Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
Translated by Anthea Bell Review by Terence Jagger Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna, but lived in England, the USA and Brazil, where he apparently died in a double suicide…
Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle, by Charlotte Smith
Review by Helen Parry Despite her virtuous nature, Emmeline Mowbray is destined to cause trouble because she is a beautiful, illegitimate orphan growing up in an isolated and decaying Pembrokshire…
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Translated by Hilda Rosner Reviewed by Harriet Siddhartha had one single goal – to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow – to let the…
The Siren’s Lament: Essential Stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Review by Karen Langley Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) was a Japanese author known for his erotically charged stories, and is considered one of his country’s best-known modern…
The Evenings by Gerard Reve
Translated by Sam Garrett Review by Rob Spence In Amsterdam, just after the Second World War, Frits, a young office worker, lives a dreary and unfulfilling existence. He lives in…
Introduction to Sally by Elizabeth von Arnim
Reviewed by Harriet ‘You’re really imprisoned, then’, said Carruthers, staring at her. ‘Imprisoned in your beauty’. Salvatia Pinner, always known as Sally despite her parents’ objections, is sixteen years old….
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
Review by Gill Davies Pushkin Press first published this selection of stories in 2013, after its 2011 publication in the US. Since then, every critic and reviewer I’ve read comments…
Suddenly at His Residence: A Mystery in Kent by Christianna Brand
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1946, Suddenly at his Residence is a wartime novel. You wouldn’t necessarily think so at first – the novel is very much a country…
Pipers and a Dancer, by Stella Benson
Review by Helen Parry Mrs Hinds beamed at Ipsie through pince-nez and bubbled her joy through thin lips, but Ipsie made no reply. Americans see English people always reduced to…
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
Review by Lory Widmer Hess In the expansive days of summer, what better book could there be to read than a classic of travel literature, Mark Twain’s career-making account of…
The Voluble Topsy by A.P. Herbert
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1927, nearly a hundred years ago, in the satirical British magazine Punch, the letters of fictional girl-about-town Topsy to her best friend Trix actually…
Twice Round the Clock by Billie Houston
Reviewed by Harriet It’s been a while since we reviewed a British Library Crime Classic on here, so it’s a pleasure to write about this recent one, the only novel…
My Life and I, by Betty Bendell
Reviewed by Harriet One of the problems with bounding spontaneously through life, I’ve discovered, is that people do tend to react to me quite strongly. I’d like to say that…
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Translated by Ralph Manheim, illustrated by Marie-Alice Harel Review by Lory Widmer Hess He picked up the book and examined it from all sides. It was bound in copper-colored silk,…
Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Elena Bormaschenko Illustrated and Introduced by Dave McKean Reviewed by Annabel I have long meant to read this SF classic by the Strugatsky brothers, published in 1972, and…
The Home by Penelope Mortimer
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve just finished reading this very good and very upsetting novel. It’s good because Mortimer was an excellent writer, vivid, perceptive, witty. But it’s upsetting because it’s…
T H White: A Biography, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Reviewed by Helen Parry Not every writer lives a particularly interesting life (it is, after all, for their sitting down and imagining things that we value them) and not every…
My Turn to Make the Tea by Monica Dickens
Reviewed by Julie Barham Monica Dickens wrote many novels, but her first three books were actually fictionalised memoirs of her first three “Jobs”, a varied collection. This book is the…
The Man With Miraculous Hands by Joseph Kessel
Translated by Helen Weaver and Leo Raditsa Reviewed by Rob Spence If you were asked to suggest which real-life character was to be played by Woody Harrelson in his next…
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland & A Fortunate Man by John Berger
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When I first heard about journalist Polly Morland’s A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story, which was later shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize, I…
Bird of Paradise by Ada Leverson
Reviewed by Harriet Bertha – Mrs Percy Kellynch – was known as a beauty. She was indeed improbably pretty, small, plump and very fair, with soft golden hair that was…
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Review by Lory Widmer Hess “The people who offer us the best insights into reality are often novelists,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said, [The Guardian, 14 Jan 2020] and reading…
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Review by Lory Widmer Hess The Farthest Shore, third book in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea sequence, was originally published in 1972. Picking it up for a reread today, in…
The Elvis Mysteries: Kill Me Tender & Blue Suede Clues by Daniel Klein
Review by Annabel Daniel Klein has featured at Shiny New Books once before, back in our early days when Victoria reviewed his 2014 non-fiction book Travels With Epicurus, a gentle…