More from Books
The one and only
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
Reigns of terror
The nomadic tribes of Central Asia eventually created vast empires that changed not only their own world but western history, says Kenneth W. Harl
A tidal wave of disinformation
Grotesque conspiracy theories merge and snowball, with serious global consequences. James Ball proposes a Digital Health System to counter the ‘pathogens’
Other worlds, other lives
A scientist finds a way to access other realities and bequeaths the secret to her daughter. But a dangerous adversary is on the trail
The waking nightmare
After years of insomnia, Marie Darrieussecq derives some comfort from finding herself in the company of Kafka, Kant, Proust, Dostoevsky, Borges and Plath
Ghostly grandeur
The history of the magnificent Thames-side palace, with its outrageous shenanigans spanning five centuries, is vividly brought to life by Gareth Russell
Adventures in Greeneland
In skilfully told stories involving luck and changes of fortune, Osborne suggests that it’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters, but how you play it
From revolutionary Paris to the moon
Thirlwell’s protagonist Celine flees malicious gossip in revolutionary France to ponder on sisterly solidarity, patriarchal violence, motherhood, colonialism and slavery
Four disparate intellectuals
Of Wolfram Eilenberger’s four intellectual heroines, Simone Weil alone really counts as a ‘visionary’, forsaking philosophy for a kind of saintly mysticism
Passports out of hell
Roger Moorhouse describes how various diplomats stationed in Europe risked their positions to issue as many forged ‘tickets to safety’ to Jews as possible
Marks out of ten
Like a weary schoolmaster toiling over his pupils’ homework, Peter Kemp dispenses praise, encouragement or reproof to modern fiction’s big-hitters
The good stepmother
Jean entertains her young stepdaughter Leah with drawings and fairy stories – but the two grow sadly estranged in this haunting novel with its own fairy-tale similarities
Towering infernos
Our unpreparedness was vividly illustrated by the catastrophic Canadian inferno of 2016 – originally judged a minor brushfire beyond Fort McMurray’s city limits
The great betrayal
Racism in Britain may be less acute than in America or even France, but the false promises made to the Windrush generation have left a bitter aftermath
Tunnels of love
With their elegant entrances and blend of Art Nouveau, Romanticism and Modernism, the white-tiled stations of the Parisian underground are works of art in themselves
In the library of Babel
Sarah Hart discusses the Oulipo group, Jorge Luis Borges and Eleanor Catton among other writers who have explored the use of mathematics in their works
Under a green sea
How, between 1911 and 1917, Owen became the dazzling poet we know and love is the story told in Jane Potter’s new edition of his selected letters
Bizarre miniatures
With flying narrators and women whose hair drags on the floor, there’s something of Leonora Carrington’s weird visions about Williams’s short stories
The sound of the underground
In his history of dance music in modern Britain, Ed Gillett describes police kettling at raves from the 1990s onwards and the attempt by parliament to ban repetitive beats
Constantly frit
Catherine Taylor describes her anxiety growing up in Sheffield against an ‘uneasy backdrop’ of picketing miners, the Hillsborough disaster and a serial killer on the loose
Sinister siblings
A brother and sister are dispatched to a relative’s farm in Colorado, and grow up isolated, unfeeling and even estranged from each other
Worthless pieces of paper
The first banknotes were greeted with deep suspicion in 1769 – but it was nothing to the distrust that Soviet and post-Soviet issues aroused
Centuries of martyrs
There is no redemption in this account of the birth of Latin Christendom, with ‘heretics’ suffering cruelly for the beliefs, just as Christian martyrs had under the Romans
The perils of permissiveness
The erotic adventures of a teenager who finally meets her match became a succès de scandale in 1920, and will still raise eyebrows today
Bold, brave and determined
Andrew Harding describes the hastily assembled ‘Dad’s Army’ – and formidable babushka – who sensationally resisted the Russian advance on Voznesensk last year
