Books
Bad behaviour
Molly Keane achieved fame and critical acclaim in 1981 aged 75, when she published the novel Good Behaviour, a razor-sharp…
A diamond set in sapphires
I was a young, aspiring writer when I decided to leave everything behind and move to Istanbul more than two…
Intimations of mortality
In Deaths of the Poets two living examples of the species, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, retail the closing…
The Baron is back
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had his Polish ancestor not been exiled to…
A disgrace to feminism
‘I was single, straight, and female,’ Emily Witt begins, with all the élan of an alcoholic stating her name and…
Bankstown lefty
For Paul Keating, there have always been two kinds of politics: ‘high tone’ and ‘low rent’. High tone was to…
Agonised questions
It’s terribly difficult to write a novel about soul-searching, and Elif Shafak has come up with a rather clever device…
The lure of the desert
The great deserts of the world hold a compelling attraction for a rare breed of men who are ‘unwise and…
Still giving peace a chance
Tibetans were once fabled warriors. Their empire, at the summit of its power in the eighth century, extended to northern…
Another challenge for Trump
James D. Zirin is an experienced litigator as well as the host of a popular television talkshow. In this provocative…
Day of infamy
On 7 December 1941, without declaration of war, 350 Japanese carrier-borne aircraft struck at the US Pacific Fleet at anchor…
Big skies and frozen wastes
We know our way around Raymond Carver’s blue-collar cityscapes and Updike’s urban angst and despair. Rick Bass opens a window…
And then there was one
After a long struggle to receive mainstream publication, Paul Auster’s first few novels were a genuinely significant contribution to American…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
In hot water
It’s good to be back in Spook Street, home of the nation’s secret service. From a handful of locations across…
Whited sepulchre
Michelangelo’s Tomb for Pope Julius II: Genesis and Genius edited by Christoph Luitpold Frommel, translated by A. Lawrence Jenkens JrYale,…
Riding the storm
Clover Stroud opens her memoir with the crippling bout of post-natal depression that hit after the birth of her fourth…
Sins of the flesh
Bill Schutt has an excellent subject, and he explores it from a promising angle. Cannibalism has long interested zoologists, anthropologists,…
The great Norse soap opera
Norse myths are having a moment. Or should I say another moment; one of a long chain of moments, in…
Agonised questions
It’s terribly difficult to write a novel about soul-searching, and Elif Shafak has come up with a rather clever device…
The lure of the desert
The great deserts of the world hold a compelling attraction for a rare breed of men who are ‘unwise and…
Another challenge for Trump
James D. Zirin is an experienced litigator as well as the host of a popular television talkshow. In this provocative…
Big skies and frozen wastes
We know our way around Raymond Carver’s blue-collar cityscapes and Updike’s urban angst and despair. Rick Bass opens a window…
And then there was one
After a long struggle to receive mainstream publication, Paul Auster’s first few novels were a genuinely significant contribution to American…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
