More from Books

Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?

26 February 2022 9:00 am

When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…

That sinking feeling: The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka, reviewed

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Julie Otsuka has good rhythm, sentences that move to a satisfying beat. Even as her tone shifts — from tender…

A playful version of the universe: Pure Colour, by Sheila Heti, reviewed

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Readers familiar with Sheila Heti’s work, most notably How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood, in which she examines both…

The machinations of the Dudleys make Game of Thrones look tame

26 February 2022 9:00 am

This is the gripping story of the ever-fluctuating fortunes of three generations of the Dudley dynasty, servants to — and…

From pirates to princes — the heroic transformation of the Normans

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The Normans had an astonishingly good run. Not only did they take over England in 1066, of course, but they…

Christina Patterson overcomes family misfortunes

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We…

What’s to become of Africa’s teeming youth?

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Demographers are attached to their theories. The field’s most enduring is the ‘demographic transition’, whereby modernisation inexorably lowers a society’s…

Inside New India: Run and Hide, by Pankaj Mishra, reviewed

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The first novel in more than 20 years from the essayist and cultural analyst Pankaj Mishra is as sharp, provocative…

Playing until her fingers bled: the dedication of the pianist Maria Yudina

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The 20th century was an amazing time for Russian pianists, and the worse things got, politically and militarily, the more…

Why did Britain lock up so many innocent refugees in 1940?

12 February 2022 9:00 am

Despite prostrate Germany’s need for the return of its men, in Britain we didn’t release our prisoners of war until…

Lonely voices: Dance Move, by Wendy Erskine, reviewed

12 February 2022 9:00 am

‘The drawer beside Roberta’s bed contained remnants of other people’s fun’: so begins ‘Mathematics’, one of 11 stories in this…

Know your left from your right: the brain’s divided hemispheres

12 February 2022 9:00 am

The dust jacket of The Matter With Things quotes a large statement from an Oxford professor: ‘This is one of…

The best and coolest decade: nostalgia for the 1990s

12 February 2022 9:00 am

The long 1990s began with the Pixies album Surfer Rosa in 1989 and ended with the invasion of Iraq in…

A Canadian’s experience of the migrant’s ordeal

12 February 2022 9:00 am

No one boards an overladen dinghy and sets out across a choppy sea without very good reason. Laden into migrant…

An innocent abroad: a Dutch tour operator in 1980s Russia

12 February 2022 9:00 am

‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…

Don’t listen to Johann Hari to help your attention span

5 February 2022 9:00 am

In 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche made a complaint about the modern world, writing in The Gay Science: Even now one is…

Abstract and concrete: the beauty of brutalism

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Nothing divides the British like modernist architecture. Traditionalists are suspicious of its utopian ambitions and dismiss it as ugly; proponents…

Is Julian Assange on a hiding to nothing?

5 February 2022 9:00 am

A question looms throughout this book: is it better to die rather than experience the wrath of a publicly shamed…

Both epic and intimate: The Love Songs of W.E. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, reviewed

5 February 2022 9:00 am

To write a first novel of 800 pages is either supremely confident or crazy. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, a professor of…

Is it an exaggeration to talk of a ‘gender war’?

5 February 2022 9:00 am

According to Nina Power’s forceful and rather unusual What Do Men Want?, we in the West are currently engaged in…

A modern Medea: Iron Curtain, by Vesna Goldsworthy, reviewed

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Vesna Goldsworthy’s finely wrought third novel explodes into life early on with a shocking scene in which Misha — the…

Stalin the intellectual: the dictator cast in a new light

5 February 2022 9:00 am

The link between mass-murdering dictators and the gentle occupation of reading and writing books is a curious one, but it…

At last, a literary sexy novel: Love Marriage, by Monica Ali, reviewed

5 February 2022 9:00 am

At last, and finally: literary sex is back. The Bad Sex Prize has a lot to answer for in British…

Parallel lives: Violets, by Alex Hyde, reviewed

5 February 2022 9:00 am

When Violet wakes up in Birmingham Women’s Hospital at the start of Alex Hyde’s debut novel her first thought is…

All hell breaks loose when our senses go haywire

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Jesus is a Malteser. You might say I’m a liar or accuse me of the most egregious heresy, but the…