book reviews and features
Disbelief - 100 Russian Anti-War Poems (ed. Julia Nemirovskaya) review - writing battle-lines
Thursday, 23 February 2023
On 24th February 2022, when Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation”, life in Ukraine changed abruptly and in a brutal fashion. Soon the impact of the war was felt around the world... Read more... |
Sally Adee: We Are Electric review - currents that run through us all
Friday, 17 February 2023
All the things going on with me as I type this – fingers moving keys, eye and brain registering characters on my screen, thoughts that will (I hope) generate the next lot of characters – rely on... Read more... |
Extract: The Northern Silence - Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture by Andrew Mellor
Wednesday, 15 February 2023
“Silence,” Andrew Mellor contends, “is more prominent in the northernmost reaches of Europe.” Yet it is more like a texture or an apprehension of vacancy than a state of true soundlessness:... Read more... |
'I let it emerge': an interview with Fiona Benson on the cusp of the TS Eliot Prize announcement
Friday, 20 January 2023
Fiona Benson’s new collection of poems, Ephemeron (Jonathan Cape, 2022), tries to capture those things that are always moving out of grasp. It does this through four sections: the first... Read more... |
Jaan Kross: A Book of Falsehoods review - plague, power and deception in 16th century Tallinn
Thursday, 05 January 2023
When the first volume of Estonian master Jaan Kross’s peerless historical trilogy first appeared in an English... Read more... |
Best of 2022: Books
Saturday, 31 December 2022
From Kafka’s spry sketches to Derek Owusu’s novel-poem, and Jaan Kross’s Estonian Wolf Hall to Katherine Rundell’s spirited biography of John Donne, our reviewers take the time to share... Read more... |
10 Questions for writer and translator Saskia Vogel
Wednesday, 21 December 2022
Johanne Lykke Holm’s spellbinding novel Strega recounts one teen’s journey into womanhood.... Read more... |
Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song review - a book that contains multitudes
Tuesday, 20 December 2022
Some years after Chronicles (2004) a book that broke moulds and delighted with its originality, and as with albums... Read more... |
Kelefa Sanneh: Major Labels review - diary of an omnivorous musicophile
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres is American critic Kelefa Sanneh’s ambitious survey of musical history. As such, it risks remaining only a... Read more... |
10 Questions for Bruce Lindsay, biographer of Ivor Cutler
Tuesday, 13 December 2022
Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room by Bruce Lindsay, is the first full-length... 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...
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian atmosphere and themes, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs...
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The theatre director Anna Mackmin has...
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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...
Album: Heather Nova - Breath and Air
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime...
Bach's Mass in B minor, The English Concert, Bezuidenho...
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book...
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmi...
“Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the good prevail”. The refrain of Aeschylus’s chorus near the start of the Oresteia is alive and honoured in...
Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully wri...
“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers...