Books
The perils of Prague: Parasol Against the Axe, by Helen Oyeyemi, reviewed
Three women with a criminal past meet for a weekend hen party – but any hopes of enjoying themselves are soon dashed
The greed and hypocrisy of the opium trade continue to shock
Amitav Ghosh admits he found writing his history difficult because of the obscene profiteering and suffering he had to cover
Is writing now changing the world for the worse?
Humanity’s great civilising accomplishment may have slipped the leash. Computer programs and surveillance also involve ‘writing’, potentially making us decreasingly human
Music was always Anthony Burgess’s first love
A gifted pianist and composer, Burgess combined his talents in a superb series of music reviews, published for the first time in a complete collection
No one could match Tess, to Thomas Hardy’s dismay
Hardy’s 38-year marriage to Emma Gifford was notoriously acrimonious; but even his much younger second wife, Florence, never seemed to measure up to his fictional heroines
Copyright chaos grows deeper by the minute
With AI and ChatGPT, we now have an exploding copyright arena in which all bets seem to be off
The thoughts of Chairman Xi – in digestible form
Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung helpfully cut through the jargon of interminable speeches and publications, and the totalitarian vision they expose is not reassuring
Gang warfare in the west of Ireland: Wild Houses, by Colin Barrett, reviewed
The brother of a small-time drugs dealer is kidnapped, and his family and girlfriend set off to find him over the course of one violent, hectic weekend
A wealth of knowledge salvaged from shipwrecks
Goods found on board can illuminate trade routes and global connections, often going back thousands of years, in ways no other archaeological sites can
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise
The truth one year, heresy the next: The Book of Days, by Francesca Kay, reviewed
A richly imagined novel unfolds in an Oxfordshire village as the accession of the child king Edward VI brings another round of ‘newfanglery’ in religion
The magic and mystery of Georgia: Hard by a Great Forest, by Leo Vardiashvili, reviewed
Homesick after 20 years in London, Irakli returns to his Caucasian roots and promptly disappears. Can Saba, his youngest son, track him down against the odds?
Three men in exile: My Friends, by Hisham Matar, reviewed
Terror of discovery by the Libyan authorities haunts Khaled, Hosam and Mustafa after their protests against Gaddafi make their return home impossible
Escape into fantasy: My Heavenly Favourite, by Lucas Rijneveld, reviewed
The 14-year-old daughter of a Dutch farmer is pursued by a paedophile vet and tries hard to combat the abuse by imagining she’s a bird
An insider’s account of the CCP’s stranglehold on China
A high-ranking intelligence officer leaves a cache of letters revealing his increasing disenchantment with the party after being purged numerous times
A Guardsman’s life as not as glamorous as it might seem
Besides taking part in dangerous operational tours abroad, units of the Household Division keep up a gruelling schedule of ceremonial duties at home
Secrets of the dorm: Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid, reviewed
An academic who also writes a column for a teen magazine eavesdrops on the conversations of rich university students and reproduces them for readers to sneer at
Have we all become slaves to algorithms?
Kyle Chayka sees their constant feeds as flattening our lives, but the spread of Americanisation, which began long before the internet, is the real steamroller
Conrad Black adheres firmly to the ‘great man’ view of history
The movers and shakers of Volume I of his projected history of the world are Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal rather than any socio-economic forces
Mystery in everyday objects
Household gadgets take on a sense of wonder or menace for Lara Pawson, who sees a porpoise’s dorsal fin in the dial of a toaster and a hand grenade in a pepper mill
The strangeness of Charles III
‘He can cry at a sunset’, says one courtier of the King. A bullied child and an intellectual among George Formby fans, Charles dreams of gardening and plants mazes
The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment
Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres
How Liverpool soon outgrew the Beatles
For the bands playing at Eric’s, the celebrated Merseyside punk club of the late 1970s, even to own a Beatles record was considered embarrassing
Have we all become more paranoid since the pandemic?
Covid-19 proved devastating to our self-confidence and faith in others, says Daniel Freeman, who describes the ‘corrosive’ effects of mistrust on individuals and society
Life is a far richer, more complicated affair than we imagined
Exploring the new biology, Philip Hall explains how genes do not in fact determine our fate, and how cells can be reprogrammed to perform all kinds of new tasks
