book reviews and features
Susan Finlay: The Lives of the Artists review - the knotted threads of memoir and art![]()
Benvenuto Cellini’s My Life (1728) is not the artist-biography to which Susan Finlay’s The Lives of the Artists pays its most obvious homage, but it appears to have followed its... Read more... |
Glory to Sound: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Brighton Festival 2023 review - a reggae rebel's life in music![]()
Straight-backed at 70, Linton Kwesi Johnson wears the smart garb of a British Caribbean elder – trilby, cream jacket, West Indies maroon jumper and tie, grey trousers, blue socks and grey shoes.... Read more... |
Keggie Carew: Beastly review - the history of animals and us![]()
There’s been an avalanche of books about animals and trees. The more species disappear and forests are felled, the more titles are published: laments, celebrations, extinction alarms and rhapsodic... Read more... |
Noreen Masud: A Flat Place - reflective landscapes![]()
On the front cover of Noreen Masud’s startling memoir, A Flat Place, a green square of sky is scored... Read more... |
A. Anatoli: Babi Yar - The Story of Ukraine's Holocaust review - a masterpiece uncensored![]()
The great Russian novelists of the 19th century wrote what Henry James called "large, loose, baggy monsters" out of belief that "truth" was... Read more... |
Max Porter: Shy review - an ode to boyhood and rage![]()
Max Porter continues his fascination with the struggles of youth in his newest release, Shy: his most beautifully-wrought... Read more... |
Solmaz Sharif: Customs review - a poetics of exile and return![]()
The language of poetic technique is perhaps weighted towards rupture, rather than reparation: lines end and break, we count beats and stress, experience caesurae (literally ‘cuttings’), and mark... Read more... |
First Person: Sophie Haydock on going beyond the grave![]()
It was a cold day in Vienna when Egon Schiele was buried in the Ober-Sankt-Veit cemetery. He was just 28 years old. The controversial... Read more... |
Lydia Sandgren: Collected Works review - the mysteries that surround us all![]()
Lydia Sandgren’s debut novel, Collected Works, a bestseller in her native Sweden, has now been translated by Agnes Broomé into English, in all its 733-page glory. An epic family saga, it... Read more... |
Jonathan Kennedy: Pathogenesis - How Germs Made History review - a return to the infections that formed us![]()
The Cayapo tribe, a shade under 10,000 strong, lived in South America unacquainted with humans in the wider world until 1903. That year, they accepted a missionary who, along with news of... Read more... |
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