Books
Trapped in hell
The mechanic, blinded in one eye by shrapnel, spent three days searching for his family in the destroyed buildings and…
To be a pilgrim
In his friendly and beguiling voice, Jean-Christophe Rufin explains (in a way that reminded me of the pre-journey relish of…
Fast and furious
Modern life is too fast. Everyone is always in a hurry; people skim-read and don’t take the time to eat…
The last word
Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and admirably fearless. I have loved her books. But for some time I had…
Trivial pursuits
Well, he’s back. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d never been away. Fresh from delivering the Reith lectures, exhibitions…
Mouldering hats and wedding veils
In deciding to write a book about her forebears and herself, Juliet Nicolson follows in their footsteps. Given that her…
Nine angst-ridden men
‘Insufficiency’ is a favourite David Szalay word. The narrator of his previous novel, Spring, suffered from ‘insufficiency of feeling’; in…
An incurable Romantic
Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre
The greatest anti-war poem of all
The Iliad begins with a grudge and ends with a funeral. In between are passages, if not necessarily of boredom,…
London’s burning
Spectator readers know Andrew Taylor from his reviews of crime fiction. Many will also know him as an admirable writer…
A breath of fresh air
His professional achievements aside, Quentin Blake’s life has been rather short on biographical event, so this book is not a…
The iceberg cometh
Every second novel is fated to be measured against its predecessor; and that comparison is particularly hard when the debut…
Obscure object of desire
Garth Greenwell’s debut novel is as dreary and oppressive as the Soviet-era apartment buildings among which it takes place. But…
Those fearless men, but few
While reading this book in a London café, I was politely buttonholed by an Irishman: ‘Sorry to disturb you, but…
Gay tittle-tattle
The Comintern was the name given to the international communist network in the Soviet era, advancing the cause wherever it…
Onwards and downwards
This is a very upsetting book. The Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond spent a year and a half living in low-income…
The holy sinner
Many of the great faith narratives (the Holy Quran being a notable exception) are clumsy, rough-hewn things; makepiece amalgams of…
Recent crime fiction
All it takes is a spark. In her compelling new thriller, Ten Days (Canongate, £14.99), Gillian Slovo tracks the progress…
The halo slips
Peter Popham is commendably quick off the blocks with this excellent account of the run-up to last November’s Burmese general…
Books and arts
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‘A good boy trying to be bad’
Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…
Courting Sultana Isabel
The idea for a mechanical cock was never going to work. In 1595 the English ambassador to Constantinople, Edward Barton,…
Hostage to misfortune
Nordic noir is passé. Now we have Israeli noir. Waking Lions is a mordant thriller written by a clinical psychologist…
Graphic, bleak and misogynistic
If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler’s mother, seek out your old house and play ball…
Lost in translation
Trencherman was first published in Afrikaans in 2006 and translated into English for a South African readership shortly afterwards, but…
