rape
Songs of murder, rape and desertion
Amy Jeffs rediscovers the disturbing beauty of traditional ballads
The evasions of smalltown Alabama: The Land of Sweet Forever, by Harper Lee, reviewed
Apprentice stories contain much of the raw material for To Kill a Mockingbird, as Lee tries to reconcile love for home with disgust at its prejudices
Pride and Prejudice retold in a thousand different ways
Some of the stranger reimaginings involve dragons, zombies, Lydia Bennet as a witch, Lizzy ending up with Charlotte Lucas and the story narrated by Anne de Bourgh
The powder keg of 1980s New York
Ed Koch’s mayoralty is beset by violent crime, corruption, racism, Aids and a crack epidemic, with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump further tormenting him where possible
Pity the censor: Moderation, by Elaine Castillo, reviewed
As a content moderator of the internet, thirtysomething Girlie is accustomed to stomach-churning videos. But how will she fare in the VR theme park sector?
No place is safe: The Brittle Age, by Donatella di Pietrantonio, reviewed
When her daughter, a student in Milan, is left traumatised after being mugged, Lucia is reminded of her own violent introduction to adulthood at a similar ‘brittle age’
The horror of Hungary in the second world war
Having suffered heavy casualties fighting the Soviets as part of the Axis alliance, the country was then occupied by the Nazis, which led to wholesale carnage during the siege of Budapest in 1945
Not for the faint-hearted: She’s Always Hungry, by Eliza Clark, reviewed
An unsettling collection of stories loosely connected by the theme of hunger contains graphic descriptions of violence and cannibalism – as the publishers see fit to warn us
A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed
Freya, a respected consultant in a burns unit, is on a secret mission to destroy as many young boys’ lives as possible, having been raped by teenagers on holiday in Cornwall at the age of 12
Mounting suspicion: The Fate of Mary Rose, by Caroline Blackwood, reviewed
Terror and distrust build in the Anderson family after a six-year-old girl is found murdered in a quiet Kent village
Small mercies: Dead-End Memories, by Banana Yoshimoto, reviewed
Rape, poisoning, child abuse and betrayal feature in Yoshimoto’s dramatic stories – but gratitude and forgiveness run alongside sadness, stitched in the same cloth
The rape of Ukraine continues while the world’s sympathies move on
Two detailed, on-the-ground accounts from Andrey Kurkov and Oleksandr Mykhed remind us of the atrocities that are changing life in Ukraine forever
The hell of the antebellum South: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward, reviewed
Teenage Annis and her enslaved mother endure beatings and rape as they are marched in chains to New Orleans to be sold to the latest brutal plantation owner
Evil geniuses
Does knowledge of the wrongs committed by Caravaggio, Picasso, Roman Polanski and other ‘monsters’ condition our response to their art, wonders Claire Dederer
The virtue of restraint
Louise Perry is on a mission: ‘It wasn’t enough just to point out the problems with our new sexual culture,’…
Quiet thunder
Hampstead’s latest play is a knotty rape drama by Naomi Wallace set in Kentucky. Four teenagers with weird names meet…
Criminalising ‘cyberflashing’ is a waste of time
It’s a fact of life that at any given time, a woman’s social media messages will be filled with three…
Bleak, brutal and bloody
Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is set in the 14th century and is a tale of rivalry and rape told…
A licence for licentiousness
In the winter of 1861, visitors to the Louvre might have seen a young artist painstakingly copying one of the…
A script to raise whirlwinds
Boy meets girl. Girl gets pregnant. Then the entire world collapses. That’s the story of Camp Siegfried, which is set…
A dish served very hot
Promising Young Woman is a rape-revenge-thriller that has already proved divisive but is a wonderfully clever, darkly funny, stomach-knotting —…
Imran Khan’s cowardly response to Pakistan’s rape crisis
Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan has once again blamed women for an appalling rise in rape cases. Khan used a televised question…
Has the school co-educational ‘experiment’ failed?
Reading these reports of what has been happening in some co-educational public schools, it’s clear that the trend began way back…
Inherited trauma
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
The cheapest, deadliest weapon
Nothing prepared Antony Beevor for this devastating exposé of the systematic use of rape in war and ethnic cleansing
