Doppelgangers galore: The Novices of Lerna, by Angel Bonomini, reviewed
A graduate from Argentina, offered a six-month fellowship in Switzerland, is appalled to meet – and have to live with - 24 versions of himself
An Argentinian allegory: Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez, reviewed
‘In Argentina,’ Mariana Enriquez writes in Our Share of Night, ‘they toss bodies at you.’ It is an arresting, chilling…
Wall Street madness: Trust, by Hernan Diaz, reviewed
‘I don’t trust fiction,’ the famous author told me, both of us several glasses to the good. ‘It contains too…
A twist on the American classic: The Sidekick, by Benjamin Markovits, reviewed
On the cover of The Sidekick, just below a broken basketball hoop, a quote from Jonathan Lethem suggests Benjamin Markovits…
Unkindly light: The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle sequence is one of this century’s great projects: an intimate epic in which the overriding…
A delicious novel from one of our most inventive contemporary voices
‘Food experiences,’ writes Michael Flanagan in his paper ‘Cowpie, Gruel and Midnight Feasts: Food in Popular Children’s Literature’, ‘form part…
The urge to purge: it’s closure at last for the tortured Karl Ove Knausgaard
And so it comes, the final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle sequence: a pale brick of a book,…
Shadows of the past are ominously present in a trio of memorable first novels
The Shangri-Las’ song ‘Past, Present and Future’ divides a life into three, Beethoven-underpinned phases: before, during and after. Each section…
Worming out the truth
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement…
Worming out the truth
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement…
Smoke and mirrors
Nell Zink’s route to publication became something of a story in itself: one that involved an email exchange about birds…
