Books
The bubble bursts
It was a born of a specific macroclimate of low interest rates following the global financial crisis – but all that is melting away and, in the case of crypto, not before time
The crimes of Le Corbusier
We can all sympathise with his desire to end bad, ugly new building, but too many of his own projects have had to be scrapped for functional reasons
Ravenous rats
Surprisingly for a novel riffing on Orwell’s dystopia, Julia is portrayed as a cheerful young woman uninterested in politics and believing in nothing at all
Familiar and strange
Each story circles around events both big and small, such as lunch at a simple trattoria, a birthday party, a summer holiday or the funeral of a friend
Making tracks
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Murder by the Mississippi
When the mutilated corpse of a Ku Klux Klan member is discovered, the stability of an entire city is threatened in this tale of racial tension set beside the Mississippi
Island queendom
Alice Albinia reminds us that Orkney was a trading station long before London, Iona the epicentre of Celtic Christianity and Shetland a haven for liberal Udal law
All to play for
Board games especially – dating back to at least 3000 BC – have never been idle entertainment but help boost the memory and teach valuable strategic skills
The thrill of the chase
The novelist himself admitted that his infidelities ‘produced a duality and tension that became a necessary drug for my writing’
Out of the shadows
Unlike his attention-seeking brother David Stirling, Bill was a careful planner, responsible for many successful intelligence-gathering operations behind enemy lines
Remember, remember
The world that blossoms in this haunting novel about the importance of memory is in the aesthetic vein known as ‘mono no aware’, or ‘the pathos of things’
Looking on the bright side
The Rochdale lass who sang her way from music hall to the silver screen encouraged a spirit of resilience and community in the interwar years, says Simon Heffer
The lives of others
Ingrid Swenson spent ten years retrieving discarded shopping lists at a London Waitrose, and the result is a rare glimpse into entire, private worlds
Same same but different
Being the genetic copy of another human not only presents problems of individuality but offers a ‘rare form of experimental control’, says William Viney
Gentle genius
Dissatisfied with his unfinished epic, the dying Vergil called for his scrolls to be burned, but was fortunately overruled by the Emperor Augustus
An absolute earful
Singing sands, the dawn chorus and the crackle of the Northern Lights are among the many natural wonders explored in Caspar Henderson’s paean to the act of listening
Stark realities
Lawyers, teachers, architects and engineers all enjoy sex behind the scenes at a Houston gay bar in a novel focusing on relationships among black urban men
Hogging the limelight
Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages
Abiding charms
We seem just as captivated by magic today as our Sumerian ancestors ever were, says Suzi Feay
Blow your mind
The UK seems on the brink of a ‘psychedelic renaissance’ – but, stripped of shamanic ritual and sanitised for medicinal purposes, will psilocybin retain its power?
Lies and extremism
The demonisation of the state of Israel is basically an anti-Semitic mutation ‘evolving out of reach’, argues Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle
Passchendaele all over again
When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains
Rising star
The second volume of Knausgaard’s trilogy serves as a prequel to the first, tracing the origins of Norway’s ominous new celestial body
Hell on Earth
More than 100 interviews with surviving detainees and former prison workers reveal how profoundly shocking President Assad’s regime continues to be
Drowning in the typing pool
For decades, undereducated girls were thwarted before they even started in the workplace, living in the slipstream of men and drip-fed with a sense of their own uselessness
