Girl with Dove by Sally Bayley
Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve read Annabel’s account of the Golden Booker presentation, you’ll have noticed that one of the judges, Lemn Sissay, urged the audience to read this book….
Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve read Annabel’s account of the Golden Booker presentation, you’ll have noticed that one of the judges, Lemn Sissay, urged the audience to read this book….
Reviewed by Kim Forrester There’s something about Michelle de Kretser’s silky prose combined with her superbly drawn characters and her forensic eye for detail that makes The Life to Come —the Australian…
Translated by Boris Dralyuk Review by Karen Langley Russian satirical writing has a rich heritage, stretching all the way back to the time of Catherine the Great and continuing into…
Review by Annabel Only the fact that I’d never read Mrs Dalloway blinded me to the power of the first sentence of Ness’s latest novel: Adam would have to get the flowers…
Reviewed by Harriet David Lynch’s films are certainly not for everybody. Almost all of them are strange, dark, and increasingly hard to pin down to a plot summary, let alone…
Translated by Frank Wynne Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Almost two decades ago I saw a French movie called Baise-moi. It contained, besides much simulated violence, what Wikipedia fastidiously calls ‘several…
Translated by Lisa Hayden Reviewed by Karen Langley You awake in a hospital bed. You have no memory of who you are or how you came to be there, apart…
Review by Rob Spence I began reading this book just as the outcry over the Trump regime’s treatment of migrants was gathering pace. It seemed an appropriate time to enter…
Translated by Tina A Kover Review by Marina Sofia With a blurb promising a story of growing up in exile and even the title cleverly playing on words ‘disoriented’ and…
Review by Liz Dexter Miranda Aldhouse-Green is a specialist in Romano-British studies and Iron Age archaeology and has written other books on myth and religion in this period, so you…
Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Gill Davies Having become rather jaded with the predictability of the crime fiction genre and wearied by the sheer number published, I’ve been interested…
Who will win in 2018? Do share your longlist predictions… Report by Annabel When I booked my ticket for this event a couple of months ago, I was lucky enough…
It’s not always the case (or often?) that judges and readers are all in agreement on longlists, let alone the shortlists or eventual winners of literary prizes. Here we look…
And finally, this fifth decade brings us up to date with previous winners of the Man Booker Prize. In 2010, the organisation decided to create “The Lost Booker” to celebrate…
The prize’s fourth decade marked the first time, in 2001, that the longlist was revealed to the world at large. It decade also marked two second wins for previous winners,…
During the prize’s third decade, for the second time in its history, two books tied for top spot in 1992. Then, in 1993, the prize turned twenty-five. To celebrate, three…
The second decade of the prize, apart from producing the “Booker of Bookers” in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, was enlivened by some tight judging decisions. In 1980, it was William Golding…
When the Booker Prize was inaugurated, prizes for literature were rather looked down upon, they just didn’t make much impact. Tom Maschler looked at the huge success of the French…
Dear Readers, The Booker Prize will be 50 years old this year. The longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize will be announced on the 24th of July, the shortlist will…
Paperback review by Annabel When I first started reading this book, I hadn’t appreciated it was by ‘John’ Connolly of the Charlie Parker crime novels, I mis-read the author’s forename,…
Review by Liz Dexter “I hate autobiographies. They’re so fake”. That’s an astounding opening sentence but one that doesn’t really surprise, given that it’s written by a man who’s spent…
Review by Julie Barham This is a book that in many ways reads like a novel. That said, it is also a non- fiction history book, well presented with at…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘Alright’ I said, ‘I’ll try’…’But I’ve never done this kind of thing before’ is what I would have said next, I’m sure, as it still seems a…
Reviewed by Julie Barham There are some books which are so good that I struggle to find words to suggest how much I appreciate them, and this is one of…