book reviews and features
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures is a collection of transcripts, recording weekly group lectures... Read more... |
Julia Bell: Radical Attention review - a clear rendering of our withering attention spans
Monday, 11 January 2021
You go out for a walk and leave your devices at home; your head feels a little bit clearer. But when you get back and plonk yourself... Read more... |
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
Wednesday, 06 January 2021
Before he published fiction, George Saunders trained as an engineer and wrote technical reports. The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo,... Read more... |
Courttia Newland: A River Called Time review - an ethereality check
Tuesday, 05 January 2021
It is near impossible to imagine what the world would look like today if slavery and colonialism had... Read more... |
Best of 2020: Books
Thursday, 31 December 2020
Stuck in our homes for most of this year, we found comfort and escape from books in ways unprecedented in 2020. The chance to dwell in alternative spaces, or inhabit different rhythms of living.... Read more... |
Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the... Read more... |
Goran Vojnović: The Fig Tree review - falling apart together as Yugoslavia splits
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
Seven years ago, at a literary festival in the Croatian port of Pula, I heard Goran Vojnović talk about... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelands
Thursday, 10 December 2020
Simon Armitage is a poet at the top of his game: in his second year as poet laureate, he has given voice to the... Read more... |
Don DeLillo: The Silence review - when the lights of technology go out
Tuesday, 08 December 2020
Don DeLillo’s latest novella, The Silence, has been marketed with an emphasis on its prescience, describing the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incomplete
Tuesday, 01 December 2020
As much as we would like it to, writing can never fully recapture someone who is gone. This we learn all too effectively in A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, arguably one of... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
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A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in...
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In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the...
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Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn...
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emot...
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from...
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey thro...
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has...
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review -...
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the...
