The Man Booker Prize at 50: 1969-1978
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…
Introducing Shiny’s Booker Week
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…
He by John Connolly
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,…
The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah: The Autobiography
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…
White King: The Tragedy of Charles I by Leanda de Lisle
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…
Caroline’s Bikini by Kirsty Gunn
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…
Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
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…
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Review by Peter Reason This is a novel about the place of humans in the living world. Too serious, too philosophical, you might say? But this is also a gripping…
84K by Claire North
Reviewed by David Harris Trying to sum up this book, and North’s writing, in a discussion with a friend on Twitter recently, I said that she is a remarkable writer,…
The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Why Everything Old Is New Again If I had to recommend a historian on the twentieth century terrors to someone who was coming new to it,…
Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
Reviewed by Harriet This little treasure of a book tells the story, in his own words, of the last survivor of the last, illegal, cargo of enslaved Africans to be…
Vocations by Gerald O’Donovan
Reviewed by Julie Barham This Irish novel, originally published in 1921, reprinted by Handheld Press, is a tremendously engaging read. Dealing with the fates of two girls in Catholic Ireland,…
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin I can’t remember seeing a more perfect cover for a book in a while. Everything you need to know about The Water Cure is there. The obscure water…
The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers
Translated by Margaret Bettauer Dembo Reviewed by Gill Davies The novel is set in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and was first published in German in 1942. Seghers was a…
Star of the North by D B John
Reviewed by Annabel Very few westerners get to visit North Korea, and DB John is one of them – he’s seen the public face of this secretive country from the…
The Sing of the Shore, by Lucy Wood
Review by Helen Parry I have been a fan of Lucy Wood’s writing since reading her début collection of short stories, Diving Belles, and so I was thrilled to see…
The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull
Reviewed by Harriet ‘From its first appearance in 1934, Richard Hull’s The Murder of my Aunt was recognised as something special in crime fiction’. So says Martin Edwards in his introduction…
A Dead Rose by Aurora Cáceres
Translation, Foreword & Notes by Laura Kanost Reviewed by Karen Langley The female form is often idealised in art and media, from classical sculptures through paintings and in more modern…
House of Beauty by Melba Escobar
Translated by Elizabeth Bryer Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies Each time I walk into town from my house I pass at least one nail/beauty salon/spa/bar/studio (the titles variously inflect the…
Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima
Translated by Geraldine Harcourt Reviewed by Annabel This latest addition to Penguin Classic’s expanding list of new translations in an upmarket paperback format is a beguiling novella following the story…
Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Karen Langley Golden Age crime, which has had such a revival recently, is renowned for particular tropes and settings; the country house location or the locked room mystery…
Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1000 Years by Chase F. Robinson
A beautiful object, as you can see from the cover image, this is published to be an accessible introduction to pre-modern Islam, looking at thirty of the individuals who founded…
White Houses by Amy Bloom
Reviewed by Susan Osborne I’ve yet to read anything by Amy Bloom that I’ve not loved. Her writing is both deft and empathetic, pressing all my literary buttons. Spanning a…
Review of The Akeing Heart by Peter Haring Judd
Review by Simon How you approach The Akeing Heart will depend largely on how familiar you are with the names Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, and Elizabeth Wade White. These…