Books
Big skies and frozen wastes
We know our way around Raymond Carver’s blue-collar cityscapes and Updike’s urban angst and despair. Rick Bass opens a window…
And then there was one
After a long struggle to receive mainstream publication, Paul Auster’s first few novels were a genuinely significant contribution to American…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
In hot water
It’s good to be back in Spook Street, home of the nation’s secret service. From a handful of locations across…
Whited sepulchre
Michelangelo’s Tomb for Pope Julius II: Genesis and Genius edited by Christoph Luitpold Frommel, translated by A. Lawrence Jenkens JrYale,…
Riding the storm
Clover Stroud opens her memoir with the crippling bout of post-natal depression that hit after the birth of her fourth…
Sins of the flesh
Bill Schutt has an excellent subject, and he explores it from a promising angle. Cannibalism has long interested zoologists, anthropologists,…
The great Norse soap opera
Norse myths are having a moment. Or should I say another moment; one of a long chain of moments, in…
Agonised questions
It’s terribly difficult to write a novel about soul-searching, and Elif Shafak has come up with a rather clever device…
The lure of the desert
The great deserts of the world hold a compelling attraction for a rare breed of men who are ‘unwise and…
Another challenge for Trump
James D. Zirin is an experienced litigator as well as the host of a popular television talkshow. In this provocative…
Big skies and frozen wastes
We know our way around Raymond Carver’s blue-collar cityscapes and Updike’s urban angst and despair. Rick Bass opens a window…
And then there was one
After a long struggle to receive mainstream publication, Paul Auster’s first few novels were a genuinely significant contribution to American…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
In hot water
It’s good to be back in Spook Street, home of the nation’s secret service. From a handful of locations across…
Whited sepulchre
‘How often’, wrote Sigmund Freud in 1914, ‘have I mounted the steep steps from the unlovely Corso Cavour to the…
Riding the storm
Clover Stroud opens her memoir with the crippling bout of post-natal depression that hit after the birth of her fourth…
The great Norse soap opera
Norse myths are having a moment. Or should I say another moment; one of a long chain of moments, in…
Sins of the flesh
Bill Schutt has an excellent subject, and he explores it from a promising angle. Cannibalism has long interested zoologists, anthropologists,…
Spurred on
‘Old radicals become quietist’ a character in Valley of the Weed tells Plant, the appropriately-named private detective investigating the disappearance…
Do you know who I am?
Anyone looking for a groundbreaking ethnography of the global political elite —the elusive social grouping that western electorates are currently…
A scandalous scramble
Empires in the Sun might conjure up romantic visions for some, but this book’s essence is distilled in its subtitle,…
An infinite spirit
Can American publishers be dissuaded from foisting absurd, bombastic subtitles on their books as if readers are all Trumpers avid…
Boy wonder
Back in 1978, a young and already successful Steven Spielberg told a bunch of would-be moviemakers at the American Film…
Lord of the Arctic
According to the author of this beautifully illustrated, hugely engaging book, if we were ever to choose a fellow mammal…
