More from Books
The good, the bad and the grotesque: the mind-blowing diversity of parasites
Maggots, fleas, lice and tapeworms are scarcely welcome companions, but we eliminate parasites at our peril, says the entomologist Dino J. Martins
Down memory lane: It Will Come Back to You, by Sigrid Nunez, reviewed
The past proves difficult both to remember or fully escape in a collection of stories, spanning decades, concerning the unreliability of narrative
Revelling in the music of words
Michael Cunningham helps us appreciate the ‘cello-like flow’ of clauses or the hiss of an ‘s’ in other contemporary authors’ works, while turning a critical eye on his own novels, too
Unlucky break: All In, by Claire Powell, reviewed
For an unhappily married couple on holiday with extended family the tensions just get worse
New York crime caper: Cool Machine, by Colson Whitehead, reviewed
The violent black demi-monde of the 1980s is thrillingly evoked in this gritty finale to Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy
Why spiders deserve our respect, not fear or disgust
Not only do the world’s arachnids eat up to 800 million tons of insects a year, but they are models of creativity that have captured the human imagination since antiquity
Adolescent anxieties: Schoolgirl, by Osamu Dazai, reviewed
In this collection’s titular story, the tormented Dazai, who committed suicide aged 38, transfers his own existential crises into the private thoughts of an unhappy Tokyo schoolgirl
When Mum went marching with the EDL
Nicola Wilding describes how her 60-year-old mother, prompted by the brutal murder of Lee Rigby, unexpectedly decided to join ranks with Tommy Robinson
Why Cicero’s life and times have never seemed more relevant
The philosopher and orator with extraordinary powers of persuasion spent his life making his ideals workable – among them being a harmonious state based on checks and balances
An alternative Paris: Château Rouge, by Amit Chaudhuri, reviewed
A writer, newly arrived in France on a visiting fellowship, is determined to explore the capital with fresh eyes
Bringing Homer into the home: how the Iliad and Odyssey became widely available
Henry Power surveys the many English translations over the centuries, from Arthur Hall’s faltering 1581 version to Alice Oswald’s mysterious Memorial of 2011
A feast of wartime espionage: the latest crime fiction
Thrillers from Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Sally Hepworth and Alan Judd reviewed
Terrorists with a taste for luxury: the flamboyance of the Baader-Meinhof gang
As Astrid Proll admits, the violent anti-capitalists had a weakness for expensive clothes and flashy cars - for which some of them paid the ultimate price
The past yields up its secrets: The Red Mouth, by Sheila Armstrong, reviewed
The dark power of an Irish peat bog lies at the heart of Armstrong’s story, with ancient bones revealing a mysterious, violent history
The appeal of asymmetry: Contrapposto, by Dave Eggers, reviewed
In his portrait of an incongruous friendship, Eggers explores the imbalances that constitute adult life – creativity vs commerce, talent vs discipline and solitude vs companionship
Good moaning: the subversive sitcoms of the 1980s revisited
From the sophisticated satire of Yes Minister to the irreverent farce of ’Allo ’Allo!, British comedy began to show a new inventive range
Buckle up for the smack-downs: the media behemoth that is modern wrestling
Part sport, part soap opera, part stunt show, part Hollywood franchise, wrestling is now a billion-dollar business
An ill-fated romance: Dark is the Morning, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
In Italy’s rugged Abruzzo, prone to superstition and magical thinking, a doomed couple are bound together in a covenant ‘written in the stars’
The art of betrayal: Exhibition, by Alex Hyde, reviewed
Two young women artists in the 1990s collaborate in an affectionate, creative partnership – until one appropriates the other’s work and passes it off as her own
What precipitated a worldwide total war in the 1930s?
Rather than focusing on the struggle in Europe, Jonathan Fennell shows how the hopes and fears of tens of millions of people fired processes of radicalisation across the globe
Distant shadows: Frame 37, by Nicholas Shakespeare, reviewed
The former journalist John Dyer is persuaded to investigate the death of old friend in an apparent hit-and-run. But is there a connection with Argentina’s Dirty War decades ago?
How does the Catholic J.D. Vance justify Trumpian policies?
Curiously, the President is almost invisible in Vance’s latest memoir – so perhaps the VP is attempting to distance himself, at least as far as his current job allows
Too close for comfort: Family Friends, by Chloë Ashby, reviewed
Past secrets emerge to test the long-standing friendship of two couples on holiday together in the south of France
Southern Gothic: the horror story of Alex Murdaugh, paterfamilias and ‘family annihilator’
James Lasdun attempts to fathom what drove an apparently respectable, caring South Carolina lawyer to slaughter his wife and youngest son
The conspiracy of silence surrounding the Nord Stream bombings
It is now clear that western intelligence agencies were fully aware of the plan and tried to stop it – then covered up what they knew for fear of an anti-Ukraine backlash
