More from Books

The rootlessness that haunts the children of immigrants

3 August 2024 9:00 am

Edward Wong tries to connect with his Chinese heritage by retracing his father’s military postings before the Great Famine – but finds the country too changed to make comparisons

Small mercies: Dead-End Memories, by Banana Yoshimoto, reviewed

3 August 2024 9:00 am

Rape, poisoning, child abuse and betrayal feature in Yoshimoto’s dramatic stories – but gratitude and forgiveness run alongside sadness, stitched in the same cloth

Doomed to immortality: The Book of Elsewhere, by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, reviewed

27 July 2024 9:00 am

For the past 80,000 years, our protagonist has been fated to respawn himself. With a similar being now tracking him, he longs for the option of non-existence

Mother of mysteries: Rosarita, by Anita Desai, reviewed

27 July 2024 9:00 am

On a break in Mexico, a young Indian woman is regaled with stories of her mother’s past by a total stranger. But is it all a con?

The power of the brown American diva

27 July 2024 9:00 am

Deborah Paredez celebrates ‘bold, beautiful, messy’ stars such as Tina Turner, Celia Cruz, Vikki Carr, Grace Jones and Aretha Franklin as fabulous role models for the oppressed

‘I am haunted by waters’: Norman Maclean and his lyrical ‘little blue book’

27 July 2024 9:00 am

The author of A River Runs Through It emerges as wiry, sardonic, compassionate and inspirational from Rebecca McCarthy’s trenchant memoir

Born in the USA: how Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album bridged the American political divide

27 July 2024 9:00 am

Steven Hyden traces the impact of the title song, whose coruscating verses and affirmatory choruses cut both ways, and made its creator for a time the world’s greatest rock star

No laughing matter: The Material, by Camille Bordas, reviewed

27 July 2024 9:00 am

A graduate course at the University of Chicago teaches stand-up to a group of aspiring young comedians. But the more you analyse humour, the less funny it becomes

The futility of ever hoping to give peace a chance

27 July 2024 9:00 am

After 400 generations of martial conflict on Earth, mankind now faces the prospect of wars in space, as China and America vie for mastery of the heavens

Tall tales of the Golden East: the fabulous fabrications of two 20th-century con artists

27 July 2024 9:00 am

Capitalising on his Afghan-Indian heritage, Ikbal Shah claimed to have crucial inside knowledge of Central Asia, while his son Idries later purveyed a rebranded Sufism for the West

Making the fur fly: Mary and the Rabbit Dream, by Noémi Kiss-Deáki

27 July 2024 9:00 am

When a poor peasant named Mary Toft claimed to have given birth to 17 rabbits, many in Georgian Britain believed her, including senior members of the medical profession

The hunt for the next Messi: Godwin, by Joseph O’Neill, reviewed

27 July 2024 9:00 am

A video file of an African teenager with legendary ball skills is circulating far from his homeland – wherever that is. How hard can it be to track him down?

Why Joni Mitchell sounded different from the start

27 July 2024 9:00 am

Polio in childhood weakened her left hand, leaving her to devise alternative tuning, surprising phrasing and ‘chords of inquiry’ that hang like question marks in the air

‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet

20 July 2024 9:00 am

My writing is mere bricolage … whatever I do, I only half do’, wails Michel Leiris in the final volume of his self-lacerating autobiography

In search of kindred spirits: An Absence of Cousins, by Lore Segal, reviewed

20 July 2024 9:00 am

When Ilka Weisz, a young refugee from Vienna, accepts a teaching post in smalltown Connecticut, she struggles to make friends in the close-knit academic community

Margaret Tudor – queen, regent and hapless intermediary

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Aged 13, Henry VII’s eldest daughter was dispatched to marry James IV of Scotland. But a precarious truce between the kingdoms soon ended with the Battle of Flodden

Repenting at leisure: Early Sobrieties, by Michael Deagler, reviewed

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Back with his family in suburban Philadelphia after seven years of solid boozing, Dennis Monk tries to make amends for past misdemeanours. But will he succeed?

Another mistress for Victor Hugo: Célina, by Catherine Axelrad, reviewed

20 July 2024 9:00 am

A young chambermaid joins the Hugo household in Guernsey and soon finds herself summoned at night to her master’s adjoining bedroom

The irrepressible musical gift of Huddie Ledbetter

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Before his genius was widely recognised, the blues singer known as Lead Belly survived not only America’s most brutal prisons but cruel betrayal by his racist ‘manager’

An AI visionary looks forward to the best of all possible worlds

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Technology unquestionably improves lives, says Ray Kurzwei, and soon we’ll be living to 150. As for 3D-printed guns invisible to scanners – there’ll be a solution to those too

Snobbery in the garden: U and non-U borders

20 July 2024 9:00 am

When Richard Sudell began promoting pyracantha, hanging baskets and crazy paving in the 1920s, the backlash from the gardening elite was vicious and immediate

The rape of Ukraine continues while the world’s sympathies move on

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Two detailed, on-the-ground accounts from Andrey Kurkov and Oleksandr Mykhed remind us of the atrocities that are changing life in Ukraine forever

Will the Olympics ever be politics-free?

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Despite Baron Coubertin’s ideals, nationalistic friction at the Paris Games in 1924 had already prompted a Times headline: ‘Olympics doomed’

How cartomania captivated even Queen Victoria

13 July 2024 9:00 am

The craze for photographic cartes de visite that swept Victorian Britain was further boosted by the Queen’s own enthusiasm for the format

Notes on the natural world: an exquisite collection from Kathleen Jamie

13 July 2024 9:00 am

In short essays and poems, the Scottish makar explores our connections with nature, always mindful of the insignificance of human time compared to the deep time of stones