family saga
Outlandish epic: Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, reviewed
Spanning three generations of Sicilian women, this family saga of honour, deception and class politics is also a study in morality and the petty ways in which it is eroded
Memory test
On page 231 of The Candy House, a sequel – no, a ‘sibling’ says Jennifer Egan – to the Pulitzer…
Laughter and tears
The Yacoubian Building, the first novel of the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany, sold well over a million copies in…
All the pomp of family life
The Green Road is a novel in two parts about leaving and returning home. A big house called Ardeevin, walking…
What a saga!
Hugh Walpole, now almost forgotten, was a literary giant. Descended from the younger brother of the 18th-century prime minister Robert…
Flirting with magic realism
A preview of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird appeared in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issue in April last…
After the funeral
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The…
Past perfect
Some years ago, a woman wrote to Dear Mary, at the back of this periodical, with an unusual problem: she…
