More from Books
Robyn Davidson explores yet another foreign country – the past
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Murder by the Mississippi
When the mutilated corpse of a Ku Klux Klan member is discovered, the stability of an entire city is threatened in this tale of racial tension set beside the Mississippi
Set in a silver sea: the glory of Britain’s islands
Alice Albinia reminds us that Orkney was a trading station long before London, Iona the epicentre of Celtic Christianity and Shetland a haven for liberal Udal law
We should all embrace the power of games
Board games especially – dating back to at least 3000 BC – have never been idle entertainment but help boost the memory and teach valuable strategic skills
Keeping a mistress was essential to John le Carré’s success
The novelist himself admitted that his infidelities ‘produced a duality and tension that became a necessary drug for my writing’
Out of the shadows
Unlike his attention-seeking brother David Stirling, Bill was a careful planner, responsible for many successful intelligence-gathering operations behind enemy lines
Remember, remember
The world that blossoms in this haunting novel about the importance of memory is in the aesthetic vein known as ‘mono no aware’, or ‘the pathos of things’
Looking on the bright side
The Rochdale lass who sang her way from music hall to the silver screen encouraged a spirit of resilience and community in the interwar years, says Simon Heffer
What makes other people’s groceries so engrossing?
Ingrid Swenson spent ten years retrieving discarded shopping lists at a London Waitrose, and the result is a rare glimpse into entire, private worlds
The difficulties faced by identical twins
Being the genetic copy of another human not only presents problems of individuality but offers a ‘rare form of experimental control’, says William Viney
Gentle genius
Dissatisfied with his unfinished epic, the dying Vergil called for his scrolls to be burned, but was fortunately overruled by the Emperor Augustus
An absolute earful
Singing sands, the dawn chorus and the crackle of the Northern Lights are among the many natural wonders explored in Caspar Henderson’s paean to the act of listening
Stark realities
Lawyers, teachers, architects and engineers all enjoy sex behind the scenes at a Houston gay bar in a novel focusing on relationships among black urban men
Too many tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages
Blow your mind
The UK seems on the brink of a ‘psychedelic renaissance’ – but, stripped of shamanic ritual and sanitised for medicinal purposes, will psilocybin retain its power?
Is Israelophobia the latest form of anti-Semitism?
The demonisation of the state of Israel is basically an anti-Semitic mutation ‘evolving out of reach’, argues Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle
Fighting every inch of the way: the Italian Campaign of 1943
When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains
Rising star
The second volume of Knausgaard’s trilogy serves as a prequel to the first, tracing the origins of Norway’s ominous new celestial body
A horrifying glimpse of Syria’s torture cells
More than 100 interviews with surviving detainees and former prison workers reveal how profoundly shocking President Assad’s regime continues to be
Never the doctor, always the nurse: the fate of women in post-war Britain
For decades, undereducated girls were thwarted before they even started in the workplace, living in the slipstream of men and drip-fed with a sense of their own uselessness
The view from the lab
The neuroscientist Camilla Nord places considerable emphasis on scanning technology, but has disappointingly little to suggest in the way of effective new treatments
Travels in Italy with the teenage Mozart
Jane Glover follows the rapturous Wolfgang around Venice, Bologna, Florence and Naples on three journeys that would change the young composer’s life
A world of your own
How the search for a birthday present led to the founding of a unique business
Brutality rules in paradise – a memoir of Jamaican childhood
Brought up by a tyrannical father in the postcard beauty of Montego Bay, this is a story of the author’s salvation through literature and the ferocity of maternal love
Joan Didion deserves better
The great American writer is ill-served by this new biography – but luckily we still have her own writing to tell us who she truly was
