book reviews and features
Muhsin Al-Ramli: 'During Saddam’s regime at least we knew who the enemy was' - interview
Sunday, 28 May 2017
Saddam Hussein’s name is never mentioned in The President’s Gardens, even though he haunts every page. The one time that the reader encounters him directly, he is referred to simply by... Read more... |
Colm Tóibín: House of Names review - bleakly beautiful twilight of the gods
Sunday, 21 May 2017
The news that Colm Tóibín has written a novel about Orestes, Clytemnestra, Electra and the whole accursed... Read more... |
Haruki Murakami: Men Without Women review - a bit too abstract and post-modern
Sunday, 14 May 2017
“I was a lamprey eel in a former life,” says a woman in “Scheherazade”, one of the most intriguing of the seven stories in Men without Women - it was previously published in the New... Read more... |
Hanif Kureishi: The Nothing review - a glittering chamber of ice
Sunday, 14 May 2017
Kureishi is mostly loved for his bittersweet panoramas of suburban London, ribald and piquant with satire. The Nothing discards that broad canvas and creeps into a glittering... Read more... |
Bella Bathurst: Sound, review - an illuminating book on deafness
Sunday, 14 May 2017
Shelve with Oliver Sacks. In Sound: Stories of Hearing Lost and Found Bella Bathurst has written a fascinating and illuminating book on deafness. Of what it’s like to lose your hearing –... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Henry Marsh - Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Sunday, 07 May 2017
Is it true that the blob of jelly resembling convoluted grey matter that we carry around in our skulls is really what we are? And how we are, and why? This is the profound question that is... Read more... |
theartsdesk at The Hospital Club
Wednesday, 03 May 2017
The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Nicholas Hytner - Balancing Acts
Sunday, 30 April 2017
After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the ... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Donna Leon - Earthly Remains
Sunday, 23 April 2017
It’s 25 years this year since Donna Leon introduced us to Commissario Guido Brunetti, a man who in his way has done as much for... Read more... |
'What did you do?' Actors reveal their Shakespearean secrets
Sunday, 23 April 2017
Much of the brilliance of Shakespeare lies in the openness, or ambiguity, of his texts. Whereas a novelist will often describe a character, an action or a scene in the most minute detail,... Read more... |
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Music Reissues Weekly: The Telstar Story, The Heinz Sessions...
“Telstar” was released 60 years ago this week. On 17 August 1962...
Counting and Cracking, Edinburgh International Festival 2022...
First, a bit of housekeeping. Maybe it was the three-and-a-half-hour duration, or maybe the unfamiliar Sri Lankan subject matter, or maybe even...
Prom 35, Wang, Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä review - crystallin...
Klaus Mäkelä, 26-year old chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris, lined up for the same role at the Royal Concertgebouw...
Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Sara Barron / Jayde Adams / S...
Sara Barron, Pleasance Courtyard ★★...
Album: Cass McCombs - Heartmind
Cass McCombs has something of the detailed, opaque depth of his late peer Jason Molina, with more taste for pop shapes under a broader musical...
Prom 34, Soltani, BBC Philharmonic, Ollikainen review - jour...
Proper music tells stories just about itself, the stern pedagogues insist; it doesn’t (or anyway shouldn’t) paint descriptive pictures of places...
Shetland, Series 7, BBC One review - Douglas Henshall is bac...
The last couple of series of Shetland (BBC One) brought the...
Eiffel review - sensuous secret history
This is a romantic historical epic with elan, giving sensual immediacy to a fanciful secret history of the Eiffel Tower, here inspired by a...
