch deciphered
When Martin Puchner was a child, tramps would turn up at his family home in Nuremberg to be fed by…
The aesthetic prejudice towards white classical statues
In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at…
Paint in the bloodstream: The Death of Francis Bacon, by Max Porter, reviewed
Francis Bacon once told the art critic Richard Cork: ‘I certainly hope I’ll go on till I drop dead.’ Max…
Latin America in crisis again
It wasn’t so long ago that British readers, on hearing about the incompetence and corruption of Latin America’s political leaders,…
The roots of humanity remain obscure
To comprehend ourselves and the future of humankind we have to understand where we came from. Unlike the approximately 350,000…
In search of Noëlle: Invisible Ink, by Patrick Modiano, reviewed
At some point in his twilit, enigmatic novels of vanished lives and buried memories, Patrick Modiano likes to jolt his…
How Hitler’s great gamble nearly paid off
Do we need another wrist-breaking book about Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich and the second world war? Since Ian Kershaw…
Is Indian cricket no longer cricket?
There is nothing in world sport, ‘nothing in the history of the human race’, Ramachandra Guha modestly reckons, that can…
Does William Barents deserve to have a sea named after him?
Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…
The farce of the Nobel Peace Prize
Betraying the Nobel opens with a detonation from Michael Nobel, Alfred’s great-grandnephew. The vice-chairman and then chairman of the Nobel…
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