book reviews and features
Book extract: Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo translated by Charlotte Coombe
Sunday, 07 June 2020
Holiday heart, instead of sentimental love discovered on vacation, describes a faltering organ, overloaded from excess consumption: a heart at risk. In Margarita Garcia Robayo’s brilliantly... Read more... |
Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims review – adventures on the road to Rome
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Some things really never change. After a blatant cheat perpetrated by a well-connected lout, one of the humblest pilgrims in Matthew Kneale’s band reminds us that “rich folks’ justice is a penny... Read more... |
Moyra Davey: Index Cards review – fragments of the artist
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Moyra Davey’s biographical note, included in Fitzcarraldo Editions’ copy of Index Cards, describes “a New... Read more... |
Keiichiro Hirano: A Man review - the best kind of thriller
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man has all the trappings of a gripping detective story: a bereaved wife, a... Read more... |
John Grisham: Camino Winds review - morality tale with a light touch
Sunday, 24 May 2020
John Grisham is a brand, in the sense that the reader relies on some sense of what the product is going to be. He is well up in the millions of sales, along with other writers under the “... Read more... |
Maria Reva: Good Citizens Need Not Fear review - tales of gloomy humour and absurdist charm
Tuesday, 19 May 2020
Maria Reva’s humorously gloomy debut collection, centring on the inhabitants of a block of stuffy apartments in Soviet (and... Read more... |
Khaled Nurul Hakim: The Book of Naseeb review – a bold debut
Sunday, 17 May 2020
A small-time heroin dealer harbours idealistic dreams of building a hospital “to help da limmless in Peshawar and Kabul”. This is the premise of The Book of Naseeb, the debut novel from... Read more... |
'What Grandma said (Grandma’s Corona)': sonnets by Claudia Daventry
Sunday, 17 May 2020
A year plagued by Coronavirus is surely a time to dust off a seldom-aired... Read more... |
Caroline Maclean: Circles and Squares review - adventurous art, progressive living and a good gossip
Monday, 11 May 2020
There was a moment in the 1930s when it seemed that contemporary art, as practised in Britain, might join the... Read more... |
Rutger Bregman: Humankind, a Hopeful History review – nice guys finish first
Sunday, 10 May 2020
In retrospect, we will surely see that British battles over the Covid-19 lockdown harboured within them a bitter but half-hidden war of ideas. On one side, the behavioural scientists who first... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journey...
As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The...
Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York), Criterion Thea...
Small scale shows, nurtured in offbeat places, are becoming all the rage in the...
Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate M...
In 1903, Wassily Kandinsky painted a figure in a blue cloak galloping across a landscape on a white horse. Several years later the name of the...
Orbital, O2 Institute, Birmingham review - the techno titans...
On Friday evening, dance veterans Orbital touched down in Birmingham to celebrate two of the most significant and acclaimed albums in...
Fern Brady, Netflix Special review - sex, relationships and...
An appearance on Taskmaster and the publication of her acclaimed memoir Strong Female Character have helped propel Fern Brady...
Album: The Lemon Twigs - A Dream Is All We Know
The Lemon Twigs aren’t shy about telegraphing their inspirations. A Dream is all we Know, their swift follow-up to last May’s ...
Götterdämmerung, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - outside looking...
Four years embracing pandemic, genocide and rapid environmental degradation predicted by Wagner’s grand myth have passed before the Southbank Br...
Music Reissues Weekly: Warsaw - Middlesbrough 14th September...
Edinburgh’s Rezillos were booked to play Middlesbrough’s Rock Garden on Wednesday 14 September 1977. “I Can’t Stand my Baby,” their debut single,...
theartsdesk Q&A: Marco Bellocchio - the last maestro
The last of the old maestros is standing tall. Marco...
Testmatch, Orange Tree Theatre review - Raj rage, old and ne...
Cricket has always been a lens through which to examine the legacy of the British Empire. In the 1930s, the infamous Bodyline series saw the new...