What Do I Know? by Michel de Montaigne
Translated by David Coward Review by Karen Langley The essay as a form of writing has existed for centuries, and one of its pre-eminent practitioners was the French author Michel…
Shiny Prize Season – Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck – International Booker Prize
Translated by Michael Hofmann Review by Susan Osborne Jenny Erpenbeck’s novels offer much food for thought on the events that have shaped modern Germany. Opening in 1986, Kairos charts an…
Shiny Prize Season – A Flat Place by Noreen Masud – Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The world is probably divided into two people: those who find the idea of a book about flat landscapes appealing and those who don’t. I suspect…
Shiny Prize Season – Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Susan Osborne Beginning in 2010, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Small Worlds is a beautiful, eloquent exploration of love, loss and finding a place of safety for a person of…
Shiny Prize Season – The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Annabel The longlist for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is truly eclectic, including poetry and short stories from all over the world alongside novels. After being…
Shiny Prize Season – Penance by Eliza Clark – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Laura Tisdall In her debut, Boy Parts, Eliza Clark brilliantly demolished the ‘disaster woman’ trope with her portrait of Irina, a deliciously callous young woman who’s on the prowl for…
Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jane Potter
Review by Rob Spence If you attended a British secondary school at any time from the late nineteen sixties until the present day, at some point you will have encountered…
To the Dogs by Louise Welsh
Review by Annabel For Welsh’s ninth novel, she stays in Glasgow and it is a thriller, but this is not a third outing for her reluctant crime-solving auctioneer Rilke (cf:…
The Future of Trust by Ros Taylor – blogtour
The Futures Series from indie publisher Melville House UK recently launched with four titles that couldn’t be more different from each other: going from Songwriting, to Trust, to War Crimes…
Marcel Proust by Michael Wood
Review by Rob Spence It’s not often that one gets the chance to begin a review with a boast, so I’ll get it over with now: I have read À…
Human Origins: A Short History, by Sarah Wild
Review by Liz Dexter I have […] tried to highlight how much our understanding of human origins has changed – and continues to change – and how, in some ways,…