book reviews and features
Zaina Arafat: You Exist Too Much review - second-generation love addiction
Monday, 30 November 2020
Zaina Arafat’s debut details the trials and tribulations of its first generation American-... Read more... |
Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC review - we won't know what we've got until it's gone
Monday, 30 November 2020
When in June 2019 the BBC announced plans to restrict free TV licences to households with at least one person aged over... Read more... |
Extract: 'On Loneliness' by Fatimah Asghar, from 'The Good Immigrant USA'
Tuesday, 24 November 2020
The infamous border wall. Prolonged detention. Children in cages. Even as Biden's election promises a sea change in... Read more... |
Nicole Krauss: To Be a Man review - first short-story collection from the award-winning novelist
Thursday, 19 November 2020
Tamar, a character in “The Husband”, one of the most appealing, joyful stories in Nicole Krauss’s new collection... Read more... |
Andrey Kurkov: Grey Bees review - light Ukrainian odyssey, with bite
Wednesday, 18 November 2020
This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour,... Read more... |
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise BourgeoisMonday, 16 November 2020
How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to... Read more... |
Ben Wilson: Metropolis - A History of Humankind's Greatest Invention review - urban resilience throughout the ages
Tuesday, 10 November 2020
Like the novel, painting and God, the city has long been pronounced dead – along with a few other things, like civil politics, society and the art of conversation that were said to have thrived... Read more... |
Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology review - wild writing to stimulate the senses
Wednesday, 28 October 2020
Among the French composer Claude Debussy’s greatest and characteristically subtle innovations was to put the titles at the end of his pieces. He did this in his piano collection Preludes... Read more... |
Judith Herrin: Ravenna review - flashes of order and beauty in a chaotic world
Monday, 26 October 2020
Anyone mesmerized by the mosaics in seven of Ravenna’s eight Unesco world heritage sites may be surprised by the... Read more... |
Jenny Hval: Girls Against God review - a sticky dance through space and time
Wednesday, 21 October 2020
Jenny Hval’s Girls Against God covers every angsty young woman’s favourite subjects. Witchcraft, heavy... 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.
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Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the...
