Books
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…
Witness to the truth
George Bell (1883–1958) was, in many respects, a typical Anglican prelate of his era. He went to Westminster and Christ…
Pure and endless light
There has been extraordinarily little bright sunlight in the far northwest corner of Britain over the past year. Damp, drizzling…
When pop gave way to rock
According to David Hepworth, the year he turned 21 was also the year when ‘a huge proportion of the most…
‘Help the British anyhow’
The sacrifices made by India on the Allies’ behalf in the second world war would profoundly affect the country’s future for better or worse, says Philip Hensher
Sick transit
Sitting at her desk at the BBC in March 2006, researching a documentary about the Olympic Games, Caroline Jones pressed…
Going global
We can all identify decades in which the world moved forward. Wars are not entirely negative experiences: the social and…
Tainted love
In 1963, when the bloom was still on the rose, Bob Dylan described Woodstock as a place where ‘we stop…
A mix of myths
With ‘both arms stretched out like a starfish, her long hair floating like seaweed at the sides of her body’,…
Disgusted of X-ville
Eileen is an accomplished, disturbing and creepily funny first novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, the latest darling of the Paris Review,…
Sexy self-advertising
At nearly eight foot high and five foot wide, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s portrait of herself with two of her students is…
Murder most foul
On 1 November 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB officer and by then a British citizen, met two of his former colleagues,…
