My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown
Reviewed by Liz Dexter It’s the book everyone’s been waiting for that fills in the gaps left by Tony Blair’s autobiography and the various books on the financial crisis, the…
Science Fiction: A Literary History edited by Roger Luckhurst
Reviewed by Annabel Once upon a time SF was a subculture haunted by small populations of nerds and geeks. Star Wars (1977) changed that, … SF author Adam Roberts says…
Ice by Anna Kavan
Reviewed by Karen Langley Ice has come a long way since its first publication by its champion, Peter Owen, in 1968. My initial encounter with it was in a striking Picador…
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies This novel borrows its title from Fritz Lang’s canonical film noir (which is also a teasing, ironic comedy of the repressed returning) and Finn’s first-person narrator, Dr…
Unaccompanied Minor by Alexander Newley
Review by Annabel The children of celebrity couples inevitably have a hard time growing up, especially when their parents split. You need only think of the late Carrie Fisher, daughter…
Lullaby by Leïla Slimani
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Moroccan born novelist Leïla Slimani is not the first woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, though she’s only…
In Search of Lost Books: The forgotten stories of eight mythical volumes by Giorgio van Straten
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is an engaging book about other books, but it makes no judgements on them, and nor can we express, even internally, our own views on…
Eastern Horizons: Hitchhiking the Silk Road by Levison Wood
Review by Liz Dexter It’s worth noting from the off that this is not a “new” travel book by the popular explorer, but a revisiting of a journey he made…
Zen and the Art of Murder by Oliver Bottini
Translated by Jamie Bulloch Reviewed by Terence Jagger We are not in Japan, but Germany; set in the snowy Black Forest, not far from the French border, this novel starts…
Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann
Reviewed by Harriet Most people probably think that the presence of black people in Britain began with the large influx of nearly 500 who came over from Jamaica in 1948…