And Time Was No More: Essential Stories and Memories, by Teffi
Edited and annotated by Robert Chandler Review by Karen Langley The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Russian émigré writing with a host of forgotten…
Edited and annotated by Robert Chandler Review by Karen Langley The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Russian émigré writing with a host of forgotten…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘Anyone who has read the four books I have written about my adventures with ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne, may be surprised by this one. Where is Hawthorne?…
Translated by Julia Sanches Review by Michael Eaude Lemons and Cherries Most reviews I write are of Catalan fiction translated to English. I often wonder whether my commitment to learning…
Review by Rob Spence Birthright. The word smacks of entitlement, doesn’t it? The idea of being privileged because of the status of your parents. There’s plenty of entitlement on show…
Reviewed by Harriet Who remembers reading The Eagle of the Ninth? First published in 1954, when Sutcliff was 34, it is set in Roman Britain and tells the story of…
Review by Annabel 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of the ‘Ondaatje Prize’, awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the…
Reviewed by Gill Davies In the summer of 1917 Virginia Woolf was living at Asheham, a house near Lewes in Sussex. She was 35 and hadn’t written anything for two…
Review by Rob Spence Anthony Burgess was, of course, one of the most significant novelists of the second half of the twentieth century, publishing over thirty novels, (a centenary reading…
Reviewed by Harriet I have set myself many tasks for the year – I wonder how many will be accomplished? A Novel called Middlemarch, a long poem on Timoleon, and…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When Alexander Larman wrote The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication about Edward VIII, he had no idea that it would be the beginning of…
Review by Annabel I enjoyed Nolan’s debut, Acts of Desperation, published in 2022, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Author Award. It is a fine example of the now…
Review by Rob Spence When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in October last year that the multi-billion pound rail infrastructure programme HS2 would not, after all, be completed, leaving Manchester…
Review by Annabel One thing I know: this sublime novella will be featuring in my books of the year for 2024. Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is a beautifully written love letter,…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I knew from the Costa Award-winning debut collection Flèche (2019) that Mary Jean Chan writes exquisite poems of love and longing. Their follow-up, Bright Fear, has…
Reviewed by Harriet In the back of my mind I was always sure that wonderful things were waiting for me, but I’d got to get through a lot of horrors…
Review by Karen Langley Back in the 20th century, the world was a very different place to live in if you were female and/or gay. Equal pay was a pipe…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I discovered there was a new collection of essays out about the philosophy of twins, and that it was written by an identical twin, I…
Review by Peter Reason The term ‘narco state’ usually refers to those countries whose economy has been taken over by the cultivation of the opium poppy and the criminal gangs…
Translated by John Hodgson Review by Karen Langley The International Booker Prize is one of the more high profile literary awards, and its stated aim is to introduce readers to…
Translated by Kira Josefsson Review by Susan Osborne While enduring a light fever, the unnamed narrator of Ia Genberg’s The Details is seized with the urge to read the novel…
Reviews by Laura Tisdall Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang’s second and so far, strongest, novel, is set in a near-future…
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…
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…
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…