Book Reviews
Fiction
-
How much did Homer know about war Well, for a start he’s… [cont]
-
Dublinesque is the story of Samuel Riba, retired publisher, recovered alcoholic, and… [cont]
-
“To become oneself,” Christa Wolf writes in The Quest for Christa T.… [cont]
-
Towards the end of the shattering first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s… [cont]
-
“I know of one Greek labyrinth which is but one straight line.… [cont]
-
Fans of Bela Tarr’s wonderful film adaptation Werckmeister Harmonies will be familiar… [cont]
-
Gerhard Meiers Isle of the Dead reads as a moment when you… [cont]
-
“You should never learn from your mistakes”, declares W. in the opening… [cont]
-
Requiem is a hymn for a master, a lament for a foreign… [cont]
-
Gerald Murnane’s Barley Patch begins before itself, before literature. Like all books… [cont]
-
Mark Walker is the chief promoter of British Neo-Latin studies. He is… [cont]
-
French philosophy, like ‘continental’ philosophy more broadly, is, of course, an oddly… [cont]
-
Ann Quin was something of a rising star at the time of… [cont]
-
The function of a canon is to exclude. The non-canonical, however interesting,… [cont]
-
Two mighty books have been giving me great delight of late. One… [cont]
-
Jordan Stumps recent (2010) translation (Dalkey Archive Press) resurrects and makes available… [cont]
-
Before embarking on this review, I should firstly provide something of a… [cont]
-
Much post-modernist “meta-fiction” can seem, once you get to grips with the… [cont]
-
The protagonist of Percival Everett’s latest novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier,… [cont]
-
Names and labels matter in Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure. So the fact… [cont]
-
First published by Random House in 1999, and then in paperback in… [cont]
-
During a book reading, Ali Sethi said he wrote The Wish Maker,… [cont]
-
I was intrigued by Kim Stanley Robinsons attack on the conservatism of… [cont]
-
Itisk Malpesh is an elderly Yiddish poet living in Baltimore. He was… [cont]
-
For André Gide, writing The Immoralist was a near-death experience. I have… [cont]
-
If in the last century Mexican literature was largely inspired by the… [cont]
-
It feels like now, in the aftermath of Israel/Hamas war, might be… [cont]
-
Amid the gathering storm of responses to Jonathan Littell’s monumental and phantasmagoric… [cont]
-
No sooner is an (almost) new writer introduced to us than he… [cont]
-
Michael Hofmann’s plump anthology of miscellaneous work by Malcolm Lowry provides an… [cont]
-
Of all the many texts – philosophical, scientific, literary – or art… [cont]
-
In this literary hijack, Claro infiltrates a classic text and takes the… [cont]
-
As one reads Ann Quins Passages a kind of language serum is… [cont]
-
Rhys Davies, one of Anna Kavan’s few close friends, wrote an introduction… [cont]
-
This is a brilliantly crafted moral fable, as if Kafka had gone… [cont]
-
Blaise Cendrars is in many ways, as Kit Maude points out, one… [cont]
-
This mordant, ticklish and addictive novel tracks, over twenty-six stories, the Canadian… [cont]
-
Rarely does an author come loaded with such impressive indie and establishment… [cont]
-
This book will be especially enjoyable for readers well-primed in late 19th-… [cont]
-
Falling Man ends where it begins, with 9/11: an experience, like a… [cont]
-
The snow never melts in this novel. There’s no reason that it… [cont]
-
I discovered the Belgian poet Georges Rodenbach because of his tomb in… [cont]
-
Pigeons feature prominently in Lee Rourkes debut collection of short stories. Set… [cont]
-
Seldom does a book grip so early. Unusually, the Prologue has three… [cont]
-
To be at hotel, in the terms of Wayne Koestenbaum’s Hotel Theory,… [cont]
-
In the brief introductory note to Steps (1990), a collection of fiction… [cont]
-
Towards the end of his discussion of the literary quality of exactitude,… [cont]
-
Few writers since Donald Barthelme have been able to synthesize an absurdist… [cont]
-
Dean Koontz has long explored human consciousness along the tension between the… [cont]
-
Tao Lin’s gleefully-titled first novel can be welcomed as a comedy about… [cont]
-
Peter Ho Davies is the author of two short story collections, The… [cont]
-
Picture a composite face divided down the centre, uniting a beautiful German… [cont]
-
It would be perfectly apt to entitle Hermann Ungar’s entire fictional output… [cont]
-
Now is a conversation novel mapping the relations of an extended family… [cont]
-
This is a novel about a serial killer set in contemporary Norway.… [cont]
-
Gabriel Josipovici’s newest book enters a world that does not have a… [cont]
-
Charles D’Ambrosio’s second story collection, The Dead Fish Museum, is a collection… [cont]
-
On Delia’s birthday her mother died, drowned wearing her expensive new bra,… [cont]
-
Jack McCall lives for the moment. If he is unhappy, he moves… [cont]
-
Robert Creeley was 78 when he died in March 2005. In On… [cont]
-
Two years after his wife Ludmilla dies, Nikolai calls his daughter Nadezhda… [cont]
-
The biographical note at the head of this book describes the writer… [cont]
-
At this time in our collective political history, when comprehension of the… [cont]
-
First published in 2000, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno seems more… [cont]
-
Bluma Lennon, a Cambridge academic, is struck and killed while crossing the… [cont]
-
Dodecahedron: A Platonic solid composed of twelve pentagonal faces, with three meeting… [cont]
-
Peter Straker lives in silent penance on the Devon coast in an… [cont]
-
Douglas Coupland’s tenth novel has been billed as “Microserfs for the age… [cont]
-
‘Felix lächelt, die Augen auf die Straße gerichtet.’ (Felix smiles, his eyes… [cont]
-
Even the obvious reference to Bach’s prodigious keyboard work is a cunningly… [cont]
-
This fine novel, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born, was the… [cont]
-
Firmin begins life at a disadvantage. Born the runt of the litter… [cont]
-
Given his more globally renowned namesake it’s easy to think of Ryu… [cont]
-
In 2004, the London International Book Fair held its inaugural Lit Idol… [cont]
-
The first of László Krasznahorkais novels to come out in English -… [cont]
-
The Fate of the Artist (originally coming out with First Second Books)… [cont]
-
In her sincere review of David Mitchells previous novel, the widely acclaimed… [cont]
-
Gautam Malkanis Londonstani is set amongst the self-described ‘Desi’ kids of Southwest… [cont]
-
Children often express their displeasure by running away from home. Theyll wander… [cont]
-
Gert Hofmanns work is little known here in the UK. Translated by… [cont]
-
Tom Gidley’s Stunning Lofts is an adroit, jam-packed and rather humorous novel… [cont]
-
In 1989 China’s Tiananmen Square stood submerged in a bloody stand off… [cont]
-
Life On The Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, shortlisted for… [cont]
-
You’ll either describe these meditations on love and sexuality as “joyful”, “playful”… [cont]
-
Stuart: A Life Backwards is a memoir of a drug-addicted, alcoholic homeless… [cont]
-
Well it’s gone and happened now hasn’t it That wonderful moment when… [cont]
-
This is probably the best place to start with Pavel Hak’s chillingly… [cont]
-
The Human War by Noah Cicero (Fugue State Press) is an odd,… [cont]
-
A Girl from Zanzibar is the story of Marcella D’Souza, a ‘Goan… [cont]
-
Are Iain Sinclair’s books more admired than read Reviewers tend to single out… [cont]
-
In E. L. Doctorow’s The March, the narrator describes the sorrows of… [cont]
-
All hail the poet of old Soho. It seems Julian Maclaren-Ross has… [cont]
-
There are 41 places in the British Isles that boast place names… [cont]
-
A photograph is a strange thing. In a newspaper or on a… [cont]
-
John Lynch’s film credits include Sliding Doors (1998), Moll Flanders (1996) and… [cont]
-
Can the pre-history of a concept or an ideology really tell us… [cont]
-
Its a sad fact but I cant help thinking if Marie Darrieussecq… [cont]
-
In Among Refugees, one of the strongest stories in Dovid Bergelson’s haunting… [cont]
-
Bernardine Evaristo’s third novel is a vibrant collage. Stylistically playful, it throws… [cont]
-
Despite writing numerous books, nobel-prize winning Imre Kertész work remains shockingly difficult… [cont]
-
JM Coetzee, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, is no longer… [cont]
-
How bad can it be, being married to a Conservative MP Bad… [cont]
-
I wanted very much to like this. Having a soft spot for… [cont]
-
Andrea Levy has a real flair for voices, for the shaping and… [cont]
-
On Peter Hithersay’s sixteenth birthday his mother tells him the secret she’s… [cont]
-
My Lords, Ladies, and LibertinesIf you think tabloid tales of sex in… [cont]
-
Heera Mandi - the Diamond Market - Lahore’s ancient landmark of a… [cont]
-
A review of this book in The Guardian began: ‘In our increasingly… [cont]
-
How far should a father go to protect his son The question… [cont]
-
It is always a treat to read a novel written by an… [cont]
-
Matt Thorne is one of the co-founders of the New Puritan movement,… [cont]
-
As an author, the voice of a young child must be one… [cont]
-
After a series of short and playful novels touching on genres as… [cont]
-
Youve got to really admire Dalkey Archive Press. You really have. Not… [cont]
-
Christa Wolf is the most prominent writer from East Germany. Born in… [cont]
-
The Tower of Glass (Dalkey Archive Press) is a collection of five… [cont]
-
James Sallis has been sending messages to us in code through his… [cont]
-
I suppose there is only one tangible British comparison we can really… [cont]
-
Most job applications do not begin like this: Yes, I want a… [cont]
-
As the creator of one of the most uniquely enduring of fictional… [cont]
-
The massive novel Underworld (Picador; 0330369954) confirmed to many Don Delillos status… [cont]
-
Marie Darrieussecqs unique and beautiful book Breathing Underwater (Le Mal de mer)… [cont]
-
Edith Grossmans new translation of Cervantes Don Quixote is a landmark event.… [cont]
-
A writer of considerable talents, with a love of word-play and allusion,… [cont]
-
In one long unbroken book length paragraph - in some ways reminiscent… [cont]
-
Charles Bukowskis fourth novel, Ham on Rye, is the semi-autobiographical story of… [cont]
-
A bestseller throughout Europe, and soon to be released as a film,… [cont]
-
I cant say anything new or particularly insightful about Jane Eyre. I… [cont]
-
This is superb. Really superb. His eleventh novel, and Oracle Night is… [cont]
-
Luther Blissett Wasnt he one of Englands first superstar Black footballers scoring… [cont]
-
Zoe Cunningham is a singular although not a lonely child: bookish, observant,… [cont]
-
The unswerving compulsion to unearth, and ultimately understand, another persons identity is… [cont]
-
A new Anita Brookner book is unlikely to surprise, unlikely to shock… [cont]
-
Theres a timeless quality to Justin Haythes first novel, a fluid elegance… [cont]
-
As it proudly states on the back cover, Soldiers of Salamis has… [cont]
-
Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart is a beautiful novel - as an… [cont]
-
Mark Gatiss is, of course, best known as one of the League… [cont]
-
Stanford J. Kelly aka Skelly is an ex-war correspondent whose third marriage… [cont]
-
Kate Atkinson’s fourth novel since the Whitbread winning Behind The Scenes at… [cont]
-
Rick Demarinis once, rather boldly, opined the short story is more related… [cont]
-
Let’s face it J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand is an… [cont]
-
If ever a novel was written with the vainglorious hope of a… [cont]
-
It would be an over-simplification to describe Cynthia Ozick’s elegant new novel… [cont]
-
26a, Diana Evans’ debut novel, provides us with yet another new voice… [cont]
-
In Paul McDonalds second novel, cynical journalist David Ichabod McVane finds himself… [cont]
-
Lewis Desoto’s A Blade of Grass is an ambitious debut, tracing the… [cont]
-
I don’t do long books. If I am to commit to a… [cont]
-
Just like it says on the cover this is a story that… [cont]
-
As translator Andrew Reynolds explains, quite clearly, in his introduction to this… [cont]
-
Charmed by Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Sexing the Cherry and… [cont]
-
Two more excellent pieces by Zweig from Pushkin. Im loathe to call… [cont]
-
Fernet Branca, the bitter Italian spirit, flows through the new novel by… [cont]
-
There is an appendix to my copy of Catch-22, in which Heller… [cont]
-
Epic in scope, MG Vassanji’s historically sweeping novel recounts the life of… [cont]
-
Tom Wolfe’s latest doorstop of a novel has, apparently, recently been spotted… [cont]
-
Stephen Mitchells uneven and rather excitable introduction (edited extract) to his fluent… [cont]
-
The journey a book takes from hard drive to hardback is usually… [cont]
-
People in the West pride themselves on having some control over their… [cont]
-
After a seven year break, Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray, much feted for… [cont]
-
Andrew Crumey’s fifth novel is an intriguing mix of mystery, philosophical thriller… [cont]
-
When interviewed by Mark Thwaite for ReadySteadyBook, I named May Day as… [cont]
-
Widely received as one of the great recent literary debuts, Manuel Rivass… [cont]
-
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali revisits one of the 20th… [cont]
-
1998s Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Jose Saramaga, has, with his superb novel… [cont]
-
In Tobias Wolffs Old School, a writer reminisces about his time spent… [cont]
-
John Herseys immensely moving Hiroshima is the text often burdened with the… [cont]
-
Margaret Drabble’s latest novel is a complex, scholarly account of power and… [cont]
-
If youre asked to think of an emotional Victorian heroine called Lucy… [cont]
-
Siri Hustvedts What I loved is both a moving elegy for the… [cont]
-
When it was first published in 1895 Chekhovs Three Years was described… [cont]
-
I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had… [cont]
-
I suppose this is for lovers of memoirs/roman a clef like Wild… [cont]
-
Elke Schmitters compelling, if bleak, novel Mrs Sartoris was a huge best-seller… [cont]
-
I am never entirely sure as to the definition of a novella… [cont]
-
In The Royal Game, the uncultured, ignorant, monomaniac reigning world chess champion,… [cont]
-
Russians looks on Pushkin much as we look on Shakespeare; his position… [cont]
-
An undercover operation. A stakeout. A lonely urban landscape. Jonathan Lethems Motherless… [cont]
-
Richard Yates is now ranked alongside John Cheever and Raymond Carver as… [cont]
-
It is rarely worth noting the edition or publisher of a book… [cont]
-
There’s an awful lot I do not understand regarding contemporary literature, but… [cont]
-
Readers jaded by the diffuse and flashy nature of much contemporary American… [cont]
-
Panos Karnezis The Maze is a subtle (neither overtly comic nor, perhaps,… [cont]
-
There are many, many obstacles in the way of writers in languages… [cont]
-
“All of a sudden, nobody can explain wind. For better or worse,… [cont]
-
Richard Brautigan was an icon of the hippy movement and a key… [cont]
Non-Fiction
-
Franco Bifo Berardis The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance (part of Semiotext(e)s… [cont]
-
To discover The Peregrine is to discover the secret of flight: to… [cont]
-
The main title is that of an episode in the Tennant/Piper regime,… [cont]
-
William O. Stephens gets no farther than paragraph two before he lands… [cont]
-
2011 saw two major Marxist publications: How to Change the World: Marx… [cont]
-
To consider the concept of nihilism, Simon Critchley once remarked 1, is… [cont]
-
Along with Peter Jones, whose Learn Ancient Greek and Learn Latin courses… [cont]
-
We have lost our best man, wrote the historian E.P. Thompson, on… [cont]
-
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.And… [cont]
-
There are two leitmotifs to this book: the way Israel has turned… [cont]
-
This is an extract from the Preface of George Monbiots Heat: How… [cont]
-
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.W.B. Yeats, Second ComingJenny Teichman, a… [cont]
-
The short essay below is Daniel Frank and Aaron Mansons foreword to… [cont]
-
The winter of 1600 was not particularly cold in Rome and the… [cont]
-
Mankind has spent an inordinate amount of his time on this planet… [cont]
-
About three quarters of the way through her comic book introduction to… [cont]
-
At the heart of human society sit fossil fuels. The coal and… [cont]
-
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations with Noam Chomsky on the Post 9/11 World is… [cont]
-
Tony White’s interest in the Balkans has already resulted in a short… [cont]
-
In Colin Wilson’s Introduction to this intriguing series of essays, he describes… [cont]
-
In Time of Need is principally a book about the German poet… [cont]
-
We can detect in Anthony Arnove’s book a significant watershed in the… [cont]
-
Fred Pearce has been writing and consulting on environmental issues for decades.… [cont]
-
A Disease of Language collects between the same covers two lesser known… [cont]
-
The new exhibition, Modernism: Designing a New World, at the Victoria amp;… [cont]
-
Daniel Dennett missed out on a career as a whodunit writer. But… [cont]
-
This is a lovely essay, but it barely constitutes a book. Weighing… [cont]
-
This is the ideal book for Beckett fans to browse and discover… [cont]
-
You already know the cynic: sarcastic and sardonic, the cynic delights in… [cont]
-
Time to dodge the bullets. I am but a young buck of… [cont]
-
How nice of Mr. Prerau to list the newspapers he’s read in… [cont]
-
Occupying a space somewhere between Dickensian Bleak-House ambience and observational humour any… [cont]
-
Love and war has always been a potent mix. For women journalists… [cont]
-
The Puppet and The Dwarf is dense, bonkers, massively erudite, tautological, brilliant,… [cont]
-
Anna Politkovskaya, Putins Russia (Harvill, 2004), ISBN 1843430509, £8.99 Anna Politkovskaya is… [cont]
-
The President of Good and Evil is a peculiar read but one… [cont]
-
Anyone who enjoys watching sport on television is an imbecile; a dangle-mouthed,… [cont]
-
Ive read hardly any Thomas Mann. I know, I know! I should… [cont]
-
Matthew Collings amusing and readable take on the British art world in… [cont]
-
Although their profiles seem to have dimmed in recent years, Heloise and… [cont]
-
It Hurts sees Matthew Collings bring his ironic and informed eye to,… [cont]
-
Our February Non-Fiction Book of the Month. Review soon!!… [cont]
-
John Armstrongs The Intimate Philosophy of Art is much less a philosophy… [cont]
-
Readers of Francis Wheen’s previous book, his highly entertaining biography of Karl… [cont]
-
We all know that Chernobyl happened, we all remember the pictures on… [cont]
-
Aharon Appelfeld’s novels – at least those I’ve read - do not… [cont]
-
I devoured this book in just two sittings, and loved every page.… [cont]
-
Vesna Goldsworthy began writing this book soon after being diagnosed with breast… [cont]
-
I dont know Dubravka Ugresics other work (not her Charles Veillon European… [cont]
-
Modernism was always troubled by its epoch and this tension helped produce… [cont]
-
Id have to say that this is a must-read. The UN are,… [cont]
-
To be honest I had never heard of Arthur Gwynn-Browne before I… [cont]
-
Christopher Hill’s knowledge of the English Civil War period is second to… [cont]
-
I read Reading Chekhov, having not read a word of the Russian… [cont]
-
From the opening pages of Ghosting, its easy to believe that Jennie… [cont]
-
Kevin Jacksons personal, quirky, wonderfully diverting and highly detailed Letters of Introduction… [cont]
-
Nine Suitcases is Bela Zsolts memoir of the Holocaust - his personal… [cont]
-
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardts Empire was, everyone seemed to agree, a… [cont]
-
Initially published as But Is It Art (An Introduction to Art Theory;… [cont]
-
Once upon a time there was a weak, thin, bitterly lonely man… [cont]
-
This is useful. Martin Fitzgeralds Pocket Essential on Woody Allen (3rd Edition… [cont]
-
Sardar is described on the jacket of this book as one of… [cont]
-
Anyone whos stayed up late to watch a heavyweight boxing match on… [cont]
-
Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late poses plenty of interesting questions… [cont]
-
Darian Leader is that very rarest of things: a populariser of Lacan!… [cont]
-
Adam Phillips is most famous for his strikingly well written investigation into… [cont]
